4K vs HDR

[Lady Elanore]

I wondered how many people were watching telly in 4K and possibly HDR. I have just watched 'The Ridiculous 6' (not a great film :( ) streamed in 4K and Dolby Vision HDR. Admittedly there was something odd about the picture quality, which looked to be either the compression in the streaming or perhaps a fast frame rate, but while 4K adds a little (nothing like the jump from SD to HD telly though), HDR and especially the Dolby Vision version, is astonishing. The picture almost looks too 'punchy' if that makes sense. 

 

At the moment there are 2 versions of HDR, the wonderful Dolby Vision and HDR10, well there were 2 version. Now it appears that the Beeb want to bring a 3rd version of it and currently no television can decode the data (it may be possible to upgrade the software on some tellys, but at the moment no manufacturer wants to say they can or will). The only good thing about the Beeb's version is it will work with normal HD telly, such as the stuff you watch on Freeview. 

 

Imho, HDR makes a much bigger difference to the picture than 4K. What do others think? I'm sure there are more than a few early adopters of it out there in Skodageek land

[GentleGiant]

I've tried a few cameras with HDR, and now I leave the "feature" turned off

[john999boy]

There was an article recently on BBC Click about the two (I can't recollect three) formats and it said that only one TV brand (LG IIRC) which could manage to show them to their true ability.

 

I've not consciously noticed anything in such as Currys as I've wandered through but the remark about the picture being 'too punchy' reminds me when colour TV's first appeared and it took a while for me to get used to the extra info that was being shown! :S

[Lady Elanore]

I've got one of the LG tellys that is Dolby Vision compliant It's worth noting that if you buy a telly at the moment, many are 4k ready, some are HDR ready, but most do not support Dolby Vision. If your telly supports Dolby Vision, then it will also support HDR10 (the slightly inferior, but more popular at present, system). If the telly supports HDR10, then it will not be upgradable to Dolby Vision as it need different hardware.

 

The Beeb has only just announced it's version of HDR (the 3rd type) and are no doubt soon to start trialing it over Freeview, but only a few peeps (the type that wear labcoats and also work for the Beeb) will be able to watch it.....for now at least. 

 

If you get a chance to see side by side 'basic 4K' and '4K with any form of HDR', do so. HDR is as big a jump as HD was to SD

[Aspman]

I tried some of Amazon's 4k stuff, tbh on my 43" telly it's very hard to tell any difference between HD and 4K.

 

Not sure if it's HDR ready, I assume not since it was mid priced.

Edited 15 September, 2016 by Aspman

[Lady Elanore]

If the movie has HDR it will say so somewhere near the 4K bit, at least on Netflix. On Amazon 'the Man in the High Castle' is HDR, although only HDR10 standard. I suspect your tellybox may not be HDR compatible though, as you would have seen the difference. 

[GentleGiant]

Seeing the difference between HD and 4K really comes down to how good your TV is at upscreening. My particular model of LG is so good, you find it difficult to tell the difference between SD and 4K.

 

As for HDR, the edges look over emphasised, more like a colourised black and white picture than reality.

[Scribbler]

SD and 4K.

 

 

Next you will be saying there is no difference between the sound track played through your TV's amazing speakers and Dolby Atmos.

 

HDR is not new its been around since the late eighties I remember when they added it to the rendering in the game Half Life 2 if you had a graphics card that could run it at a descent frame rate the improved effect was night and day. But i agree with you Eleanor in TV its almost to real its like a stylized version of real life. As with all these things though you will get used to it and a few years time you will look back at an old 1080p HD flick and be like this is **** quality.

[GentleGiant]

 

Next you will be saying there is no difference between the sound track played through your TV's amazing speakers and Dolby Atmos.

 

HDR is not new its been around since the late eighties I remember when they added it to the rendering in the game Half Life 2 if you had a graphics card that could run it at a descent frame rate the improved effect was night and day. But i agree with you Eleanor in TV its almost to real its like a stylized version of real life. As with all these things though you will get used to it and a few years time you will look back at an old 1080p HD flick and be like this is **** quality.

 

Like every other TV, mine has sh1te speakers, exactly how sh1te I dont know, as I have never used them.

 

All sound goes through my Yamaha cinema amp to my surround sound system - which is 5.0, rather than 5.1 as my main speakers are so massive, I dont need a sub. (you can feel the hairs on your legs move from the subsonics in some films).

[Mort]

I've not really noticed much difference between SD and HD on my 4k set. And I don't really have any 4k sources to compare them to either (save a few youtube videos - but they depend on how they're filmed really).

 

I'm hoping HDR will make a bigger (more noticeable) difference, but i'm not sure which HDR 'standard' my 2015 Sony set supports (had a firmware update to support one, so I know it does - just not whether it's going to be a useful one).

 

But then again, I still buy DVDs over BluRay and am more than happy with how it looks so probably not the demographic for you.

Edited 16 September, 2016 by Mort

[999pooch]

There was an article recently on BBC Click about the two (I can't recollect three) formats and it said that only one TV brand (LG IIRC) which could manage to show them to their true ability.

