Is Blu-Ray Hype?

[Blu-Ray Blu-Ray]

I just bought a Samsung 52-inch 650-series LCD TV with an Insignia Blu-Ray player. Blu-Ray movies have amazing clarity, but their "depth" sucks. Often a Blu-Ray movie looks like it was originally shot on video -- although it can have a shot that looks like film, the next shot will go right back to looking like video. The player's hooked up to the TV with HDMI.

Have i missed a setting? I've watched three different Blu-Ray movies today, and they've all done this. So right now it all seems like hype.

Any advice appreciated. Thanks.

[Blu Titan]

I believe your tv is 120 hrtz.. I would turn off the 120Hz motion technology when viewing a movie. 120 hz is great for watching sports, but gives movies that shot on video / daytime soap opera look. Maybe JasonR and some of the other av experts can help you more.

[cdot2four]

What movies are u watching. I'm 90 deep and love them. Some are "less" quality but each is better than dvd. Do u have hd audio?

[Blu Titan]

If the op has the 120 HZ on, that would fit the description of the visual appearance he is describing. I own 256 Blu-ray movies and none have a "shot on video look" . Obviously, some have better PQ than others...but all are an improvement over the DVD version.

[JasonR]

Have you properly calibrated your TV?

[JasonR]

Originally Posted by Blu Titan

If the op has the 120 HZ on, that would fit the description of the visual appearance he is describing. I own 256 Blu-ray movies and none have a "shot on video look" . Obviously, some have better PQ than others...but all are an improvement over the DVD version.

This sounds like the issue to me, good call Titan. Also, calibrate your set. It is probably set to factory defaults....which suck.

[coolmilo]

This is the third new user complaining about Blu-ray (so far). From day one Blu-ray has knocked my socks off (so to speak). But I was careful and did my research to make sure my setup was configured correctly to accommodate Blu-ray.

How do we tell every new user with high expectations that they MUST spend some time and learn about their equipment to make sure everything is configured correctly? They should spend time reading through this site to help make sure their problem is not something they are doing before complaining about Blu-ray.

It just looks really bad when a new user starts a thread complaining right away about Blu-ray when their problem has nothing to do with Blu-ray. They need to realize that if something does not look right, it's probably their setup (especially running LCD’s in torch mode) and not Blu-ray. It reflects poorly on the new users and leaves me feeling a little defensive.

I would rather see new users with problems start threads like, "New user having problems" and then describe the problem and list their equipment.

[welwynnick]

Originally Posted by Blu-Ray Blu-Ray

I just bought a Samsung 52-inch 650-series LCD TV with an Insignia Blu-Ray player. Blu-Ray movies have amazing clarity, but their "depth" sucks. Often a Blu-Ray movie looks like it was originally shot on video -- although it can have a shot that looks like film, the next shot will go right back to looking like video. The player's hooked up to the TV with HDMI.

Have i missed a setting? I've watched three different Blu-Ray movies today, and they've all done this. So right now it all seems like hype.

Any advice appreciated. Thanks.

What's you're over-scan setting?

If you don't have the player and screen pixel-matched, the TV will scale the 1080p input and you will lose quality.

Just a thought.

[Roggster]

Listen guys, you cannot just say "have you calibrated your TV". If it were that easy then everyone would do it.

Problem is service menu access is not advertised and indeed if you do find out how to get in their and tweak stuff you will invalidate your warranty AND possibly break your TV.
Also why would the manufacturer set the default settings to be "make our TV look shit when playing blu-ray"?

You didn't need to go and be a Engineer or research fellow and basically reprogram your car when you bought that did you? It just worked.

If all LCD tvs are set to rubbish by default then there ought to be a clear, easy procedure that the owner can do without penalty.

I may be over simplifying things here, but if you need to go jumping through hoops just to make your blu-rays look acceptable on your new multi thousand £/$ equipment then something is wrong - the set is faulty in my opinion and the manufacturer should do something about it.

They are TV sets for goodness sakes, not lab experiments for AV geeks.

Perhaps another problem here is with expectations. Blu-ray on any TV will NOT look like real life and will NOT be perfect.
I am happy with my TV (Sony KDL-40D3500), it has issues sure, but then again it was a few thousand £ less than the top of the range sets.
You get what you pay for. I got astounding value for money and I live with certain things that the set does.

Blu-ray and HDTV are NOT hype imho.

