4k TV - DVDs look bad

[easytarget]

I've just got a 75inch 4k TV, y'know for films and that.
Content streamed from Netflix and HBO looks great, normal DVDs played off my XBox look horrible, very pixelated and blocky.

I get basic idea why this happens (there's lot of explanations on youtube - "This is how many pixels your source has, this is how many pixels your display has, so the image has to be stretched otherwise it would be a tiny window in the middle of your screen") - but is there something I can do about it? Get a dedicated DVD player? Mess about with some settings on the TV to make the stretched picture look better?

Or am I limited to only watching Avatar on BluRay?

[Twed]

TV might have really stupid upscaling methods that try to be too clever and look terrible. Change anything in the menu that sounds upscale-y.

[falafel]

Ultimately, if the detail doesn't exist in the source picture no amount of fancy post processing from the TV will reintroduce it (unless it is some better-then-Google level realtime AI magic going on). DVDs are much lower resolution than your TV - I suspect the best you'll get is a bit of extra sharpening and the fuzzy pixellation won't go away. Lots of films are available on blu ray but to replace your whole library might be a bit of an investment...

[biggytitbo]

Isnt that expanding the image by 16 times? It's never going to look great is it.

[NoSleep]

I get basic idea why this happens (there's lot of explanations on youtube - "This is how many pixels your source has, this is how many pixels your display has, so the image has to be stretched otherwise it would be a tiny window in the middle of your screen")

This would actually be the perfect answer (as long as the smaller screen size was centred and bordered with black), but I suspect it hasn't been offered as an option.

[mobias]

Yeah I found this out when I got my 4K TV last year. Suddenly my entire DVD collection might as well be checked in the bin. Totally unwatchable. Netflix is the same, you really have to subscribe to their more expensive high resolution package, and even then of course it doesn't cover everything. 

Its annoying that older TV shows like Fawlty Towers and Blackadder look bloody awful steamed from Netflix on a big 4K TV.

[Phil_A]

Yeah I found this out when I got my 4K TV last year. Suddenly my entire DVD collection might as well be checked in the bin. Totally unwatchable. Netflix is the same, you really have to subscribe to their more expensive high resolution package, and even then of course it doesn't cover everything. 

Its annoying that older TV shows like Fawlty Towers and Blackadder look bloody awful steamed from Netflix on a big 4K TV.

I feel like anything any old-school BBC studio comedy shot on video is a bust on Netflix because the framerate is too slow. Also I'm pretty sure they use NTSC sources for a lot of UK shows, which is already a downgrade even before you add 4K into the equation.

[batwings]

Can you set the Xbox to output DVDs at standard def (480p)? Your TV will probably do a better job at upscaling SD sources than the XBox. The picture from DVDs is watchable, if a little soft, on my 55" 4k. I'm using a Panasonic UHD player though which does a decent job of upscaling 480p stuff. A lot of SD Freeview TV is unwatchable, image quality-wise.

[New Jack]

Totally unwatchable. Netflix is the same, you really have to subscribe to their more expensive high resolution package, and even then of course it doesn't cover everything. 

Surely regular degular HD doesn't look too bad. Depends what you watch on the Flix I suppose. Blackadder on a 4K TV sounds destined to look dodgy.

[Twed]

It shouldn't be unwatchably bad. If it is, the TV is doing something extra that sucks.

[Ignatius_S]

I've just got a 75inch 4k TV, y'know for films and that.
Content streamed from Netflix and HBO looks great, normal DVDs played off my XBox look horrible, very pixelated and blocky.

I get basic idea why this happens (there's lot of explanations on youtube - "This is how many pixels your source has, this is how many pixels your display has, so the image has to be stretched otherwise it would be a tiny window in the middle of your screen") - but is there something I can do about it? Get a dedicated DVD player? Mess about with some settings on the TV to make the stretched picture look better?

Or am I limited to only watching Avatar on BluRay?

Not sure what Xbox you have, but pretty sure that the last couple of releases have settings for disc playback, which allow you to select different resolutions and I suspect one or two other settings that would help.

