HDRip or Blu-ray?

[jessewest]

Which is better quality? An HDRip or a Blu-ray? What about a WEB-DL rip? What kind of movie rip is the best quality out of all the movie rips available?

[RobertX]

Go with Blu-Ray rips and Web-DL if you can.

Of course, with Cinavia, Blu-Rays rips are far and few in between. In that case, just use Web-DL.

[jessewest]

Go with Blu-Ray rips and Web-DL if you can.

Of course, with Cinavia, Blu-Rays rips are far and few in between. In that case, just use Web-DL.

How come hd rips are larger in file size than blu Ray?

[RobertX]

I don't know.

I think I should correct myself: the comparison between Blu Ray rips and HD rips, in terms of quality and compression, is arbitrary. Maybe I should correct myself again!

Well, in any case, bob5695 should be adept in answering, truthfully, those questions.

Why'd you ask?

[jessewest]

I asked because I want to know which rips are better . I noticed that hd rips have a larger file size and that got me wondering.

[᠎]

Robert's suggestion is not a bad starting point but it's not simple, and it's something you can only learn by personal experience.

"Quality" depends on (at least) five factors :
- the objective quality of the source material (a Blu Ray is generally higher resolution than an HD channel, and an older movie won't have been filmed in as high a resolution than a modern day movie).
- the skill of the ripper (all encoding programs come with default settings, which do an OK job for most people. But rippers who take the time to learn can create better quality by adjusting the settings depending on the source material eg. a fast moving action movie benefits from a higher frame-rate bit rate compared to a slower paced period drama)
- the settings chosen by the ripper (they decide how much they want to reduce the filesize--the smaller the file they want to create the more "quality" gets discarded to do it. Some rippers create larger files which are generally higher quality; some cater to downloaders who prefer smaller files)
- the device on which you play the file (if you play something on an iPad it may look great but if you play it on an 85" plasma it may look shite)
- your personal taste / what you're use to (if you're only used to DVD's, a Blu-Ray will look great. If you've watched nothing but retail Blu-Ray discs for the past year any rip will look poor).

HD Rips may be larger than Blu Ray Rips (or vice versa) for a number of reasons:
- higher resolution of the rip (which is not related to the resolution of the source material)
- higher bit rates

Whether you will be able to notice any difference will depend on you (and what sort of movie it is, and what you're playing it back on).

Beyond Robert's advice, get to know the names of some of the uploaders (and/or rippers). They're generally fairly consistent release-to-release. YIFY is the most well know, and their files are relatively small for HD. Download some of those and, if you're happy, you know you will more than likely be happy whichever YIFY release you download. If you have more bandwidth avaiable and you want to try something else, download something a bit bigger and decide whether you, personally, like it and are happy to download files that size.

[jessewest]

I read on Wikipedia that hd rips and web dl rips can be better than did quality but I don't know if it meant blu Ray dvd or just regular

[RobertX]

It can be better because web downloads are mainly fresh from the source.

[imPROvise]

  What kind of movie rip is the best quality out of all the movie rips available?

The best quality would be BD50 rips, which are ripped directly from the bluray disc without any loss of quality. BD50's will contain all the languages, subtitles, and extra from the bluray.
If you wanted just the main video then you would want to dl a REMUX, which is also lossless but may or may not include all the language and/or subtitle streams.

[᠎]

"can be" is not "are". In fact "can be" directly implies "sometimes they are [better] and sometimes they are [worse]". ie. the statement is perfectly true and completely useless.

BD50 rips are the best you're going to get at this point (but you are talking approximately 30GB per movie, so they're probably not what you want).

There are also a smattering for "4K" torrents starting to appear. As previously noted, that's generally refers to the source of the rip not necessarily the rip itself. They're potentially even higher quality than BD50's but they're going to be around 30GB also (so between that and the fact I don't have a 4K screen I've never downloaded one to see).

One final point: the "codec" used to create the file will also bear significantly on the filesize. Roughly, Xvid (commonly found in AVI files) is older. x264 (commonly found in MP4 and MKV files) is "the current top dog". An x264 rip of the same filesize as an Xvid rip will be considerably higher quality; and an x264 rip of the same quality will be found in a considerably smaller file. The "coming thing" which you will probably only be able to play on your computer not your TV, is x265 (aka HEVC). An HEVC rip of the same filesize as a x264 rip will be considerably higher quality.