Still not convinced

[Rocklandsboy]

Okay so I'm staring at my Amazon order page, poised to drop The Martian and Sicario into my basket. I put the BD editions in, removed them, put the UHD editions in (it's good to future proof right?), removed them, put the BD editions back in...

I'm just not sold on the concept/theory of 4K and, especially, of HDR...

It's a frequently discussed fact that most movies are native 2K or similar. Upscaling aaaaall of those movies doesn't feel right to me. Plus I have a lot of TV DVD titles and I don't much like the idea of them looking like crap (despite many questions in many threads nobody is keen to keen to answer what DVD looks like on a 4K display)

Where to start with HDR? Once you recover from threads that suggest no two films are the same and constant tinkering is required, you have to wonder how it changes the motion picture image. I've seen some comparison shots and the HDR images, while undeniably pretty, don't look like motion picture images. The format is still in its "wow" phase I guess, but when did it start to be okay to "treat" the image differently for home viewing?

Comments in the Samsung owners thread about the playing performing all sorts of automatic picture adjustments fills me with dread. AND I'm not a bit fan of LCD or LED screens (I hate clouding more than I hate banding) and OLED screens are just too darned expensive!

And then they announced a DE of The Martian. So buying the UHD now wouldn't be future-proofing at all! All in all a bit of a mess when, truly, regular old BD looks absolutely superb on my 42 inch Panasonic plasma!

BD had obvious advantages over DVD. The colour improvement was magnificent. The image stability striking. Hell, in the UK and Europe (PAL territories) it was the first time that movies were presented at the right speed! But this upgrade still feels loaded with fakery and gimmickery.

What a dilemma...

[Coenskubrick]

I don't see any reason dvd would look any worse on a 4k display than 1080p. It would look equally poor.

[kidglov3s]

Originally Posted by Coenskubrick

I don't see any reason dvd would look any worse on a 4k display than 1080p. It would look equally poor.

bahaha

[Coenskubrick]

Originally Posted by kidglov3s

bahaha

Not sure if you're laughing at or with me but I don't understand where people get the idea that upscaling to a much higher resolution would degrade the image more than upscaling to a somewhat higher resolution, especially since upscaling makes the image a little better in most every case.

[JJ]

You're not convinced, watching BD on a 42" plasma, that a 4K HDR will not look better?

Brace yourself. If you're ever in Miami, I'll give you a peek at how it looks. Right now, all we have are 2K upscales. Wait until the 4K ones such as Sicario (HDR done with cinematographer's approval) and Spiderman2, etc, etc. Or even The Martian which used original material at a res higher than 2.

Then you'll be convinced.

Sidenote - I went to LED/LCD when my Panny 65ZT60 plasma died. You know that was the best plasma made, save a few Kuro monitors. I'm not going back.

[Rocklandsboy]

Originally Posted by JJ

You're not convinced, watching BD on a 42" plasma, that a 4K HDR will not look better?

On a screen of equal size? No. And does HDR truly make the image look better (by "better" I mean closer to the director's intent).

Originally Posted by JJ

Sidenote - I went to LED/LCD when my Panny 65ZT60 plasma died. You know that was the best plasma made, save a few Kuro monitors. I'm not going back.

Are there LED screens out there that don't have clouding? I've seen two - both Panasonics - and both had clouded corners. Very distracting.

[Vugam]

Originally Posted by JJ

Wait until the 4K ones such as Sicario (HDR done with cinematographer's approval) and Spiderman2, etc, etc.

I understand the point of view floating around, but it's not like there will be movies only from the digital era. I would buy the stuff to play UHD just to see Alien and Blade Runner. Lowry scanned films and restored them in 4K, same with Warner Bros on a few titles. Apocalypse Now was remastered in 4K too.

Hoping UHD lives long enough for these old titles..

[ouchmyfacehurts]

Originally Posted by JJ

You're not convinced, watching BD on a 42" plasma, that a 4K HDR will not look better?

