Upscaled Blu-Ray on 4KTV (First Impressions)

[Brother_Dobby]

So, I've finally taken my first steps into 4K and purchased a 65" 4KTV and a 4K Player!

I have sampled The Martian, Logan, Allegiant, Passengers, Ghostbusters and The Revenant. And watched Fantastic Beasts all the way through.

First impressions on 4K? This is probably the best image quality I've come across in terms of clarity, resolution, sharpness and colour. The early scenes of The Martian and The Revenent especially popped with quality unlike anything I've come across on Blu-Ray.

HOWEVER, one element that I wasn't expecting, was how well my 4K Blu-Ray player appears to handle upscaling of standard Blu-Rays.

In some cases, the jump is bigger than others. Watching the opening scenes of The Martian, for example, and seeing the sand in the desert as Matt Damon wakes up, you feel like you could just reach into the screen and touch the sand, the texture is so detailed. The same goes for the sweat on Matt Damon as he's healing himself in the final shots of the following scene. Comparing it to the standard Blu-Ray, the sand isn't as defined as the image has been compressed, and the sweat on his face has compression artefacts like a JPEG image by comparison. If 4K is good for anything so far (along with HDR) it's removing the compression that is forced to happen when the film is downscaled to Blu-Ray.

In other cases, though, I sampled a series of my current Blu-Rays, and played some of my 4K discs alongside each other, and honestly, if you asked me which was 4K and which was upscaled, I'd be struggling to tell you which was which more than once. The first film I watched all the way through was Fantastic Beasts, and while it was a perfectly pleasant image, I did find it softer generally throughout the film than I was expecting. I put in the regular Blu-Ray afterwards and was surprised to find as minimal a difference as I did. There are upgrades, across this film and others that I sampled (Logan, Allegiant, etc.) , and it's by no means worse, but you'd really need to look for the upgrades in a few cases.

I don't feel like the jump to 4K is as big as the jump from DVD to Blu-Ray. At least with DVD to Blu-Ray, the DVD quality was significantly compressed and the frame rates (in the UK at least) were incorrect due to UK DVD's format. In 4K, the framerate is still correct and even though compression is completely removed in 4K, it's not like it was ever really a problem on a 1080p setup.

Despite this rant, I DON'T regret purchasing my 4K equipment at all and making the jump to 4K, and am completely satisfied with my 4KTV and 4K Blu-Ray Player (as they have so far given me some of the best quality I've come across with my entire Blu-Ray lineup, and I can't wait to experience my film collection again on this set up!), but I'll admit I wasn't expecting my current Blu-Ray library to look so good simply upscaled, and it's made me think twice about if I need to upgrade my collection across the board. I know this may sound like sacrilege to some! ( )

So, on that note, are there any 4K Blu-Rays that you guys have so far found are significantly better than the Blu-Ray versions for whatever reason? Be it picture quality, 4K exclusive alternate cuts, expanded aspect ratios, etc? I may prioritise upgrading these films over others for the time being.

Thanks, guys!