I used to be a fan of Digital Foundry and I do still watch their content if i'm looking to buy something for purely technical reasons, like a new PC port or a device like an Analog Pocket.
However I think their coverage and features are becoming more and more irrelevant. I can get direct comparisons with no nonsense on
ElAnalistaDeBits. Even includes a bullet point summary of their findings.
MyLifeInGaming handles retro hardware coverage better. Vincent at
HDTVTest just destroys all other coverage when it comes to TV related issues.
Amok4All even does HDR quality analysis, which is very important now in the 4K age. Point is, there are new kids on the block doing things better now.
In terms of the merit of even doing comparisons, they are generally less and less useful. The consoles are basically the same power no matter how much fanboy cock measuring happens on here. Resolution differences in the age of 4K TVs and image reconstruction techniques are becoming increasingly minuscule. DF even addressed this by saying they are no longer going to count pixel resolutions from now on. It's the same story with minor framerate dips - variable refresh rate is making tearing and the odd drop to 58fps a non-issue.
I care much more about tangible differences, like better LODs or effects. Sadly there have been some instances where DF really let me down over the years with that.
Alex's video of Dark Souls Remastered for example seems informative at first glance, but it paints the game as an upgrade when
it just is not. Same story with
Tom's coverage of Alan Wake Remastered - why on Earth didn't he compare it to the 4K PC version, which would reveal that the remaster looks
noticeably worse than the original release? They also softball a lot of games which fuck with the art style enormously, like GTA: Definitive Edition and Crysis 2 with its new lighting. There is a borderline fetishization of 'the tech'. A new dynamic lighting implementation may be better on paper but that doesn't necessarily mean it actually
looks better than the old one.
Finally I wanted to rant about DF Retro. This used to be my favorite part of the channel. John's early output was
phenomenal. I still have all those videos saved on my hard drive in high quality from when I backed the Patreon. But DF Retro has quickly become a pet project for John (and now the hopelessly deadpan Audi) to just namedrop whatever his niche interest of the week is. This got people in the comments section extremely upset when I said this lmao.
Why do we need 3 x 1 hour videos about the PS1 launch lineup in every region? Who cares? There are a lot of 'literally who?' tier videos about really obscure / sideshow games which lack populist appeal (this is reflected in the declining view counts). It really seems like they ran out of content after covering so many of the big guns early. It doesn't really make sense to me though, because I can name a lot of visually interesting retro games not covered yet:
Tekken series? Paper Mario? Gran Turismo series? More arcade games like Outrun? Zelda games? Cel-shaded classics like Jet Set Radio and Wind Waker? A special maybe on pre-rendered games and their production? The golden age of pixel fighters like KoF, Garou or Street Fighter? I mean will they finally do a big Resi 4 retrospective when the HD texture mod drops next month?
Who knows, as we speak John is probably pouring his time into a video about a fan translation of a PC Engine game a handful of people give a fuck about.