Going from memory, but a friend had similar problems and their TV had options that would enhance video quality, which were great for newer content, but were awful for SD content. So definitely have a look at the settings for your TV.

Incidentally, a few weeks ago, I was visiting friends that had a new 4K TV – think it was 65" – and watched some of When The Boat Comes In on DVD (which they had kindly bought me). That show is form the 1970s and as far as I can see, it's a basic DVD transfer. Although it didn't look great on that TV, it was perfectly watchable and when I got home, found that the quality was a little better but not a huge amount in it; my TV isn't 4K, a fair bit smaller (37") and reviews reported that it was very good at handling SD content.

[batwings]

Surely regular degular HD doesn't look too bad. Depends what you watch on the Flix I suppose. Blackadder on a 4K TV sounds destined to look dodgy.

HD Netflix looks very good on my 4K tv. Not quite as good as regular blurays but still really good.

[Shit Good Nose]

It shouldn't be unwatchably bad. If it is, the TV is doing something extra that sucks.

This - a mate has one of this year's 77" LG OLED TVs matched up with an XBox 1 and DVDs look fine, albeit in relative terms.  I would say the equivalent of somewhere between SD and 720 on a 40" screen, so more than watchable.

So either the TV itself is no great shakes (hopefully you didn't just go to Asda and buy the biggest TV they had for £350), or the various motion settings are all on.  Check the latter first and turn everything off.

What make of TV is it?

[Delete Delete Delete]

Is it a Panasunic, Shony, Shamsung, or a Philpips ?

[hedgehog90]

You bought a thing to make things seem better but it's so good it makes everything seem worse.

This is normal, get used to it.

[Benevolent Despot]

I've just got a 75inch 4k TV, y'know for films and that.
Content streamed from Netflix and HBO looks great, normal DVDs played off my XBox look horrible, very pixelated and blocky.

I get basic idea why this happens (there's lot of explanations on youtube - "This is how many pixels your source has, this is how many pixels your display has, so the image has to be stretched otherwise it would be a tiny window in the middle of your screen") - but is there something I can do about it? Get a dedicated DVD player? Mess about with some settings on the TV to make the stretched picture look better?

Or am I limited to only watching Avatar on BluRay?

I haven't tried the Xbox One's DVD player since I got it but just did (it's the One X but I guess it's the same drive and software in the regular One) and compared it to the PS4. You are right to say it looks pixellated (each pixel is a square with hard edges) on the Xbox because it does. It's Microsoft's fault. The PS4 upscaled the image a lot better and doesn't have the pixellation. I'm on a 1080p TV, so I'm not sure what would happen when watching a regular PS4 on a 4k TV, since the 480p original image will be upscaled for output at 1080p by the PS4 (successfully) and then the TV will upscale this again using it's own processor to 4K - so you need to research how good your TV is at upscaling 1080p to 4k - if you want to use a regular PS4! If not then you will have to buy a dedicated disc player. But first research how good your TV is at upscaling to determine whether the dedicated player needs to be one that outputs 4K. If it is good then you could just save some money and get a regular non-4K blu ray player that also upscales DVD.

[Benevolent Despot]

It's actually a huge difference between PS4 and Xbox One with DVDs in particular. Scroll down to the last comparison tool: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-which-is-the-better-media-player-ps4-xbox-one-revisited

[Isnt Anything]

Ultimately, if the detail doesn't exist in the source picture no amount of fancy post processing from the TV will reintroduce it

kinda untrue

sure it cannot invent detail that isnt there so youre right about that

but it can do interpolation to get rid of jaggies and make things watchable

am surprised thats not coming as standard tbh

[easytarget]

Thanks for the comments.
I switched from the Xbox360 to the Xbox One and, without tweaking any settings on the TV, it looked a bit better (though this is all subjective), then - turning on a bunch of things I normally turn off (the "smooth motion" family of settings which, if I understand them correctly, insert extra, calculated, frames in between the existing frames - on other TVs I've had this makes everything look fucking terrible, but seems like the tech is better in this one), tampering with the brightness and saturation levels improved things some more (though the image is still a bit noisy).

It's a bit annoying because I have a smaller version of (pretty much) the same 4k TV in another room and it looks fine - but blowing up the image really shows off the flaws.

