POLL: Soft- vs. hardsubbed 480p

Well pretty surprised about the results considering what was on the link I posted about the cons of hardsubbing: -

“Disadvantages of Hardsubbing

Despite what some may call numerous advantages for hardsubbing, there are several distinct disadvantages that should be evaluated before making a decision.

The method of hardsubbing requires that the source video is re-encoded so the subtitles can be written on the image. This, by the nature of lossy video encoding, causes a reduction in video quality.

Subtitles add a sharp contrast in a video image due to their nature. This will cause compression artifacts along the edges of the encoded subtitle, and blurring of the subtitle. This effect is especially evident at lower bitrates.

Under typical circumstances, the inclusion of the subtitles will cause an increase in the bitrate needed for the video to keep the same quality. This, of course, means an increased filesize, or lower quality at the same size. The increase in bitrate necessary is typically around 3 to 10%.

Changing the subtitles requires a re-encode of the video source, which can add a lot of time and extra work to the release process. ”

As it does affect video quality ever so slightly and with the so much among fans that prefer Ryugan over Kyuubi becuz of video quality yet from this, it seems most people don’t care =_=

Also taking into the fact the HD is an upscale whereas the SD (480p) is the native resolution it was animated at =p