Who likes SD?

[greenman]

You're probably right. I'll be honest, I rarely watch anything on physical media anymore, and I think modern TVs have so much of their own baked-in "picture correction" that it's quite hard to get a good gauge on anything for what it actually is without some fiddling. I just know that some of the regular Criterion or otherwise "curated" Blu-Rays I own look a lot warmer than some of the UHD 4K things I've come across[nb]talking about transfers of older movies here, with current ones you may as well just be given a copy of the DCP[/nb], but there's clearly no hard-and-fast rule.

Really I think UHD releases have started to follow more of the Criterion like market now, not all of them, especially the really big franchises do often have grain smoothing(luckily not the recent Indy films though) but a lot more going for a more accurate look because they know that's what the more hardcore market wants. Studio Canal have looked to almost turn themselves into that kind of sub label as well rather than merely a middle man.

Most TV's do have standard "shop" models that whack up the contrast/colour/sharpness but most will also have something more accurate or at least the ability to control the settings. Besides the changes on the disks themselves really I would say part of the difference is down to the TV's, we grew up with screens that could show quite limited colour/contrast relative to the cinema, actually having the ability to show bright reds especially seems strange at first.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Actually I reckon although 'vivid' shop floor defaults almost always look terrible on flat panel tv's I reckon for the most part they're a bit more uniform than the old CRT days. There's quirks with the vividness and as I said I think LCD backlight tvs look a bit blue but they're all pretty consistent in that.

Although you got good CRT's (Sony) and terrible ones, it was far more normal to go round people's houses and see some quite bizzare picture settings where the brightness or saturation was screwed up to the max and you're thinking "mate, how do you live like this?".

[Noodle Lizard]

Really I think UHD releases have started to follow more of the Criterion like market now, not all of them, especially the really big franchises do often have grain smoothing(luckily not the recent Indy films though) but a lot more going for a more accurate look because they know that's what the more hardcore market wants. Studio Canal have looked to almost turn themselves into that kind of sub label as well rather than merely a middle man.

Most TV's do have standard "shop" models that whack up the contrast/colour/sharpness but most will also have something more accurate or at least the ability to control the settings. Besides the changes on the disks themselves really I would say part of the difference is down to the TV's, we grew up with screens that could show quite limited colour/contrast relative to the cinema, actually having the ability to show bright reds especially seems strange at first.

It is quite odd that we're at a point where we technically have more access to relatively affordable high-quality setups, even getting close to what you'd see from a well-presented cinema screening, but as consumers we're actually leaning more towards heavily-compressed and often quite poor-quality copies of film/TV with streaming services. Same thing happened with music, I suppose, and Laserdisc lost to DVD etc. Convenience will always win.

It makes you wonder how much current film/TV-making is being geared towards being ubiquitously "decent" across all the various TV/streaming set-ups, especially when it comes to colour grading and picture finish. As someone who has to deal with "final picture" on things which are seen both on TV and various computer monitors/phones etc., it does lead you to just create a sort of flat and lifeless image in order for it to display properly across all these different outputs.

[Replies From View]

Although you got good CRT's (Sony) and terrible ones, it was far more normal to go round people's houses and see some quite bizzare picture settings where the brightness or saturation was screwed up to the max and you're thinking "mate, how do you live like this?".

You've just reminded me of the times I visited my mum's stepmum's house when I was growing up; I have no idea how but the TV was always fucked up in new and interesting ways.  I'd fix it and the next time it would be rubbish again.  One I easily remember was the brightness being right down and the saturation being right up, so everything was moving patches of shadow and glimpses of purple faces.  She had got used to it somehow, so at first when I put it back to normal she complained that I'd made it "too bright".  (Amusingly she complained to my mum while I was doing it:  "look: he is making it too bright.")

I've no idea why she ever felt the need to fiddle with it after I'd fixed it, but maybe she kept losing the volume control.  A company would probably make a lot of money releasing a remote control that was just an on/off button and a volume control.  By the time CRTs were on the way out at least a third of the controls on a remote were never intentionally used by anybody on earth.  Never an "undo" button was there.

[willbo]

I barely watch tv or films anymore, but I find modern super sharp HD images almost unwatchable. I find it almost creepy how vivid the people look and how defined their facial pores are and what not. Even when watching youtube I keep it at 360 or so. It's why I never really got into Blu Ray. I mean I'm no expert on TV settings, but whenever I see a friend's modern tv with a sport discussion show or something, there's no light and shade, no depth - everything's just blaring at you in super bright colour and sharp pixels, the people, the desk, the background, it's all equally bright.

People say the cinema is more defined but I never had that problem watching films on the big screen. And even if films are, home media is for the home, it's for closer, more intimate watching.  A softer image feels nicer to me in that context. I'll stick with DVD and video as long as I can.

