Classicamiga Forum Retro Edition
Thread: Amazon Prime
Harrison 10:31 31st December 2023
Amazon continue to sneak new features into Prime membership without really promoting them.

One I've used for a while is Deliveroo Plus, which gives you free dekivery on orders over a certain amount.

And one I just discovered is Odeon Cinema 2 tickets for £10. This is once per month. However Sky now offer 2 free tickets each month to Vue Cinemas, so that's a better deal, although if you want to go twice in a month this is a useful option. I also get discount cinema tickets from Royal Mail. I really should take advantage of all these more.

There is also unlimited full resolution photo storage which I never use. Really should as the Google one does degrade your pictures. The Prime one also includes 5GB free video storage.
[Reply]
Kin Hell 12:51 2nd January 2024
It's all getting a tad crap tbh. Gotta pay 3 bucks a month to stop Adverts now.

YouTube are just as bad & then still screw you with adverts even though you subscribed to stop the adverts.

How do you mean "Google One degrade your pictures?"
[Reply]
Harrison 01:15 4th January 2024
Google doesn't save your original images. It decompressed them to make them smaller files, which degrades the image quality.
[Reply]
Kin Hell 11:15 6th January 2024
Originally Posted by Harrison:
Google doesn't save your original images. It decompressed them to make them smaller files, which degrades the image quality.
Guessing you mean;

Google One "Compresses" them to degrade the image quality. - This is similar to MP3 compression & the loss of Quality of Signal/Sound for doing so.
[Reply]
Harrison 23:31 7th January 2024
Yep. Jpeg compression.

You can get away with compression in a lot of audio far more than images and video where compression causes instant noise and halo fringing adding big differences in contrast. It also knocks down the greyscale levels, meaning the contrast is reduced, causing slightly more washed out images and less blacks.

The problem is many consumers now view images and watch videos almost exclusely on mobile phones, tablets and modern TVs which mostly now have higher contrast screens that boost colours and contrast, so most don't really notice these degradations. But it instantly becomes apparent if you then try to print them.

For me image compression is quite noticeable as I've worked with image editing for a very long time. But for most they just don't notice it. Similar to audiophiles who can instantly hear a digitally compressing and clipped audio file over an uncompressed version.
[Reply]
J T 20:40 8th January 2024
There's certainly a trade off between quality and convenience.

Personally, as most of my photos are quick phone-snapshots of events, I accept the loss of quality. I do like that Google Photos backs up automatically, so if something happens to my phone I won't lose all the pics. I also love the automatic things it does like making collages, memories (this day 5 years ago, or the holiday to X, now-and-then flashbacks). It's a very quick type of photo 'consumption' though, so it's very modern and in some ways a little superficial - but then again, how often do I pull out the old-fashioned photoalbums of physical prints? Not often.
[Reply]
Harrison 12:35 9th January 2024
True. We make photobooks of holidays or special events. We also used to make a yearly calendar with pictures of Tom for the Grandparents, but each month now would just be him playing a video game or at his computer.
[Reply]
Tags:Array
Up