Do the Right Thing 4K UHD (1989)

[Scottishguy]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Again: there was no mainstream alternative to VHS, and even statellite TV with a gazillion movie channels only came along fairly late in the millennium. People still wanted to WATCH movies, then and now, and VHS was the only game in town for the average Joe/Jane. Quality was never the concern for them, and it still isn't. The difference being that nowadays they can watch whatever without having to buy a silly physical copy at all.

No necessarily. They are at the mercy of whatever a streaming service provides with a monthly subscription. Which is not a lot.

Sure Amazon let's you rent. But that's more money.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Scottishguy

No necessarily. They are at the mercy of whatever a streaming service provides with a monthly subscription. Which is not a lot.

Sure Amazon let's you rent. But that's more money.

It's more than enough content for most people, espesh with TV shows factored in, otherwise video streaming wouldn't be worth tens of billions of dollars (and it's only rising from there). It's not enough for you, not enough for me, but I can only keep stressing that we're not indicative of the prevailing "good enough/veg out" mindset so many times.

[HeavyHitter]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

I sold TVs for many years and this is the #1 assumption that people have. This was back in the HD age but the exact same thing applies to 4K. I'm not knocking them, I'm not belittling them, they just don't know any different and are perfickly happy with what they have. And yesh, this is also why streaming has taken over.

Yes, same thing in HD age and maybe worse. I remember so much confusion among family and friends around standard def being somehow magically into transformed into HD. I feel bad for you probably having to constantly explain the upscaling concept, the 'HD Ready' thing, etc. to customers. What made matters worse was trying to explain to my sister how her 1080i CRT PRTV could display 480p and 1080i natively. lol She was arguing with me that everything is just "HD" on it, damn it! And then the DVD upscaling thing which Crutchfield always claimed made your DVDs look "near HD". (Looking back, all of that almost makes explaining HDR and tone mapping seem simple today despite some confusion around it).

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by HeavyHitter

Yes, same thing in HD age and maybe worse. I remember so much confusion among family and friends around standard def being somehow magically into transformed into HD. I feel bad for you probably having to constantly explain the upscaling concept, the 'HD Ready' thing, etc. to customers. What made matters worse was trying to explain to my sister how her 1080i CRT PRTV could display 480p and 1080i natively. lol She was arguing with me that everything is just "HD" on it, damn it! And then the DVD upscaling thing which Crutchfield always claimed made your DVDs look "near HD". (Looking back, all of that almost makes explaining HDR and tone mapping seem simple today despite some confusion around it).

HDR has been a disaster in how it's been implemented, I'm soooo glad I'm not working in leccy retail now but yes, there have always been things that customers would/could not grasp or had their own predetermined assumptions about which could never be broken down.

[reedzkee]

I'm pretty tech savvy but was never a tv tech nerd until recently.

I assumed HDR (especially Dolby Vision) was a marketing gimmick until seeing 4k BluRays on my friends LG C9. I assumed if the TV was good and the source material is good, why would there be a need an "enhancement" layer ?

I work in audio and am very anti enhancement in that domain. Speakers/room/source are 99.9% of what makes something sound good, at least for linear narrative stuff like movies. I figured it would be the same for video.

[ROSS.T.G.]

This is one of the best looking discs in my collection.

Chuck D’s voice almost blew my head off. Wow what a great sounding mix.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by reedzkee

I'm pretty tech savvy but was never a tv tech nerd until recently.

I assumed HDR (especially Dolby Vision) was a marketing gimmick until seeing 4k BluRays on my friends LG C9. I assumed if the TV was good and the source material is good, why would there be a need an "enhancement" layer ?

I work in audio and am very anti enhancement in that domain. Speakers/room/source are 99.9% of what makes something sound good, at least for linear narrative stuff like movies. I figured it would be the same for video.

It's just a name. They don't mean "enhancement" in the sense of bolting on something that's extraneous to the video signal, it's there to rebuild the HDR10 base layer into an approximation of the Dolby Vision master which is usually the de facto (and often filmmaker approved) source of the HDR grade.

HDR is different from SDR, yes, so in that sense it's "enhancing" the image in a way that SDR couldn't do, but here's the kicker: HDR doesn't show anything that wasn't there already on the raw, ungraded source material (camera negative, raw video files). In audio terms it's akin to going back to the master tapes and re-recording them with more dynamic range and bit depth than a previous recording. Whether we were meant to see/hear every last morsel that's on the source material is another question entirely...

[Fat Phil]

Originally Posted by ROSS.T.G.

This is one of the best looking discs in my collection.

Chuck D’s voice almost blew my head off. Wow what a great sounding mix.

Watched mine in full the other day and decided to get absolutely baked for the occasion - something I rarely do, but man oh man was it ever a fantastic decision.

[Show spoiler]

[Scottishguy]

I'll get the standard when it hopefully hits.

[Kyle15]

There are plenty of average viewers who care to an extent about the look of what they're watching. This also goes into decrying film grain because to their mind "clear is clean" etc etc.

My dad is far from a videophile and he recently brought up how abysmal the Taylor Swift concert he was watching looked. "it's got blocks all over it and looks horrible, and we're paying for that!!" he goes.