[willbo]

I went rushing out to buy The Prisoner when it came out on Blu-Ray, thinking it would be amazing as it was all shot on film, but forgetting to factor in how shonky some of the sets would suddenly appear. No one's fault - the sets had been designed to look great on 405-line TV, but a bit distracting when all the blemishes were brought into sharp relief.

that's how I felt watching 70s/80s sitcoms on dvd for the first time in the 00s.

[Replies From View]

There was a culture of laughing at "wobbly sets" before HD, but maybe Michael Grade told them to.

[Huxleys Babkins]

I find sometimes watching films in HD (don't have 4K) I end up obsessing over plastic surgery scars or freckles or wrinkles or noticing irrelevant details up the back that distract me.
I honestly think a lot of the time I prefer SD. Enough detail to enjoy the film with a slight cloudiness that just gives films a certain touch of mystery for me.
Am I alone here?

"Films".

Careful lads, they're after wanking stories.

[PlanktonSideburns]

You've just reminded me of the times I visited my mum's stepmum's house when I was growing up; I have no idea how but the TV was always fucked up in new and interesting ways.  I'd fix it and the next time it would be rubbish again.  One I easily remember was the brightness being right down and the saturation being right up, so everything was moving patches of shadow and glimpses of purple faces.  She had got used to it somehow, so at first when I put it back to normal she complained that I'd made it "too bright".  (Amusingly she complained to my mum while I was doing it:  "look: he is making it too bright.")

I've no idea why she ever felt the need to fiddle with it after I'd fixed it, but maybe she kept losing the volume control.  A company would probably make a lot of money releasing a remote control that was just an on/off button and a volume control.  By the time CRTs were on the way out at least a third of the controls on a remote were never intentionally used by anybody on earth.  Never an "undo" button was there.

Maybe she had unusual eyesight?

[AsparagusTrevor]

You've just reminded me of the times I visited my mum's stepmum's house when I was growing up; I have no idea how but the TV was always fucked up in new and interesting ways.  I'd fix it and the next time it would be rubbish again.  One I easily remember was the brightness being right down and the saturation being right up, so everything was moving patches of shadow and glimpses of purple faces.  She had got used to it somehow, so at first when I put it back to normal she complained that I'd made it "too bright".  (Amusingly she complained to my mum while I was doing it:  "look: he is making it too bright.")

She must've really loved the POV shots in Predator

[Replies From View]

Maybe she had unusual eyesight?

Probably yeah.  Or she just took issue with being corrected.  On the final occasion she actually made me put it back to how she liked it.  So with her standing watching I cranked the saturation back up to max, pulled the brightness down to zero, and she said "that's much better".  And I never helped her with her TV again after that as I realised it was unwelcome meddling.




Anyway she died so that's good

[Replies From View]

She must've really loved the POV shots in Predator

She hated all films, claiming they were all too long and boring.  She also hated Lenny Henry.

[dissolute ocelot]

There are some filmmakers who go for a very HD aesthetic, like Pedro Costa, all inky blacks, deep focus, static camera, and shot on digital (and no grain filter). Even with stuff shot on film, this style works well with something like A Passage To India which is all landscapes and scenery. A lot of early computer animation was the same, clean and sharp, although I think these days you get more post-processing to stop it looking like a graphics demo.

In contrast, if a filmmaker's aesthetic is shallow focus (or out-of-focus), grain, handheld/shaky-cam, murky lighting, smoke and fog, it's (a) going to look shit on modern TVs because TVs are optimised for sharpness, and complex motion and blurry colour gradients take more bandwidth, and (b) doesn't matter if it's high definition because the detail isn't there.

[Mr_Simnock]

SD, yesterdays shite, never watch it unless it's the only option (this is getting rarer though for what I like), I'll leave that to those trapped in the past

[Sebastian Cobb]

Some guy who did video production courses was telling me along with bouncing digitally shot video through film and scanning it (definitely happened in the earlier days) and using film effect plugins, another technique is to mix in a loop of video from a bit of partially exposed film.

The film effects people use generally look ok but the fake vhs effect everyone uses is OTT, far too much colour-ghosting, dropouts etc.

[EOLAN]

Probably SD for me. Find sometimes when I watch HD the movements seem very unnatural. Think my eye is picking up the 24 or however many shots per second and sensing things are a bit jerky. If there are improvements - generally won't enhance my viewing experience by much but could possibly significantly reduce my enjoyment if going back to downgrade to SD.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Probably SD for me. Find sometimes when I watch HD the movements seem very unnatural. Think my eye is picking up the 24 or however many shots per second and sensing things are a bit jerky. If there are improvements - generally won't enhance my viewing experience by much but could possibly significantly reduce my enjoyment if going back to downgrade to SD.

