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Best HDR Content

Started by Abnormal Palm, March 29, 2020, 01:13:24 PM

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Abnormal Palm

Looks like a bot thread title. I got myself an absolute sinkhole of a telly on PayPal credit, on the premise that I might well die in the next few months so fuck it, I'll just never pay it off. I want to give it a proper workout.

Anyone got any recommendations for the best HDR films or shows you've seen?

I'm up for anything, kids films or any old superhero shite but ideally stuff that you can actually watch.

Cheers.

greenman

Going from UHD blurays I would say...

Alien
Blade Runner
The Deer Hunter
Escape From Newyork

Dex Sawash

I adjusted to HD pretty quickly, not getting on with HDR at all except the built in Roku HDR showcase promotional videos of surfing (etc) which look amazing.  I assume doing some settings research will help.

Abnormal Palm

Thanks, greenman, great stuff. I'll definitely check them out. I heard amazing things about the new Blade Runner (both as a film and spectacle) but didn't get round to it yet.


Quote from: Dex Sawash on March 29, 2020, 01:50:45 PM
I adjusted to HD pretty quickly, not getting on with HDR at all except the built in Roku HDR showcase promotional videos of surfing (etc) which look amazing.  I assume doing some settings research will help.

I'd suggest going on rtings.com and looking up the settings for your set. Mine was great out of the box but with the RT settings, it's even better. They focus on a natural, cinematic presentation according to mastering standards so you might tweak for your particular room and lighting but fundamentally, they're very reliable.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: greenman on March 29, 2020, 01:46:48 PM
Going from UHD blurays I would say...

Alien
Blade Runner
The Deer Hunter
Escape From Newyork

These were film, are they put through an algorithm to 'open them up', are they scanned with a higher colour depth because the film captured things in a wider range than normal digital scans or are they scanned multiple times and combined like in HDR photography?

It does seem, based on the blumf that what HDR brings 'more colour range' and 'more contrast' are things that filmakers have been using computers to squash ever since full-film DI became a thing.

greenman

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on March 29, 2020, 02:15:23 PM
These were film, are they put through an algorithm to 'open them up', are they scanned with a higher colour depth because the film captured things in a wider range than normal digital scans or are they scanned multiple times and combined like in HDR photography?

It does seem, based on the blumf that what HDR brings 'more colour range' and 'more contrast' are things that filmakers have been using computers to squash ever since full-film DI became a thing.

UHD seem to be really a mix of a lot of improvements, higher resolution, wider colour and HDR meaning the ability to show brighter highlights and deeper shadows without blowing out to white/black. Probably because the shift in pure resolution isn't going to be an obvious as from DVD/standard TV to HD unless your using a very large TV and a very sharp source.

As you say there is potentially more info in the original film or digital source than could be show on HD TV's so its not just some added effect after the fact like a lot of 3d releases although I'd guess there might be some of that on certain films.

I would say the biggest issue is as mentioned probably TV settings, the out of the box ones tend to be ultra contrasty with loads of sharpening added to try and make it stand out in the showroom but your probably better off with something like "cinema" mode on most of them for something a bit more tasteful closer to the original intensions, turning sharpening and motion smoothing to zero/off as well. Alot of what I'v enjoyed most has actually been Studio channels releases of older films, the above and Angel heart, Don't Look Now, etc really do look like watching a film projection, I';d guess being able to show very fine grain helps there rather than trying to smooth it out.

Sebastian Cobb

Yeah my telly is nearly 10 years old and was a fairly pedestrian Samsung - fluorescent backlit just as LED was coming in (and in my opinon looking a bit too 'cold' picture-wise) and I still think it looks better on the recommended settings someone posted on AV Forums than a lot of modern sets.

HDR still seems counter to what a lot of people seem to be doing in non-HDR remasters though, which often seems to involve making the dark bits darker and moving the colour palette into blues.

e.g.





greenman

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on March 29, 2020, 02:41:39 PM
Yeah my telly is nearly 10 years old and was a fairly pedestrian Samsung - fluorescent backlit just as LED was coming in and I still think it looks better on the recommended settings someone posted on AV Forums than a lot of modern sets.

HDR still seems counter to what a lot of people seem to be doing in non-HDR remasters though, which often seems to involve making the dark bits darker and moving the colour palette into blues.

e.g.






Messing around with the colours I spose is independent of the format although I think Blade Runner does seem to have improved, its lost a lot of the excessive teal added to the final cut bluray. I'm guessing generally they might be shifting there mastering towards pleasing a more hard core viewer base, less messing around with colours and de noising.

