4k TV etc

[Hot Flatus]

I bought one, yesterday.

I joined the plebian masses, with their flabby bodies and cheap clothes, clutching their spangly boxed items of tatty Chinese shite, in the marbled cathedral of consumerism, high up on the mount overlooking Bristol,  in an orgy of decontextualised American culture.

And I'm not sure I like it.

I stuck on the Netflix 4k version of Breaking Bad, and it looked unnervingly realistic. Like I was actually there. But I dont want to be there. Thats the last place I want to be.

Then I put on Blue Planet and nearly drowned.

Hmmmm

[Jaded]

But did you watch all of it?

[Hot Flatus]

Yes.

 I left it on whilst I went out for the day.

[rogerzilla]

This could be the first visual technology not to be driven by pr0n.  Sometimes you don't want to see every hair.

[Chris S]

Have you watched anything in 60fps yet? It just looks wrong.

[ian]

I have the same issue – we recently got a 55 inch UHD OLED monster and a lot of things look somewhat artificial. I've got used to it a bit, but it gives movies and TV programs a bit of an 'animated' quality. And it ruins a lot of CGI which, of course, is animated. Basically it takes a $300 million holiday blockbuster and makes it look like Babylon 5. I'm not sure what it does for porn, but I'm scared by the very concept. That and a porn version of Babylon 5, of course.

We used to have one of those LCD projection TVs, which was gloriously old school (and actually old), but the picture quality, while lacking the sharpness, really worked and just looked, well, less digital and more like being at the movies.

[Kim]

The high-quality video "soap-opera effect" doesn't really bother me.  At some point I stopped associating film grain and low frame rate with quality and started associating it with idiots who think they can make up for low production values by throwing away half the fields and adding noise.

The problem is that good video shows up everything else that's lacking.  We can see that they're plastered in make-up.  We can read that that time machine's controlled by the landing-lights panel from a 1950s aeroplane.  Lighting design matters more than ever.  So do props.

Babylon 5's a good analogy.  Other than the CGI, they shot the whole thing on film in a widescreen-safe aspect ratio, and while the makeup was consistently good, if you watch a version that hasn't been through the VHS filter the sets and props are a lost cause.

I've encountered plenty of perfectly sensible B5 slash over the years, but for some reason the image of Tracy Scoggins and Lovejoy just popped into my head, and I had to share it.  You're welcome.

[ian]

Thanks, erm, for that. I kind of knew there'd be B5 porn, because, well, the internet. But there's knowing and knowing.

But anyway, a lot of stuff looks kind of false at full throttle UHD/4K. A presume a good portion of this is up-scaling, I doubt there's a lot of stuff shot natively at 4K (the last time I was involved in any of that nonsense they digitized film at 2K or shot via a 2K intermediate). I confess, I've not got around to paying the premium for Netflix UHD content, the samplers didn't look an awful lot different and there wasn't that much content at the time.

Reminds a bit of the IMAX, when they show normal movies blown up to IMAX size they can be a bit less than flattering to the actors. The stuff shot or remastered for IMAX tends to edit out all the pimples, wrinkles, and razor burn.

ETA: I know UHD isn't just 4k and true enough, the colour range and depth is amazing even to my stunted colour vision.

[Chris S]

Some things look staggeringly awesome in 4k. The recent Mountains short series on BBC for one. Fully supported 4k games on the Playstation are pretty good too - I can see why some Elite: Dangerous players play just for the "views".

[ian]

Landscapes and nature do look amazing (though there's a tendency towards oversaturation), it's more standard TV and movie production values that come up short.

Not that I don't like my big TV, but I do sometimes miss the softer edged pictures of the ginormous projector TV (despite the fact the bulb had a projected life of 2.5 years, it was still going strong the better part of twelve years later, it was a the fan that noisily went into terminal decline).

[Kim]

If I want softer edge pictures, I can take my glasses off for the full SD effect.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I joined the plebian masses, with their flabby bodies and cheap clothes, clutching their spangly boxed items of tatty Chinese shite, in the marbled cathedral of consumerism, high up on the mount overlooking Bristol,  in an orgy of decontextualised American culture.