The jerkiness isn't always the frame rate itself sometimes, few media devices bother to synchronise the frame rate to the refresh rate so it has to clock/repeat frames to get 24p to either 50 or 60p.

My raspberry pi can output raw 24p and it looks smoother.

[touchingcloth]

I'm usually pretty happy with x264 rips of 1.5-2GB. It's an ignorance is bliss thing to me - my telly is a 32" 720p thing and it's quite far away, and my internet connection is flaky and slow. I can't be arsed to replace the telly, whichbis a good thing because if I did and started realising that I needed much larger file sizes to find things tolerable then I wouldn't be able to do anything about it - the only option for internet here is via 4G, unless I wanted to shell out literal 1,000€s to run a phone line to the house.

[Mr_Simnock]

I decided some years back that as I like to watch telly a lot after work I might as well get the best picture I can so i got me a 55" OLED (was fortunate enough at the time to afford one). I haven't looked back at all, in fact it got me back into watching films, I remember watching 'les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot on Blu Ray, the old film looking so life like and clear it was a joy to watch, picking up all sorts of little details in the set and background actors you wouldn't see via SD at all. Watching 'Back to the Future' for the first time in 4K was like watching the film again for the first time, so much extra detail and clarity, I can't go back to watching it any other way. You now don't need to spend that much on a good TV now, I still find it incredible you can get a 55" TV for under £500 these days with a reasonable picture.

Probably SD for me. Find sometimes when I watch HD the movements seem very unnatural. Think my eye is picking up the 24 or however many shots per second and sensing things are a bit jerky. If there are improvements - generally won't enhance my viewing experience by much but could possibly significantly reduce my enjoyment if going back to downgrade to SD.

A note on this, when I got my OLED I watched a clip from 'Empire Strikes Back' featuring the Falcon's approach to cloud city. The clip itself was quite jerky and not at all pleasant to watch. First thing to be turned off was a 'true motion' picture processing setting, so that got rid of the soap opera effect. Next I switched 'De-Judder' to 2 (from 10) and 'De-Blur' to 1, massive improvement in the picture followed.

[greenman]

Really as well with a new format there is going to be a phase of "wow look what this can do" which can be a bit distracting from watching the films but I find that passes relatively quickly.

[Glebe]

The other night I watched the first episode of the BBC version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy on YouTube app on 32" telly, series uploaded at 1080p, actually pretty decent picture except for sever macroblocking in dark scenes. Don't think I'll watch the rest of it though because it's the US version that was condensed down, apparently. Given a 40th anniversary Blu-ray release a couple of year ago, I believe.

Browsing around Tower Records the other day, I came across Blu-ray editions of both The Likely Lads and Till Death Do Us Part movies. Wonder what they look like.

[Replies From View]

I remember thinking in the mid 90s that real-life home technology couldn't possibly get much better.  Astonishing how things have moved on since then, really.


I wonder what the next steps will be to ensure everyone thinks their current televisions are absolute fucking shit and need to be replaced.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I remember thinking in the mid 90s that real-life home technology couldn't possibly get much better.  Astonishing how things have moved on since then, really.

I find this a little depressing given things like netflix are quite commonly predicted in retrofuturist predictions of modern life. Sure, the internet wasn't described in a technical way or whatever, but being able to watch things *on demand* from some sort of central repository was predicted to the point it was seen as a given.

I wonder what the next steps will be to ensure everyone thinks their current televisions are absolute fucking shit and need to be replaced.

I was going to flippantly say 'they could have another go at failing to make 3dtv work again' but then I remembered an article I read the other day.

It seems they're going to have another go at making high-frame-rate films (upto 120fps) as VFX expert Douglas Turnbull, (2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Trek, Blade Runner...) reckons the secret to making it work is by introducing a flicker to stop the 'soap opera effect' that audiences hated on things like The Hobbit.
https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1627034704

Although I think film is basically fine the way it is, I think there is some scientific consensus that high frame rates are more important than resolution in things that move due to the way angles work, years ago The Register did a good explanation but I can't find it.

https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1627034704

[greenman]

I remember thinking in the mid 90s that real-life home technology couldn't possibly get much better.  Astonishing how things have moved on since then, really.

I wonder what the next steps will be to ensure everyone thinks their current televisions are absolute fucking shit and need to be replaced.

Really though I think you could argue that their starting to hit into the limits for resolution at UHD, both what you can get out of film and indeed what people can actually pick up on. There has been some attempt at 8K but really I'm not sure I can see that taking off outside of maybe at the cinema as a counter to streaming were you might actually see the advantage of it on giant screens.

[Replies From View]

I wonder if in the future they will manage to make cinema audiences shut the fuck up.

[Avril Lavigne]

Disappointed this thread isn't about Scooby Doo.

[Replies From View]

Disappointed this thread isn't about Scooby Doo.

Scrappy Doo is your favourite one.