I wouldn't say HDR automatically means brighter and more contrasty all the time, you don't need to show the entire dynamic range in every shot. I would say potentially the reverse as because you can show more subtle detail in the shadows you don't need to increase the brightness to do so, something the Deer Hunter especially I think benefits from that allowing for some very subdued scenes were you can still see whats going on.

batwings

Some HDR movies I've seen recently that looked good:
Pacific Rim.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
1917
Apocalypse Now
Prometheus
Ad Astra
Annihilation (Netflix)
2001 a Space Odyssey

Non-movies: Planet Earth 2, Blue Planet 2, Dynasties (nature docs)
Altered Carbon, Mind Hunter,  umbrella Academy (Netflix)

Abnormal Palm

Many thanks, all added to the list. I've seen some of Blue Planet 2 and it looks staggering.

phantom_power

I downloaded a 4K version of Thor Ragnarok and it looked fucking great

batwings

Quote from: phantom_power on March 30, 2020, 08:44:59 AM
I downloaded a 4K version of Thor Ragnarok and it looked fucking great

Yeah some of the MCU titles look great - especially Avengers Infinity War, Guardians 2 & Ragnorak.

Ant Farm Keyboard

Francis Ford Coppola worked a lot on dynamic range for Apocalypse Now The Final Cut, and the work done also benefits to the two other existing cuts in the latest boxset. The night scenes are much more legible now, for instance. The UHD Blu-ray still has the edge but plain Blu-ray or even DVD are improved.

The Revenant was celebrated a lot when it was released (it was at the beginning of the format) for the edge the UHD version had compared to regular Blu-ray.

Anyway, the OP had it right. Most of the UHD benefits come from the greater dynamic range offered by the format. Almost every CGI-heavy blockbuster has for instance its VFX rendered at 2k, which means that every shot with some special effect is just 2k. 4k would take to four times longer for rendering (or would take the same time with four times the processing power) and the improvement wouldn't be that much noticed, even in theaters.

Sebastian Cobb

Interestingly, I was reading people are applying machine learning to upscaling algorithms to HD the episodes of Star Trek Voyager and DS9 which are unlikely to get done by the studios.

https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/fm13wf/star_trek_voyager_4k_remaster_using_ai_machine/

mjwilson

Apparently the Twin Peaks pilot looks amazing on the new box set, I assume that's an HDR thing although I haven't seen it.

Mister Six

Twin Peaks: The Return looked fucking astounding on the 5gb rips I downloaded at the time. Haven't watched the Blu-rays but I assume they are of a similar quality.

Abnormal Palm

This might be a dumb question but I don't know the answer:

Is there any difference in quality playing a UHD BR through an £800 player rather than playing a UHD download directly through my telly's Amazon Video app?

I don't understand why DVD players have such massive cost difference, but given how much I'm into audio gear, I appreciate that it's likely a stupid comment.

Basically, how would I get the best quality source to play UHD movies through my telly, please?

greenman

Quote from: Abnormal Palm on March 31, 2020, 07:29:44 PM
This might be a dumb question but I don't know the answer:

Is there any difference in quality playing a UHD BR through an £800 player rather than playing a UHD download directly through my telly's Amazon Video app?

I don't understand why DVD players have such massive cost difference, but given how much I'm into audio gear, I appreciate that it's likely a stupid comment.

Basically, how would I get the best quality source to play UHD movies through my telly, please?

Unless you want a surround sound system built in to the player or some flashy design to it the main thing to consider if what video formats it supports. UHD is basically a format there adding features to so you have some disks will say they include things like Dolbyvision which is basically adding a bit of extra quality ontop of regular UHD. The disk will play if your player doesn't support that but you won't get the bit extra. You don't need to pay that much for it though, I got a Panasonic DP-UB450 that's basically a bog standard box player with a small controller but supports Dolbyvision/HDR10+ and that only cost me £160. You will need to buy a USB 2.0 cable to connect any player to the TV though to carry the extra data, old USB cables won't work.

Quality wise streaming video is always going to be more compressed than disks, a UHD disk can have 100 GB's on it which would be too much data for Amazon/Netflix to deal with so they downsize the files to roughly 1/4 the size. Probably a question of whether you can notice the difference or not, maybe stream stuff you care less about the quality of?

Abnormal Palm

Thank you for this. I had thought if I downloaded the UHD file (from Amazon or whatever) it would be equivalent quality but now I appreciate that's not necessarily how it works, and not even an option for the majority of these stores. I can't be arsed with piracy these days so I've bought a handful of the UHDBR recommended in the thread and I'll look forward to comparing. I'm someone who spent a fair bit of time with high quality audio and I can differentiate between lossless and 320kbps files on certain types of recordings, and I can hear the difference between Tidal Masters and Spotify Extreme on certain recordings, but I still feel like the end of the chain (the headphones) are more important than the source, provided the source is still 9/10 albeit not 10/10. I expect the same with the telly. UHD streaming is so much better through the C9 than it was through my good 4K Samsung LCD. I'll be curious to see what they're like with the same physical source. I went with a similar Panny BR player, Dolby Vision compatible so hoping for good results. Cheers for the info.