I might get a BluRay player that claims to have a good upscaling engine - might be better than the one in the TV, also it's time to start buying some BluRay discs.

[Sebastian Cobb]

TV might have really stupid upscaling methods that try to be too clever and look terrible. Change anything in the menu that sounds upscale-y.

What this guy said. Flick it in game mode to turn off all the silly dsp noise.

We make streaming apps for televisions and they've been consolidated a fair bit now, everyone but Samsung has jumped on freeview play.

Anyhow my point is we've got a big wall of televisions for our QA staff to test stuff on and they all manage to bollocks up a clear image in their own unique way. Especially the ones that do weird shit like 100fps and make up their own frames.

[Funcrusher]

Fortunately I can't afford to buy one of these.

[Sebastian Cobb]

To be honest I'm not sure there's owt in 4k that's worth watching.

I got an arrow video remaster of videodrome a while back. That's half? Or maybe a square root of the pixels? Either way it looks magnificent in it's 2k glory.

[Twed]

Anyhow my point is we've got a big wall of televisions for our QA staff to test stuff on and they all manage to bollocks up a clear image in their own unique way. Especially the ones that do weird shit like 100fps and make up their own frames.

I hate that so much. Look at this weird-ass shit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxLspeno3m4

[Sebastian Cobb]

I hate that so much. Look at this weird-ass shit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxLspeno3m4

There's an argument that film's 24 frames a second is all arbitary and utterly irrelevant to how many frames the human eye can see; the solution to all that is definitely not interpolation and just making up frames. Film's fine.

[batwings]

To be honest I'm not sure there's owt in 4k that's worth watching.

Planet Earth 2 and Blue Planet 2 look stunning in 4k HDR. The BBC world cup UHD stream is also great. A lot of hollywood stuff uses a 2K intermediate for effects/grading etc so resolution-wise there's not much difference between 1080p and 4K. A good HDR grading makes more of a difference.

[Benevolent Despot]

Thanks for the comments.
I switched from the Xbox360 to the Xbox One and, without tweaking any settings on the TV, it looked a bit better (though this is all subjective), then - turning on a bunch of things I normally turn off (the "smooth motion" family of settings which, if I understand them correctly, insert extra, calculated, frames in between the existing frames - on other TVs I've had this makes everything look fucking terrible, but seems like the tech is better in this one), tampering with the brightness and saturation levels improved things some more (though the image is still a bit noisy).

It's a bit annoying because I have a smaller version of (pretty much) the same 4k TV in another room and it looks fine - but blowing up the image really shows off the flaws.

I might get a BluRay player that claims to have a good upscaling engine - might be better than the one in the TV, also it's time to start buying some BluRay discs.

Dump the Xbox dude. You probably couldn't get a worse player these days for DVDs. For some reason they haven't cared whatsoever for the quality of DVD playback, despite it originally being sold as a media-consumption device. Blu ray playback on the the Xbox is fine though, not sure about 4k playback. Yes, turn off any processing your TV does. Some people prefer MPEG noise-reduction to get rid of compression macro blocks, but this also makes the image look softer in places where it doesn't need to be.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Planet Earth 2 and Blue Planet 2 look stunning in 4k HDR. The BBC world cup UHD stream is also great. A lot of hollywood stuff uses a 2K intermediate for effects/grading etc so resolution-wise there's not much difference between 1080p and 4K. A good HDR grading makes more of a difference.

I've heard good things about the BBC stream.

I didn't realise Hollywood was still on 2k. I'm told 2k/1080p isn't far off an optically printed film (lets assume it's not compressed). Offline upscaling can improve things though. I've got delicatessen on bluray and you'd not know it was filmed on 16mm. It looks great.

[batwings]

I've heard good things about the BBC stream.

I didn't realise Hollywood was still on 2k. I'm told 2k/1080p isn't far off an optically printed film (lets assume it's not compressed). Offline upscaling can improve things though. I've got delicatessen on bluray and you'd not know it was filmed on 16mm. It looks great.

This is a pretty good resource for which 4K releases are actual 4K or not:

http://realorfake4k.com/list/