The trick is to not get carried away by either marketing campaigns or the naysayers at the other end who couldn't actually tell the difference between VHS and DVD.
All this is is the next evolutionary step of AV entertainment currently in the commercial domain.

Just my thoughts
Nick

[jsteinhauer]

Originally Posted by Roggster

Listen guys, you cannot just say "have you calibrated your TV". If it were that easy then everyone would do it.

...

Nick

I disagree with this. You can calibrate you display nonprofessionally without aceessing the service menu. I would argue that you can probably get about 90% of the way to as good as it can be using DVE, your eye, and the included filters. Many of us who are not perfectionists in our avocational activities will be satisfied with this. I do agree with your point that it is ridiculous to fork over thousands for AV equipment, only to have to spend hundreds more to get them "working" correctly. I really don't think 99% of HDTV and Blu-ray viewers really care about video calibration, and will be perfectly happy with the settings out of the box.

Even if the manufacturers were to make the out of the box settings near to accurate, it still would not be calibrated, since this depends on the other hardware you have attached.

Even if it were easy, not everyone would do it. They won't even read the user manuals that came with the displays.

[quirkmanly]

Originally Posted by Roggster

Listen guys, you cannot just say "have you calibrated your TV". If it were that easy then everyone would do it.

Problem is service menu access is not advertised and indeed if you do find out how to get in their and tweak stuff you will invalidate your warranty AND possibly break your TV.
Also why would the manufacturer set the default settings to be "make our TV look shit when playing blu-ray"?

You didn't need to go and be a Engineer or research fellow and basically reprogram your car when you bought that did you? It just worked.

If all LCD tvs are set to rubbish by default then there ought to be a clear, easy procedure that the owner can do without penalty.

I may be over simplifying things here, but if you need to go jumping through hoops just to make your blu-rays look acceptable on your new multi thousand £/$ equipment then something is wrong - the set is faulty in my opinion and the manufacturer should do something about it.

They are TV sets for goodness sakes, not lab experiments for AV geeks.

Perhaps another problem here is with expectations. Blu-ray on any TV will NOT look like real life and will NOT be perfect.
I am happy with my TV (Sony KDL-40D3500), it has issues sure, but then again it was a few thousand £ less than the top of the range sets.
You get what you pay for. I got astounding value for money and I live with certain things that the set does.

Blu-ray and HDTV are NOT hype imho.

The trick is to not get carried away by either marketing campaigns or the naysayers at the other end who couldn't actually tell the difference between VHS and DVD.
All this is is the next evolutionary step of AV entertainment currently in the commercial domain.

Just my thoughts
Nick

I think you are confusing "user" calibration with professional calibration. No one is suggesting that the OP dabbles in service menu. Educated and judicious use of the TV's easily accessible Picture menu options can work wonders.

OP, this thread may help you resolve some of your issues:

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=32738

[Johnny Vinyl]

It is possible that it is the BD player?

Private-label brands, in-house brands (whatever you want to call them) don't nearly stand up as well as the Panny, Sony, Samsung, Sharp, etc. units. The units are usually less expensive, which means the internal componants are of lesser quality.

I'm not knocking the OP's player, we buy what we can afford and we all go at our own pace, but I thought it was a vaild point to make.

[SpikesBluBlooded]

I just want to add how impressed I am at where we, as members, have come. Used to be a day (back during the format war) that posts like this would see an onslaught of flame attacks for even "hinting" that Blu-ray wasn't the most incredible thing in the world.

Now we see members still jumping to the defense of the format, but doing so in a constructive manner, and by offering assistance to the new user. Most impressive, and a welcome change to the forum. Keep it up peeps!

[Roggster]

Originally Posted by quirkmanly

I think you are confusing "user" calibration with professional calibration. No one is suggesting that the OP dabbles in service menu. Educated and judicious use of the TV's easily accessible Picture menu options can work wonders.

OP, this thread may help you resolve some of your issues:

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=32738

Yes, I am guilty there. The term calibration is over used and incorrectly used - again, in my opinion.

If I adjust the volume by increasing it am I calibrating the audio? Or am I just turning it up?

I totally agree with what you are saying though. I have finally (I think) got to the happy stage with the settings on my telly.

Nick

[Yeha-Noha]

Welcome to the forum and to the world of Blu-ray.

Congratulations on your purchasing the Samsung 52-inch 650-series LCD TV. That's a nice display!

