Have you ever noticed that the quality of a YouTube video drops immediately when snow falls or confetti is thrown? I honestly never did, but my eyesight is not that great. The HBO intro was given as an example of how noisy background affected video quality. And there are examples in this video.
You’d think the explanation would be very technical, and it is. But Tom Scott (previously at Neatorama) explains what happens in a simple, concise way that left me feeling smarter about video in the digital age. -via reddit