The Elephant Man (1980)

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by urbo73

As I said, at best, one can do a WB calibration, that's really it though. I like how you keep separating tone mapping from HDR, as if they are different things. What are you doing to "calibrate" DV? I suppose one can break it down 4K UHD into 3 main categories:

1. Resolution - 4K is great, nobody will argue that because there's nothing to argue.

2. Color space/gamut - P3 in a Rec.2020 container. How many displays can display this properly and fully? How can one calibrate the colorspace properly?

3. HDR - the largest problem, as I pointed out already, and you have has well with tone mapping.

So yeah, work to be done. I do think things will improve, and the tech will catch up with the specs. It's just not there yet.

DV uses the same D65 white point as HDR10 and indeed SDR, so the white balance settings are the same as those. Sony TVs can just transpose these figures and, if you'd read the article you keep bringing up, you'd note that some other brands of TV also set a calibration for DV by doing it in SDR 2.2 space and then it just maps it across.

As for colour space, how does one calibrate for 709 gamut on any given TV? If they have a CMS (and not all TVs do) then the same controls are transposed across to the HDR, and by using separate 2020 and P3 inside 2020 patterns we can check how the TV is assigning those primaries and secondaries. Most higher end displays will resolve most if not all of P3 and as that's what content is still being mastered in (with the occasional bleed outwards into the 2020 gamut) then displaying it 'fully' isn't a problem.

Lesser sets will struggle for sure, and as they struggle with the peak brightness too (often having just frame dimming, or even no dynamic dimming at all) then they're not very well suited for HDR, not merely on a calibration level but on a fundamental technical one. You may well take that as your cue to celebrate the awfulness of HDR as an industry-wide implementation and I wouldn't disagree, but if you can find a path through it then you'll be greatly rewarded. The people who don't will continue to remain deeply frustrated with it. But I dare say that much of Criterion's clientele are people who've got a 1080p supermarket special that they're watching from 15ft away and don't have any idea what HDR is anyway, so releasing a 4K HDR disc is not gonna affect them.

In a way, that leads into your next question...

Originally Posted by urbo73

So why do you think they haven't gotten into it? You seem to think it's not economics, so what is it? Maybe they will at some point, maybe they won't.

I think it's partly FUD about what 4K HDR is and does (though I still think that the HDR implementation issue means **** all to Lee Kline et al, he seems to think that HDR makes little difference and that 4K is about resolution only?), partly a notion that if they produce a disc that's only for the niche of the niche then they're somehow betraying their fanbase and their mission statement. Arrow's restoration supervisor James White literally said this in a 2017 interview, that by producing a UHD you're admitting that the next version down isn't the best any more and that may well alienate some people - but as people still buy Criterion DVDs in droves and ignore the BD offerings then I don't think that core fanbase give two shits about another even betterer version.

Hell, I think even the staunchest anti-4K members on here would actually prefer that Criterion did start doing 4Ks if only to shut down these kinds of tedious discussions that get played out in every new Criterion thread (with the irony being that in this case I'm very glad that The Elephant Man is being released on BD in the US, even if it's not 4K it's about goddamned time).