Rest assured, Blu-ray is not hype. It's really what people and advertising say it is. It really does bring the experience of cinema quality movies and sound right into your home. I know you are just venting some of your frustrations wondering if the format is worth all the expense. Just hang in there. I'm sure your topic has grabbed the attention of a lot people. Give their suggestions a try before dismissing Blu-ray as hype. Anyway for the record your problem has nothing to do with Blu-ray or the format. Yours is a display problem or the video settings in your BD player are not correct for your display. For starters, did you set your BD player to output 24p?. Also, make sure the player is set to output 1080p video resolution. I leave my players 24p option set to always on (instead of factory default, Auto). When the players upscale DVDs of course, the output will be 1080p/60p instead of 1080p/24p. All BDs are 24p, that is to say. So if you are still not getting 24p cinema quality all the time or it seems to be off and on, I would return the TV and exchange it for another one. It shouldn't be doing that. Again, don't blame the format! It's your display or both your display and BD player's settings.

Don't expect everything to work perfectly right out of the box. It doesn't always work that way. Although, that would be nice! That's one of the reason's why we have this forum. Most of us have been there, done that.

My Vizio 47" 1080p LCD's PQ looked pretty pathetic right out of the box. Vizio's seems to be well know for that, crappy out of the box PQ. The store displays are no different. The backlight, contrast, brightness, and sharpness (= edge enhancement) were all incorrectly set. The color wasn't too far off though and only needed some fine tuning. The sharpness set at 4 level needed to be set down to 2 or on some BDs, even 0. I went out and bought the Video Essentials BD calibration disk. That pretty much brought everything back to the real world. Later, I joined this forum and the AVS forum. In the AVS forum they have an official Vizio users forum. There, I found some more calibration settings that others had done for my Vizio 47" model. Not surprisingly most were pretty similar to mine except for the color settings. I had left the color temperature settings at factory default (all 3 at 127). I changed those to what other owners though were an improvement. Wow! Indeed it was it. I have not needed to calibrate my Vizio ever since (that was over a year ago).

My Vizio will display 24p via 3:2 pull down. But even with that, the movies are always cinema like all through the film and not just in parts. I have not noticed any motion judder artifacts of 3:2 pull down and have even looked for it. I am so happy with this display, that I have never upgraded even though I can certainly afford to. But if I do, I will buy a much larger display.

That's my experience and it was indeed a rather frustrating start. Not only that I had owned the Sony BDP-S301 player well know for being slower than a snail when it comes to powering it up and loading BD movies. Boy am I glad that I bought a new player, the S350, on BF!

The cinema quality picture I get on my set up with the Vizio 47" and Sony BDP-S350 player has a remarkable amount of depth. People coming to my home have marveled over the PQ. Comments like, wow the depth looks like in the movie theater! I love hearing that from them. All the work I did on getting it setup right paid off.
You will really benefit by getting a video calibration BD. There is a little bit of learning curve using these, but don't neglect doing that. Then you will be well on your way. Another thing google your LCD's model + calibration. You should get a lot of hits that might even list the calibration settings done by other owners. At the very least, those will be a better starting point than the factory settings. Expect the factory settings to be anything but optimal.

In summary, it's most important to read the manuals thoroughly and make sure you got all the setting correct for your display and player working together. Factory settings are not always the correct ones. Sometimes the factory uses those setting to ensure that everything will work ok out of the box with almost any setup. But to get optimal results and PQ, will usually require you to tweak the settings of both your display and player.

[Kayne314]

The DVE everyone is talking about here is a Blu-ray disk made especially to calibrate your TV with Blu-ray. Here is a link.

Digital Video Essentials

[Blu-Ray Blu-Ray]

Thanks for the replies, they've all been very helpful. As a tech executive whose hacker skills have long since atrophied, Roggster's comments really hit home. His insight is something that technology companies (I work in the chip industry) still haven't been able to deliver, and I was a little dissapointed to learn that the Home Theater-industry (if that's the right term) had migrated to a problematic out-of-the-box approach as well.

I took the group's advice and set my set to 60hz for videos, and that has made a difference. But I played a standard DVD today, and while the resolution was inferior to BD, my wife preferred its cinema-like feel. So I'll keep tuning, and following the links and advice the you all have provided.

Also, thanks rwojtalewicz for your advice. I'm going to pickup a calibration BD, and your suggestion to google settings for my set, was, like the best ideas, obvious only in hindsight; ex ante i would have never thought of it.

Thanks again.