Brace yourself. If you're ever in Miami, I'll give you a peek at how it looks. Right now, all we have are 2K upscales. Wait until the 4K ones such as Sicario (HDR done with cinematographer's approval) and Spiderman2, etc, etc. Or even The Martian which used original material at a res higher than 2.

Then you'll be convinced.

Sidenote - I went to LED/LCD when my Panny 65ZT60 plasma died. You know that was the best plasma made, save a few Kuro monitors. I'm not going back.

Not an invalid argument. However, to counter this: all of recorded history was in a resolution lower than this up until The Amazing Spiderman 2.

That said, the amount of pre-existing content that literally could not possibly be upgraded so outweighs what is out there (about 49,000 to 5).

The extreme dip in quality in most mainstream movies as of late (Spectre, Avengers 2, Star Wars 7, anything that looks like a video game rather than a film, etc), also leaves much to be desired.

I think 4K will go the way of the beta max and the laser disc.

[kidglov3s]

Originally Posted by Coenskubrick

Not sure if you're laughing at or with me but I don't understand where people get the idea that upscaling to a much higher resolution would degrade the image more than upscaling to a somewhat higher resolution, especially since upscaling makes the image a little better in most every case.

In most cases DVD looks considerably worse than Blu-ray on a 1080p display, I see no reason why a UHD/4K display would change this.

(Oh, I misread your post, thought you said DVD and Blu-ray would look equally poor in 4K, I will retract that bahaha)

[Tompa]

Originally Posted by Coenskubrick

I don't see any reason dvd would look any worse on a 4k display than 1080p. It would look equally poor.

I have a reason: common sense.

[Adam_ME]

Originally Posted by Rocklandsboy

Okay so I'm staring at my Amazon order page, poised to drop The Martian and Sicario into my basket. I put the BD editions in, removed them, put the UHD editions in (it's good to future proof right?), removed them, put the BD editions back in...

I'm just not sold on the concept/theory of 4K and, especially, of HDR...

My advice would be to wait and go check it out at a store like Best Buy once they have these players hooked up and on display. Even though I didn't personally think there was a huge leap in picture quality from the Blu-ray to UHD on titles like The Martian and Kingsman, they still looked noticeably better on the new format. And the HDR gave the colors a huge boost. And I did think Exodus and Scorch Trials showed a significant improvement.

Keep in mind these aren't even true 4K titles. Once we get those, I'll bet the jump in quality will be big. But like I said, see for yourself and then decide.

[Frank@Chicago]

Let's not gloss over the cost involved here...

LG just came out with a 65" 4K 3D set that's OLED/HDR and it costs eight grand (!).

I bought an LG 65" 4K 3D set last year that's LCD/SDR for two grand, before all this started.

Bigger is better and it does BD & 3D better than I ever imagined, not to mention gaming.

For the same money, I would've had to get a much smaller OLED and I thought OLED colors looked muddy.

On the other hand, with LCD you can see some uneven blacks on blank inputs and blank credit sequences.

It's all about enjoying your media and not going broke doing it, I bought a TV to enhance my existing BDs not to make them obsolete.

[Frank@Chicago]

Isn't it semi-alarming that they haven't even worked out HDR downconversion for SDR sets?

When they working that out, I hope it's retroactive for early adopters.

[Mr. Joshua]

All hail LG OLED 4K and HDR!

[JJ]

Originally Posted by Mr. Joshua

All hail LG OLED 4K and HDR!

Holy crap, you have the same Prism TV stand I do.

I haven't seen anybody else with one of those EVER, they're rare as hell.

[saprano]

If you're not ready to buy anything and prefer to wait till everything is more sorted out, then do so. Don't feel like you need to buy into this just because it's new and everyone else is doing it. I'm going to wait a little while longer. See what other studios like Paramount, Disney, Universal and the rest are bringing in terms of catalogue titles. Then there's the display issue. I want to see how OLED advances to other manufacturers and hopefully true RGB. I was going to buy a player from either Panasonic or Oppo and get benefits from downscaling, but i'm not sure yet.