I've not consciously noticed anything in such as Currys as I've wandered through but the remark about the picture being 'too punchy' reminds me when colour TV's first appeared and it took a while for me to get used to the extra info that was being shown! :S

Just watched that episode downloaded on my phone on the plane to Lanzarote last night!!

[john999boy]

Just watched that episode downloaded on my phone on the plane to Lanzarote last night!!

Glad that I was of some use for 30 minutes of the flight!  

[Lady Elanore]

I've not really noticed much difference between SD and HD on my 4k set. And I don't really have any 4k sources to compare them to either (save a few youtube videos - but they depend on how they're filmed really).

 

I'm hoping HDR will make a bigger (more noticeable) difference, but i'm not sure which HDR 'standard' my 2015 Sony set supports (had a firmware update to support one, so I know it does - just not whether it's going to be a useful one).

 

But then again, I still buy DVDs over BluRay and am more than happy with how it looks so probably not the demographic for you.

Sony telly don't support Dolby Vision at the moment and it is not something that can be fixed with an update unfortunately. But HDR10 is still a decent step in the right direction. Once you have seen it, you will know instantly if a show you are watching has HDR support. You do have to be careful with your settings, at least on LG tellys, as some of the added contrast/sharpening boosters give a false halo around high contrast objects. So 'the Man in the High Castle' which is black and white has a stylised look to it, a bit like a super sharp "Sin City". I noticed that a couple of these settings had been accidentally left on in my sub menus (my giddy aunt there are huge numbers of sub menus these days), but all is good now

 

I'm waiting for the next round of 4K Bluray [layers to come out and the price drop. Curretnly there are only 2 players and the Samsung one does not support Dolby Vision. Panny have a new cheaper (£400!) one coming out, but nobody knows if it supports Dolby Vision yet. Also Philips are releasing a 4K player and the latest X Box will play basic 4K too.

[ColinD]

I'd love to do a fly on the wall for a top end tv shop

 

Take a bit of test media in to compare some stupidly expensive media/tv setup

 

Wave my film reel, then copy to a vhs tape in the backroom, save that to a dvd, then of course encode it to a mp# something, uploaded to the cloud to stream onto the telly... I really think I'd see no difference  would be funny seeing bill & ben on a 60" telly.

 

4k telly... I'v not really thought about telly as mainly the content isn't there, affordable wise. I toyed with it for screen work, but actually to run at half res just to make fonts sharper and easier on the eyes.  From demos I've seen in the stores, I don't actually get 4k, except for nature...that is probably where I'd go for it...

 

because flying to say the galpagos islands to see it with my own eyes versus seeing it possibly better at 4k might actually be the better planetary thing to do.

 

If we ignore all the waste/minerals/ores we've used to get to this point... the point being it's pretty impressive. To be on the early adopters is I think going to be very expensive for a good few years to come. I still use an old 14" telly somedays Yes i have lots of vhs videos that are truly horrendous to watch on a new tv

[Lady Elanore]

i actually played a couple of S-VHS tapes through my new OLED 4K super telly a few weeks ago. The result was hilarious and virtually unwatchable, even with the excellent upscaling of the LG. As someone who appreciates and understands how much work goes into making Film and TV, I think it was worth it, to pay a premium for a top Telly. Undoubtedly in a couple of years time, the cost of a TV similar to my own will be halved, but there again in two years time who knows what I will be doing with my life.

 

Wudda, shudda, cudda, not for me on this one. 

[GentleGiant]

Due to the way they were recorded and stored, TV from the 1980s/early 90's looks worse than TV from the 60's and 70's.

[Lady Elanore]

Really? Please enlighten me.

 

You do realise that around 1980 the VPR-2B had replaced the inferior Quad machine of the 70s? (editing with with a razor blade with 2" video tape, an air compressor built in, potentially lengthy line ups every time you changed reels and some time base issues)

Edited 17 September, 2016 by Lady Elanore

[GentleGiant]

Instead of using film, they switched to video tape; see if you can find an old copy of Start Trek TOS (pre digitally enhanced), and compare it with a similar pre digitally enhanced copy of Star Trek TNG, the film is a bit grainy, but the video taped 80s version is almost unwatchable.

 

I am currently rewatching MASH (digitised, but not remastered), and the picture quality on this early 1970's show is far superior to many of the 80's or early 90's shows.

 

I am talking US shows, the BBC programs I used to watch are not generally available these days, and if they are, it is often a copy taken from an old VHS tape, but even with Dr Who, the John Pertwee and early Tom Baker shows look better than the ones produced with the last two idiots they had before cancelling the show.

[Lady Elanore]

As someone working in TV in the early 80s (and still is), I saw and used a lot of legacy equipment but to imply that 70s TV was recorded on film is largely untrue. Partly because 'recorded' refers to tape, but also, although many shows had film inserts, they were mastered onto Tape anyway. Also there was an awful lot of poor quality 16mm flying about (i spent time in dubbing suites and transfer suites :( ), just look back to the local news in particular and many inserts into comedy shows (out of studio scenes obviously) the Quad machines I referred to are often the ones that you see where the colour bleeds, VT dots are occasionally apparent and the image is generally poor quality, but 1" improved much of this. Admittedly shows like Star Trek where they had bigger budgets and could shoot on decent film stock will look great, but in this country, it was sadly not so often the case. The storing of tape is not always the best way to go around things, but most film has been transferred to other mediums now anyway. I still have many early 1/4" audio recordings I worked on and although the sig to noise is not stellar (we used stereo tracks and 15ips) the general sound of the recording is great, so tape and analogue isn't totally without merit. 

