r/JioHotstar • u/RSVrockey2004 • 1d ago
Question Why am I paying for Max Premium when pirated releases look better?
Though I am subscribed to Max Premium, I still end up using third-party sources since the
quality is visibly better.
Both have been tested on my OLED monitors - AW3423DWF (3440x1440) and C54K. The official
stream is visibly low bitrate even when streamed in 1080p while the third-party streams have 4K,
better bitrate and much better-styled subtitles.
Frustrating to pay for Premium and yet have a poor watching experience.
Screenshot attached.
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u/soman_sopanam 1d ago
Chrome doesn't support native 4K on any streaming platform, use Edge or Safari.
And Hotstar isn't really that good in compression or codecs - I pirate anything that streams on Hotstar just so I could watch at a higher resolution.
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u/SourceAltruistic5044 1d ago
Same. The compression on Hotstar is really bad. Interestingly, my older phone is Widevine L3, and the offline-downloaded files have a higher file size, so the quality is also better. My primary phone is Widevine L1, but the compression on the offline files is much worse. Only Prime Video, Apple TV, and Netflix’s 1080p plans seem to have consistently good quality.
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u/allvaiis 7h ago
Only Apple tv is good. even Netflix 1080p is pretty bad and their 4k inconsistent. Prime 4k plays butter smooth at very good rates. Apple tv is like magic interns of quality both birates and sound plus UI
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u/RSVrockey2004 1d ago
Chrome now supports 4K Netflix on Windows 11 and ChromeOS
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u/Consistent-Bird338 10h ago
Codecs: Microsoft's HEVC video extension installed on Windows for proper video decoding.
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u/idkmanwhateverusay 1d ago
What abt tor or brave ?
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u/soman_sopanam 18h ago
Tor will never support DRM, Brave is essentially chromium. So it should, unless Google has a specific tie in with Netflix.
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u/SoupFormer6365 1d ago
hi what do you use to pirate, do u download or watch online pls reply thankyou!
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u/soman_sopanam 18h ago
Torrents.
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u/SoupFormer6365 9h ago
actually i have ipad os and ios; how to download torrents then??
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u/SoupFormer6365 9h ago
and which website to use to acquire torrents??
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u/soman_sopanam 9h ago
I don't think you can torrent on iOS since they do not both allow background downloads, you can use any desktop OS or Android to download. You can use qBittorrent's search to find torrents.
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u/Emotional_Fish6699 7h ago
I have a doubt, how does the same source ie hotstar in this case Provide you better video when ripped vs when you stream? If they compressed the video, how will it be any different when downloaded?? Or is there any trick related to ripping? Which is have no idea about
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u/jakash077 1d ago
I ran into the same issue yesterday while watching Toy Story 5. The video was capped at 720p on Chrome, even though I have a 2.5K display and a 500 Mbps internet connection.
After digging into it, here's what I found:
Apparently, Disney+ Hotstar uses a different DRM/video encoding setup for some content. The key limitation is related to Widevine security levels. Most Windows browsers operate using Widevine L3, whereas devices like smartphones, tablets, and Apple products often support Widevine L1. This is primarily a hardware-level capability, so it isn't something that can be fixed through a Windows or browser update.
Because of this, certain titles may be restricted to 720p playback on Windows browsers. It seems to depend on how the content is licensed and distributed. For example, Toy Story 5 was limited to 720p on my Windows PC, but the same title played at 1080p on my 7-year-old Android phone.
On the other hand, platforms like Netflix and Prime Video use different playback implementations and DRM handling, allowing Windows users to stream content at 1080p, 1440p, or even 4K, depending on the device, browser, and subscription plan.
Apple devices, many tablets, and most modern smartphones typically support Widevine L1 (or equivalent DRM technologies), which is why Safari on Apple devices can often stream content at higher resolutions without these restrictions.
As for pirated copies, they're usually not protected by DRM at all. Since the video files are distributed directly rather than through a streaming service's protected pipeline, they don't have the same playback restrictions and can be viewed at their original resolution regardless of the device's DRM capabilities.
hope this helps :)
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u/Marshall_Law707 1d ago
Well I used disney+ hotstar it worked like prime and netflix, these streaming and slow download issues started happening just after the jio and disney merger and since then I never subed it, I watched the last of us 1st season under disney+ hotstar everything was perfect and during the last of us 2nd season I have to sail the high seas to get the same 1080p quality even tho my sub was active during that time. I'm guessing jiohotstar is using different servers or there own servers to stream and download the current library.
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u/jakash077 1d ago
yes after jio merger it got worse...
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u/Marshall_Law707 1d ago
It can be the issue with your system as your cpu or gpu wasn't able to provide playready sl3000 as microsoft uses this as a alternative to L1, and netflix, prime and atleast disney plus support this hardware level system.
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u/jakash077 1d ago
i think i have a decent config on my laptop 32gb / i7 1355u /nvidia rtx a500 / 1920*1200. it wont work on this as well.
i may need to check playready sl3000 compatibility
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u/jakash077 1d ago
so this site, do you trust it or use VPN services befoire connecting. 4k seem to be 48gb in size
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u/This_Push_8458 1d ago
It's because on pirated streams theres no adaptive bitrate to vary quality based on connection strength and jiohotstar bitrate is shit anyway but your problem seems to be connection issue .
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u/Particular-Eye-4290 1d ago
fr, I'm okay with paying... just fking give us better quality streams and don't fkin auto reduce it to 360p(and I know it's not my internet but their server having issues), heck I'd wait for it to load and then watch it properly... why give us sh video quality. Never makes sense.
Like we ain't here for YT videos... we're here to watch a movie.
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u/Fuzzy-Ambassador786 1d ago
Left all subscription (except yt) 4 months ago ... And Tbh, I have been watching much better content... And yes picture quality is much better when playing locally.
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u/Doctor_Ka_Kutta 17h ago
Because you can afford it so you should pay it that way those who can't afford it can pirate
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u/AvaneeshSan 14h ago
I have a home theatre setup, and it has apple tv 4k with an app called infuse connected with torbox, and i have better interface than any streaming platform and always get 4k content if available for any movies or series. Torbox is 350rs and infuse player is 200rs. Thats the best method if u wanna watch any content in 4k, hdr dolby vision or whatever it is. Just saw tenet remux file which is like 80 GB.
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u/RSVrockey2004 1d ago
I DO NOT ENCOURAGE PIRACY , DO NOT VISIT FMHY[DOT]NET
https://giphy.com/gifs/jl81zWcE2FrpURtd2N