There's no need to rush. I was watching the movie Dope last night and it really doesn't get any cinematic and realistic than that. The daytime outdoor scenes of LA are gorgeous. I wasn't thinking to myself "damn, i really need to go buy another display for more resolution, color, and HDR."

Take your time and decide how you really want to go about this.

[jaaguir]

Originally Posted by saprano

If you're not ready to buy anything and prefer to wait till everything is more sorted out, then do so. Don't feel like you need to buy into this just because it's new and everyone else is doing it. I'm going to wait a little while longer. See what other studios like Paramount, Disney, Universal and the rest are bringing in terms of catalogue titles. Then there's the display issue. I want to see how OLED advances to other manufacturers and hopefully true RGB. I was going to buy a player from either Panasonic or Oppo and get benefits from downscaling, but i'm not sure yet.

There's no need to rush. I was watching the movie Dope last night and it really doesn't get any cinematic and realistic than that. The daytime outdoor scenes of LA are gorgeous. I wasn't thinking to myself "damn, i really need to go buy another display for more resolution, color, and HDR."

Take your time and decide how you really want to go about this.

I agree with this very much. If I had thought out my first post on this thread properly I would have added a last sentence:
"That doesn't mean you have to re-buy all your collection. To what extent and how fast you do that is up to you."

I just meant that if you're going to improve your hardware in the future, UHD is probably going to be there, and you'll probably try it out at some point.

I'm going to wait myself. The first Premium certificated tv sets are going to be released this spring! I mean, right now is still really early times for this format.

[Mr. Joshua]

Originally Posted by JJ

Holy crap, you have the same Prism TV stand I do.

I haven't seen anybody else with one of those EVER, they're rare as hell.

My Grandma has it now.

[Ian B]

Originally Posted by Rocklandsboy

Okay so I'm staring at my Amazon order page, poised to drop The Martian and Sicario into my basket. I put the BD editions in, removed them, put the UHD editions in (it's good to future proof right?), removed them, put the BD editions back in...

I'm just not sold on the concept/theory of 4K and, especially, of HDR...

It's a frequently discussed fact that most movies are native 2K or similar. Upscaling aaaaall of those movies doesn't feel right to me. Plus I have a lot of TV DVD titles and I don't much like the idea of them looking like crap (despite many questions in many threads nobody is keen to keen to answer what DVD looks like on a 4K display)

Where to start with HDR? Once you recover from threads that suggest no two films are the same and constant tinkering is required, you have to wonder how it changes the motion picture image. I've seen some comparison shots and the HDR images, while undeniably pretty, don't look like motion picture images. The format is still in its "wow" phase I guess, but when did it start to be okay to "treat" the image differently for home viewing?

Comments in the Samsung owners thread about the playing performing all sorts of automatic picture adjustments fills me with dread. AND I'm not a bit fan of LCD or LED screens (I hate clouding more than I hate banding) and OLED screens are just too darned expensive!

And then they announced a DE of The Martian. So buying the UHD now wouldn't be future-proofing at all! All in all a bit of a mess when, truly, regular old BD looks absolutely superb on my 42 inch Panasonic plasma!

BD had obvious advantages over DVD. The colour improvement was magnificent. The image stability striking. Hell, in the UK and Europe (PAL territories) it was the first time that movies were presented at the right speed! But this upgrade still feels loaded with fakery and gimmickery.

What a dilemma...

I did this test yesterday between the bluray and the UHD copy. What you need to remember is after seeing the UHD, reset tv output to 1080p and put the bluray. Now when you play the bluray, you will definitely see the difference between the bluray and the UHD version. If you dont, it is either your settings, your vision, too close to tv or tv size is too small to notice difference.

Ian B

[bruceames]

UHD Blu-ray is a supplement to Blu-ray, not a replacement. It's going to be mainly for new movies and it looks like they will include the Blu-ray version as well. What's not to like?

As for you collection, the vast majority will never be released on UHD. This isn't like Blu-ray and DVD, where one by one you see your DVD collection becoming more obsolete by the day. Sure there will be movies you have that will come out again on UHD, but if you're happy with the BD then you don't have to buy it.