Lethal Weapon: The Complete First Season (2016-2017)

[tenia]

Originally Posted by chip75

Bear in mind that Miami Vice's 4:3 aspect ratio takes up less space, so they can push the bitrates higher with 6 episodes on a disc.

Bitrates are a question of disc space and content. The AR doesn't impact how high the bitrate can be, so MV being 4:3 isn't the reason for the higher bitrate, the soundtracks are (and maybe how full the BD-50 whole space is used).

However, the bitrate can be used differently. Lethal Weapon is 1.78, so the bitrate is used for the whole screen, while MV only needs the bitrate to serve the "center" of the screen while the black bars can be set at 0 Mbps. So even if MV had the same bitrate than Lethal Weapon, it could focus on a smaller part of the screen.

But no, the AR doesn't push the bitrates higher. I guess that Warner might have not used 100% of the BD-50 whole disc space, or maybe the 12.22 Mbps is the AVB for the 1st disc (which has technically 7 episodes instead of 6) and that the 2 other discs have actually a slightly higher bitrate.

[McCrutchy]

Usually, discs authored by Warner's TV division end up being about 40-43 GB in size at the most, so we can probably assume that more than 20 GB of combined space has been left unused across the three BD-50 discs.

Originally Posted by Gold Ranger

That sucks.
Hopefully an international version pops up somewhere with better specs.
Then again, this IS Warner's...

No chance. Right now, all of the releases use the exact same Blu-ray Discs. And WB goes out of their way to ensure that most releases are digitally identical on Blu-ray, so even if an edition with a different language package pops up, the A/V specs will be identical. I think this is why we so often see WB discs with acres of unused space--the encodes are designed to be one size fits all.

[Gold Ranger]

Originally Posted by McCrutchy

No chance. Right now, all of the releases use the exact same Blu-ray Discs. And WB goes out of their way to ensure that most releases are digitally identical on Blu-ray, so even if an edition with a different language package pops up, the A/V specs will be identical. I think this is why we so often see WB discs with acres of unused space--the encodes are designed to be one size fits all.

I know. That's why I said what I did in the last sentence.

[chip75]

Originally Posted by tenia

But no, the AR doesn't push the bitrates higher.

As I said if everything was equal, for example if you took a 16:9 video and cropped it to 4:3 it would occupy less space on the disc, so you could decrease the compression and in theory increase the quality of the image.

But that's if everything is equal, there's rarely any point in comparing one show's bitrate to another and a high bitrate is not always a benchmark for video quality, there are goods bits and bad bits. The rate doesn't discern between them.

[tenia]

Originally Posted by chip75

As I said, if everything was equal, for example if you took a 16:9 video and cropped it to 4:3 it would occupy less space on the disc, so you could decrease the compression and in theory increase the quality of the image.

Your idea is right, but the details aren't, hence my remark.

It's not taking up less space on the disc, it's occupying less space on the screen.

Given the same AVC video bitrate, 1 min of BD video will take the same space regardless of its ratio because that's just maths (x sec times y Mbps = z Mb). However, how it will look will be different so yes, you could decrease the compression because you have a smaller area to focus your encode on.

Case in point (I'm choosing Criterion-type releases because the audio tracks are much less a variable) :

Cries and Whispers is 1.66 while Ali : Fear Eats Soul is 1.37. On their respective Criterion releases, both are encoded at similar AVB (35.075 Mbps for Cries, 35.17 for Ali), have similar soundtracks (1 1.0 LPCM 1152 kbps track, Cries also has a small DD 1.0 192 kbps) and are of a similar duration (91 min 43 for Cries, 93 min 33 for Ali). Their total bitrates are both around 39.5 Mbps.
And they end up taking up similar disc space despite Cries and Whispers having more a bigger moving area in the frame : Cries takes 27.102.799.872 bytes, Ali takes 27.500.156.928 bytes.

A 1.78 exemple could be Repo Man : 92 min 09 on its UK release, 35 Mbps, 3 small 2.0 tracks that lead to a similar total bitrate of 39.5 Mbps : it takes again 27.299.629.056 bytes.

Bigger Than Life is a slightly longer 2.55 movie (95 min 21). Total bitrate is again 39.47 Mbps. Size of the movie is again 28.228.706.304 bytes.

All this works also with Watership Down, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, His Girl Friday, The Darjeeling Limited, Wild Strawberries, Branded to Kill, ..., regardless of their AR.

Originally Posted by chip75

But that's if everything is equal, there's rarely any point in comparing one show's bitrate to another and a high bitrate is not always a benchmark for video quality, there are goods bits and bad bits. The rate doesn't discern between them.

This however is very true.
The reading of the AVB doesn't tell how the encoder options were setup, notably.