 

TV cameras were also not of a particular high standard in the 60s and 70s, if you pointed one at a studio light the image would show a burned out spot that would grow exponentially until the camera images was completely wiped out. By the 80s, they were becoming considerably better and by the 90s things like camera line up 'twice a day' was becoming a thing of the past. 

 

I realise a lot of people assume that film is and was always the best, but it is certainly nowhere near as clear cut as that. 70mm is still a standard to be reckoned with and it's amazing considering how many decades it has been around, digital is only just beginning to match it (albeit with different strengths and weaknesses). I did not realise that  tape recordings were stored in an inferior way to film though??? As I said before, most stuff has been converted to a digital format and now lives on dirty big servers and such like. it is fair to say however that a good 35mm film would have been superior to anything recorded up until the 90s, but most television was not done in this way. put it this way. in Manchester's Network 'New Broadcasting House' they had a few full time film cameramen but dozens of TV cameramen in the 70s, even then things were tipped in the favour of tape recordings. There were film recordings made in TV studios but they were not the most common way to do things

Edited 18 September, 2016 by Lady Elanore

[Lady Elanore]

I should have summarised by saying your initial comment should have read 'in the 80s and 90s some tv looked worse than in the 60s and 70s,' rather than your blanket statement which implied all 80s and 90s was worse.  

[GentleGiant]

I should have summarised by saying your initial comment should have read 'in the 80s and 90s some tv looked worse than in the 60s and 70s,' rather than your blanket statement which implied all 80s and 90s was worse.  

 

Yeah, my bad, and I bow to your knowledge of the technology, I only say what I see.

 

If you even have the time to watch MASH episodes back to back, they change the film type used several times, and the picture differences are HUGE, in later episodes you can easily spot bits snipped out of earlier shows by the colour saturation, picture noise, and colour tone(temperature??). You can also see where they have used a version that has been stored on a different (vdeo tape??) format, in one episode in Series 6 or 7, using clips from earlier seasons, the characters skin colour is that of Homer Simpson in some clips, and like clown make-up in others, yet the original looks fine.

 

I also realise that the BBC were stuck with antique equipment for many years; having pioneered the cameras, they got left behind by the rapidly improving camera technology for many years (at least according to David (bloody) Attenborough).

[Lady Elanore]

I remember the stuff we made in the 80s and 90s and the quality was fine, subsequent archiving may not have done it much of a favour, but the original recordings when ok. Some of the expensive 35mm dramas such as the Persuaders looked glorious and hopefully always will, but shows like that were not the norm (the cost was staggering), but they are more memorable and stand the test of time extremely well from a picture and sound quality point of view (film sound being recorded on the ubiquitous Nagra 1/4" recorder).

 

The Americans did a lot of high quality filmed shows (at least from a technical point of view ) and they had the advantage of lots of nice bright natural light usually, but their NTSC (Never Twice the Same Colour) studio stuff was horrible, whereas we used PAL (Peace At Last) was much nicer imho. It is funny how many top end film makers are going back to film stock though and Christopher Nolan sites costs as one advantage!! now we have high contrast video recordings, perhaps the two systems will be seen as complimentary, but I do prefer the way 70mm and its peers look to Digital (although IMax digital is pretty good )

 

You have now inspired me watch this epic throwback 

 

over 2 hours of The Banana Splits

[GentleGiant]

I introduced them to my daughter last year :sun: Ahh! those were the days, I used to love watching them. I am still looking for Whirlybirds, Skippy and Marine Boy though.

 

I've not come across that meaning for NTSC before, but it is very apt!

 

I understand the BBC used to work some "magic" on bought in US NTSC shows to make them look better on PAL.

[gadgetman]

From what I understand there's next to no 4K content made in 4k in the UK. It's simply been up scaled.

IMO it's a bit of a waste of time for at least a couple more years when broadcasting catches up.

The only way to get true 4K movie content is downloading as it's too large for dvd or blueray discs for the majority of films. And the majority of households aren't set up to watch streamed content on their TVs or have poor Internet connections.

It's more about the TV manufacturers trying to force the TV broadcasters to buy expensive 4k cameras. Don't expect it on Sky, as Astra is pretty maxed out already with just HD

[DenzilDexter]

Lots of huge movies are shooting 35mm film in the UK right now (even some 16mm) and it's well publicised that Chris Nolan's Dunkirk is shooting 65mm film (the prints are 70mm).

 

Kodak announced they are putting 65mm film processing into the UK, currently all the 65mm film goes to the USA for processing. There is also some very nice large format digital material as well shot on Alexa 65 and Red Weapon 8K cameras.

 

HDR finishing (grading) works great from film and digital camera sources and it's not just about the bright specular highlights it's also about the Wide Color Gamut (WCR).