To watch I Saw the TV Glow in perfect clarity is to watch it as a product. To watch it in x265 is to watch it as a memory . And memories are lossy.

The compression creates a sense of asphyxiation. You are watching a movie about a person suffocating in a reality that isn't theirs, while the very data of the movie suffocates under the weight of efficiency. The film begs you to look closer at the screen, to find the hidden world behind the pixels. The x265 denies you that luxury. It holds the "Pink Opaque" just out of reach, teasing you with smears of color that might be a monster—or might just be a bad encode.

Let the pixels fight for survival. Let the black crush swallow the edges of the frame. Because the thesis of I Saw the TV Glow is that the world we live in is a low-bitrate simulation of the world we are supposed to be in.

Schoenbrun films the act of glitching out . The codec finishes the job.