You were there at the wrong time. Friday midnight in ASDA carpark for the drag racing is where you should be.

[ian]

If I want softer edge pictures, I can take my glasses off for the full SD effect.

I do that and all I see is a TV-shaped blur. Leastways, I think it's a TV. Might be a chair.

[Jaded]

It could be an escaped un-led thought?

[Hot Flatus]

I've got the hang of this thing now, and I'm liking it more and more.

Coolest thing ever....via WiFi  I can project what is on my smartphone screen onto the telly. My 5 year old was the first to experience this whilst having his viewing of the A Team interrupted by my face leering down at him (live selfie 😀)

[Canardly]

Just been watching my sister's OLED telly and completely agree ref make up outlines and that in HD only. But, OLED is superb and I hope the cost curve comes down soon.

[Brucey]

One of my chums was working on OLED technology about thirty years ago and raised my expectations; for me personally, it has all been a long time coming. But....HD video (in its various forms) often looks a bit weird and has various artefacts. But then so does every form of video, and we just get used to them.

Interestingly different folk make different selections if there is (as there is on some TVs) a choice between upscaled SD content vs HD content with more artefacts. IME it doesn't take many more artefacts in the latter to make the former the preferred choice. 

There are a few things that always look better on a bigger screen with more definition but IMHO they are the exception.  It depends what you are watching and why; if you take the argument to its end, you would presumably conclude that if picture quality per se was of primary importance, there would be no point whatsoever in radio drama, or reading a book.  At the other extreme, I-max etc is brilliant for certain types of film but if it were an essential ingredient of film/TV then it would be more popular. Same goes for 3D, smellovision, and any number of other things that are intended to provide a more immersive experience but might just be another gimmick.

Then again maybe I am thinking about it all wrong; in times to come maybe we won't use the biggest screens to 'view content' but instead will have 'wallpaper' i.e. a whole wall that gives us a nice landscape view or something (cf Hilda Ogden, Total Recall etc..)

cheers

[simonp]

The HD artefacts are surely a result of excessively pushing the bitrate/compression.

4k blurays look stunning because you don't have this issue.

[ScumOfTheRoad]

Regarding 4K for Blue Planet and Mountains - I Was not aware that the Beeb were broadcasting in 4K
However there is some trial footage in 4K for Blue Planet, which is a test of the Beebs new codec which allows 4K boradcast over Freeview.
It is stunning.

Perhaps you are talking abotu this trial?    IF I am out of date please say so!

Regarding 4K footage, look on YouTube for Burj Dubai Base Jumpers. It gives me the collywobbles even to think about it, but it looks good.

[ian]

The HD artefacts are surely a result of excessively pushing the bitrate/compression.

4k blurays look stunning because you don't have this issue.

Many (if not most) movies are still often upscaled from 2k masters (regardless of what they're shot on). The recent Blade Runner 2049 was shot on 3.4k (and the VFX at 3.4k) and mastered at 4k (according to Google).

Blue Planet 2 is filmed digitally in 4k (or actual film scanned at 4k) and mastered in 4k.

[Hot Flatus]

Gritty American dramas can end up looking like an early 90s episode of Neighbours

[Chris S]

Films shot at 60fps look wrong; The Hobbit for example. Thankfully, it's a shite film so we don't (re)watch it.

[ScumOfTheRoad]

I really don;t see the justification for 60fps.   Can anyone convince me why it would work?
I thought that perception studies showed that 24fps was as much as the human eye can process.
OR maybe I'm barking and that was the limit on mechanical shutters and film transports back in the day.

[simonp]

Film shot at e.g. 24fps without frame rate adjustment IME looks juddery on a LCD or OLED display. Panning can look terrible.

I don't like the artifacts introduced by frame rate interpolation ("mosquitoes") but the judder is worse, IMO.

[Chris S]

My youngest is something of a film nerd, and he too reckons 24fps is the limit we can handle; and 60fps looks "hurried" precisely because there's too much data for your brain to interpret, so it just skips over the bits it misses.