Plenty of people watch things to watch and veg out. VHS no longer prevails, people do want a lil more. They might not skip watching something over artifacts, or whatever, but the concern for getting money's worth is completely there.

If you're paying for something that looks worse than your Youtube funny videos you might get a lil upset about it. But it's not unversal, so.

[ROSS.T.G.]

Originally Posted by Fat Phil

Watched mine in full the other day and decided to get absolutely baked for the occasion - something I rarely do, but man oh man was it ever a fantastic decision.

[Show spoiler]

I knew I liked you for a reason Philly.

I was also baked when I screened mine.

Please also do the same with the Big Lebowski UHD

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Fat Phil

Watched mine in full the other day and decided to get absolutely baked for the occasion - something I rarely do, but man oh man was it ever a fantastic decision.

[Show spoiler]

Watched it stone cold sober and my god, when the cops kill Radio Raheem it hit me like a sledgehammer, it felt like my very soul was aching. The movie always had power but calling it unerringly prescient does it and its cause a major disservice because that shit was still happening then and is still happening now, fast forward 30 years and nothing has changed. Nothing.

And it's still such a good film because it doesn't give up any easy answers but it's not a tub-thumping polemic either. It's too easy to characterise Spike Lee as a militant black filmmaker but what he's always wanted to do is to normalise black lives on-screen, showing regular people going about their regular business whilst still putting their daily struggles with racism front and centre. Lee and his DP are both film fans so there are homages and references to some classic flicks too, they don't ignore the legacy of film.

[thebigcheese3k]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

It's more than enough content for most people, espesh with TV shows factored in, otherwise video streaming wouldn't be worth tens of billions of dollars (and it's only rising from there). It's not enough for you, not enough for me, but I can only keep stressing that we're not indicative of the prevailing "good enough/veg out" mindset so many times.

It’s enough content and most people assume they are viewing the best quality release. There’s a general lack of awareness around film restorations, masters, sources, etc. I mentioned to a coworker that I ordered Do the Right Thing on 4K. They responded “I just watched the trailer on YouTube the quality looked awful, not sure I’d watch that”. I’ve had similar occurrences with many friends, that assume what’s on YouTube is representative of the film’s inherent picture quality. The lack of source information on streaming services is one of the primary reasons I avoid them.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Kyle15

There are plenty of average viewers who care to an extent about the look of what they're watching. This also goes into decrying film grain because to their mind "clear is clean" etc etc.

My dad is far from a videophile and he recently brought up how abysmal the Taylor Swift concert he was watching looked. "it's got blocks all over it and looks horrible, and we're paying for that!!" he goes.

Plenty of people watch things to watch and veg out. VHS no longer prevails, people do want a lil more. They might not skip watching something over artifacts, or whatever, but the concern for getting money's worth is completely there.

If you're paying for something that looks worse than your Youtube funny videos you might get a lil upset about it. But it's not unversal, so.

You're quite right that the average Joe/Jane has that preconception about what video should look like, I moan about it often enough. But at the same time it's pretty much the case that as long as there's no grain, no black bars and the TV is set to Torch Mode then that's about as involved as it gets, and stuff like DVD and streaming (with its plethora of clean, crisp modern digitally-shot content plus pre-filtered encodes of "old" grainy movies) plays to that mindset. If something's blocky AF then people don't notice but give them properly resolved grain and they'll think something's wrong with their TV.

[Kyle15]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

You're quite right that the average Joe/Jane has that preconception about what video should look like, I moan about it often enough. But at the same time it's pretty much the case that as long as there's no grain, no black bars and the TV is set to Torch Mode then that's about as involved as it gets, and stuff like DVD and streaming (with its plethora of clean, crisp modern digitally-shot content plus pre-filtered encodes of "old" grainy movies) plays to that mindset. If something's blocky AF then people don't notice but give them properly resolved grain and they'll think something's wrong with their TV.

Definitely, I have noticed that a lot more than complaints about blockiness.

Another goodie is referring to macroblocking as grain. Everything detrimental to the picture in their eyes is grain. lmao

[Scottishguy]

Originally Posted by Kyle15

Definitely, I have noticed that a lot more than complaints about blockiness.

Another goodie is referring to macroblocking as grain. Everything detrimental to the picture in their eyes is grain. lmao

Who the F would honestly think MB is grain? Sure, luminosity/chroma noise.

You don't need to be an archaeologist to tell MB is an artifact.

[PissedOffPeoN]

This comparison site almost makes me wanna buy it.. https://www.hdnumerique.com/dossiers...ght-thing.html

[bradnoyes]

My household is preparing for a move and I'm in the process of packing stuff up so we can get our house ready to put on the market. I'm going to pack up the Oppo today so last night I made sure to watch Do the Right Thing. It is effectively the last UHD I'm going to watch on my original 4K setup and it was a fitting way to go out. There's so much to say about this movie and this release, but I'll keep most of it to myself because I need to get back to packing. Suffice to say that no proper UHD library is complete without it.

[Filmmaker]

Originally Posted by PissedOffPeoN

This comparison site almost makes me wanna buy it.. https://www.hdnumerique.com/dossiers...ght-thing.html

No idea why there’d be an ‘almost’ about it.

[Full Effect Ed]

Best thing they did when they revised this is put the orange tone back into the film that the 20th anniversary Blu got rid of for whatever reason.