Long time ago, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and AMD K8 was the pinnacle of technology, I invested in a basic home theater setup. A decent AV receiver, a subwoofer, two studio-quality monitor speakers. A friend warned me that the speakers I had picked were "crisp, but unforgiving".

All of a sudden DVDs sounded wonderful. The audio tracks in TV programmes became clear. The warnings made no sense.

Until I watched a classic TV show episode from 1980's. Bad mixing. Flipped stereo channels. Stuffy voiceovers. Everything sounded ... wrong.

Suddenly, it all made sense. I understood.

There is no generally accepted theory of stereo sound, instead there are at least three theories:

   (1) a method for mastering sound recordings intended to be played by two speakers that are right next to each other (two sides of a TV,  see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Retrieval_System for some theory)

   (2) mastering sound records so that 'left means left' and 'right means right' which means your speakers are on opposite sides of the room and you're near the middle.  That can cast sounds effectively to the left and right but falls down casting them to the middle

   (3) Ambisonics,  which doesn't really work because the coherence in natural sound sources badly damages the timbre of natural sounds and the concept of 'represent natural soundfield' doesn't really mix with 'record instruments individually in dead environments',  'add reverb',  and 'repeat' which is how 'quality' sound in the judgement of the industry is attained.

Often DVDs were mixed under the assumption that they couldn't trust the receiver (e.g. no center channel); blu-rays sound a lot better not just because they allocate more bits to sound, but because the mixing is more aggressive... they don't feel they have to copy dialog on the L and the R because they know many people don't have a working C.

I am delighted to be one of today's lucky 10000: https://xkcd.com/1053/

I have worked for Canal+ a long, long time ago and I have been on the set couple of times. When the studio was lit you felt hot even though there was air conditioning.

It is basically the same as meeting sunshine on a winter day with no air movement. The air is cold but the sunshine on your skin makes you feel much hotter than it really is.

Also, when there was a cut to a new scene, for a few seconds my brain thought the movie was playing faster. Like those old black and white movies of the early 20th century.

But clearly we learned something or there was something special about Hobbit, because that hasn't necessarily been my experience with all 4k / high-frame shows or movies...

I saw them in both normal frame rate and HFR as they were coming out and it looked kinda low-budget, weirdly lit/color corrected, and generally just clunkier than the LotR films did in the moment.

I would describe the effect of HFR as pushing immersion past suspension of disbelief into reality. You can no longer see them as characters, you see them as you would as if it wasn't through a screen - as you said, like watching actors on a stage.

Fortunately(?), humans may get used to HFR as we have with previous advancements in video technology. Remember when people were freaking out about 4K, 3D, HD, Color, "The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station"?

I only use it at about 10-20% though, not at 100% which I think is the default setting and I agree is vomitive.

I think the people complaining about the first are whiners and as a digital video expert I will allow you to leave it on.

Every time I go back visiting parents, which have TV with this on, anything on TV feels surreal and not in a good way. Which isn't bad, watching TV instead of interacting with my parents is stupid waste of time anyway and TV itself actively helps with that

Reading the manual doesn't help when your TV doesn't have a fast mode. And many don't.

If the source happens to have more frames, then show them of course. But otherwise I'd prefer to see the same frame again for the extra 1/60th of a second.

It's a shame there is no 1080p HDR content. 35mm movies would benefit a lot more of higher color bit depth that higher resolution. Anyone knows if this is a codec limitation?

Typically, you as a consumer, will be receiving an H.264 or H.265 stream that your cable box or streaming device decodes. These have all been updated with levels/profiles to allow for things like 3D, 4K, HDR, and 10bit encodes. The shoehorn used to shove new features into these formats has been put to heavy use.

I don't have any examples on hand. But with large amount of time I have found myself with over the past year to watch a lot of content, I too have noticed even some of the last episodics to be shot on film (2005-2010 range) are very noticeable. I have also seen some features from the 90s that looked really clean in comparison. Lots of things go into that, from how much the camera department "cared", what film stock was used, what film processor was used, etc. Towards the end of mass film production, there were fewer and fewer labs left. During they heyday, the soups used in the processing where in constant use. As demand lowered, the soups kind of stagnated especially in the shops financially strapped.

Film is fickle to be sure.

