A solution to different tastes for grain

[luscious]

Excising grain through an automatic process inevitably leads to loss of picture detail (doing it manually would be too time consuming). But some people still prefer reduction of grain even at this cost. Some people are very sensitive to this cost, others not so sensitive.

Then why not have the movies/TV on discs not use any noise or grain reduction process and so people who like it this way can enjoy it and people who like the grain reduced can use their PLAYER to do it? Why not develop players that can tailor to consumer preferences in this way? This way everybody wins.

The only downside would be having to switch to different grain reduction profiles when playing different discs since many discs will have already reduced the grain.

[Batman1980]

A PLAYER that reduces noise grain? I'm not even sure such a thing is possible, people who really hate grain should just turn the sharpness on their HD TV all the way down so they notice it as little as possible.

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by Wolverine1980

A PLAYER that reduces noise grain? I'm not even sure such a thing is possible, people who really hate grain should just turn the sharpness on their HD TV all the way down so they notice it as little as possible.

Everyone should already have their sharpness setting turned to off just because the digital medium of DVDs and BDs are already pixel perfect sharp as they're gonna be; anything the TV does is going to just be an optical illusion that might make you feel like the image is sharper, but really it's just affecting the coloration at edges.

That said, I think something as simple as a softener setting would work for the fools who deny grain even at its least obtrusive. They could pick just how soft they want the image to be. The sad part is that I do believe many TVs already have this (or could easily, as I'm pretty sure that softening a picture is a simpler task than digitally "enhancing" the edges), but many companies are still stuck on the way they did things before: sloppy picture softening worked ok for SD broadcast and even DVD I guess, but it doesn't work for Blu-ray. They miss the point that BD is should have a strict showing of the film as intended. If the director and/or DP wanted there to be grain, there should be grain in the HD presentation.

[KubrickFan]

They should just leave it alone and have some sort of explanation on the disc, the same thing they did for explaining black bars in a picture.
Although I wonder how much that helped.

[Sussudio]

a solution for people who don't like grain: stop buying blu-rays

[Blaumann]

Many players and displays already come with noise reduction circuits. One can simply use these, to a certain degree they will remove film grain and noise. They'll probably also remove some details, but at least it's up to the individual to decide how much he/she wants to apply it.