Bloat often stems from "lazy" encoding. Modern encoders like x265 offer hundreds of settings.
Typical BDRips use the Matroska (.mkv) container and the x264 or x265 (HEVC) codecs. These codecs are designed to compress the massive raw data of a Blu-ray into a manageable size while retaining as much detail as possible. The Problem of "Bloat"
Anime encoding is the most heated battleground for the bloat debate.
So a would be a Blu-ray rip that’s bigger than it should be without a proportional gain in visual/audio quality. This is often used as a criticism in torrent or P2P comments:
Choosing a higher bitrate during the ripping process can increase the file size to maintain higher video quality, but this can sometimes be at the expense of compression efficiency.
As codecs like AV1 and HEVC become standard, the line between efficiency and bloat is shifting. The modern consensus among high-tier encoders is : using exactly as many bits as necessary, and not a single bit more. For the downloader, understanding bloat transforms file selection from a guessing game into an informed choice between saving disk space and future-proofing a collection.
This feature explores what bloat is in the context of BDRip encoding, why it happens, the technical arguments for and against it, and how it affects the end-user experience.