Maybe like Netflix film grain, Spotify could generate the white noise locally and reduce bandwidth usage?
TIL: https://www.slashcam.com/news/single/Netflix-removes-movie-n...
Is there at least a way to turn it off?
If you download the video file and play it back locally, you can change it or turn it off if you want, it's just a video filter
You can even turn off deblocking if you want, get those crispy jpeg-like artifacts!
It's all just post-processing, when it was previously hardcoded, which seems like a win, especially considering bandwidth gains
Now the filmmakers may have done that in the first place, depending on how the movie was made. So for say, things made by Netflix themselves I'm sure they sometimes use fake digital film grain, but that's coming in at an earlier step in the process.
If non-grainy film stock had been available for the same price, do you think filmmakers would have intentionally picked the grainy film instead? Every single time?
As an over-the-top example: Most people (that I know) would agree with George Lucas re-edits of Star Wars with newer CGI are worse than the original edits. The only reason to choose the newer edits are because they're released in HD and the original is not.
(and of course if your film is shot on digital, then it was never there)
It's actually part of AV1 https://norkin.org/research/film_grain/index.html
You'll be telling me that distortion pedals and valve amps are a bad idea next.
It also requires staring into a bright light, so don't do that.
I have astigmatism. Most modern headlights produce lens flares when driving at night. Street and traffic lights also. Doesn’t need to be harmfully bright to flare, just brighter than the background.