720p: Web-dl Vs. hdtv?

[miconar]

Hi everyone

Many thanks for the nice welcoming community you have here, there is a lot of knowledge and files floating around in here for everyone to enjoy, and I appreciate it :)

I was hoping someone could explain the general difference between 720p.hdtv and 720p.web-dl tv episodes. both in the sense of where they come from (the source), how they are captured, and most importantly is there a consistent difference in quality between them?

thanks :)

[TheKarateKitt]

Well, I can't speak for all HDTV vs. Web-DL rips, but I know for a show like "Lost," it appears on iTunes the next day after airing on TV. Both HDTV and Web-DL rips have their own pro's and con's.

For HDTV rips, they generally appear within the hour after the show airs (sometimes within minutes!), but HDTV encodes often lack the quality of Web-DL rips. With WebDL's, the quality is sometimes noticeably better. However, you'd have to wait 'til it gets released on iTunes - usually a full 24 hours AFTER it airs on TV. THEN, after that, someone would spread it like wildfire on the internet.

To summarize: If you want quality and don't mind waiting, get the Web-DL. If you wanna' watch your TV show ASAP, grab the HDTV rip, but don't complain when you notice artifacts, banding, and other crap relegated to HDTV rips :P

[miconar]

thank you :) May all your questions find answers as well ;-)

[zillionandnine]

speaking of, is there a good place to find web-dl rips? i usually just stick to usenet so i don't know if there's like a forum or something with lots of these rips in one place.

[hotshot6473]

It is completely dependent on the show. You need to make comparisons between an internal encode and a web-dl. Generally web-dl is better then encodes but it depends on the original stream bitrate. If the original stream was high or from c-band it will be better most of the time. Also basically anything NBC for web-dl is absolute crap.

But web-dl is greater than scene if that's all you can get and are not members of HDBits.