Here's a good list to check whether a film is real 4K or not.

https://www.digiraw.com/DVD-4K-Bluray-ripping-service/4K-UHD...

I've now remembered that the X-Men films from 20 years ago did look pretty good in 4K HDR. And apparently they are "real 4K". Also the 4K remaster of The Fifth Element.

Best to leave modern productions (like Nolan) out of the conversation, IMO. It can give an unrealistic picture of what resolution is achievable. Take Lawrence of Arabia for example: it's possibly the paradigmatic example of a 70mm film, and yet in most scenes the resolution is no better than an upscaled 1080p. This is due to a combination of problems: film stock degrades relatively quickly and was generally of lower quality 50+ years ago than today, and focus pulling was not precise enough to take full advantage of the available resolving power of 70mm film.

Unfortunately this is also true for many scenes in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Take a look at these comparisons here: https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?go=1&a=0&d1=12517&d2=12509&s1... You're looking at an upscaled 1080p film versus native 4k (tonemapped to have roughly comparable colors on SDR screens). There's little if any more detail in the 4k image.

On the other hand, 35mm film certainly can have details visible only in 4k, especially more recent stuff. Check out this comparison for Casino (1995), the difference is unbelievable: https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?d1=13389&d2=13388&s1=134076&s...

I agree with you about HDR though. It's certainly the most important improvement that's come up in the last decade, much more than the resolution increase.

> It's a shame there is no 1080p HDR content. 35mm movies would benefit a lot more of higher color bit depth that higher resolution. Anyone knows if this is a codec limitation?

Yes and no. The standard for Blu-ray (which uses H.264) is not able to accommodate HDR or 4k, so it was not possible until the release of the UHD Blu-ray standard. Players with the UHD standard support 4k, HDR, and the HEVC codec instead of H.264. HEVC (aka H.265) can support HDR at any resolution, but since you're releasing a "UHD" disc anyway that only people with supporting players can use, you may as well put it on there in 4k anyway. Better for marketing, probably. So it's a bit complicated. If you check bittorrent trackers, you'll probably be able to find 1080p films with HDR (encoded with HEVC), but no one in the industry releases films that way.

(Also, the higher bit depth is not quite as important as the extended dynamic range.)

I'd especially emphasize the 'tricks you can get away with' in low resolution television. A few months ago I was watching a rerun of an early 1960s B&W sitcom on a TV sub-channel running at normal 1080 HD resolution. The program was My Favorite Martian which is a spoofed up science fiction comedy series. The program features a Martian who can disappear and levitate objects so it's not unusual to see things either moving or floating in midair.

Anyway, the tricks employed to levitate things were embarrassingly obvious in standard HD/1080 resolution as it was dead easy to see that they had been suspended on nylon fishing line. When the show was first aired the most common TV standards were 405, 525 and 625 lines so the series producers were betting that the limiting resolution of these TV systems would hide the lines—which clearly they did. BTW, as a young kid I used to watch the show [on 625 B&W], and if I'd have seen that fishing line then I've made a big deal out of the fact.

Incidentally, the early series were in black & white and filmed on 35mm film which meant the original negatives would have been dazzlingly sharp in comparison to the then TV systems. It's interesting to note the present video quality of this series—unlike so many others from the time—is excellent (and that includes the later color episodes). Clearly, the recent transfer/digitization was done from negatives have been archived well. It's especially obvious in the color series which are of exceptionally good color quality given the passage of time (there's not a trace of fade, cross-coupling of color dyes or color bleed which plagues so many old films).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbZMqS-fW-8

https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/what-is-the-soap-...

Basically, we (over the age of about 25 anyway) are used to associating 24 FPS with “high quality” content like movies and higher FPS with cheap content like soap operas.

People here blame it on age, but very high resolution always screams it was shot on video. I don't need to see every pore on an actor's face. I'm usually wanting to get away from reality when watching a movie, or a tv show too.

I am very content with the visual quality film gave us.

I love black, and white film for the same reasons, and others, even more.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/acomjean/35581239466/in/photos...

I watched Gemini Man in 4k HDR and some of the scenes seemed a little like a video game. I think there was sort of an "uncanny valley" sort of thing where you could see detail into the deepest shadow and it looked fake.

On the other hand, 2001 in 4k was awesome.