movies

[Michael]

Ouch. All plasmas available cost many thousands of dollars.

OLED has basically replaced plasma for the true black color you crave.

[Tambourine Man]

Ouch. All plasmas available cost many thousands of dollars.

OLED has basically replaced plasma for the true black color you crave.

I'm completely out of the loop on TV's. Still love my Panasonic, but I'm back in the market for a budget 2nd TV. Time to head over to AVS to figure out which TV's are the end of the world no good.

[TimeForGuinness]

Ouch. All plasmas available cost many thousands of dollars.

OLED has basically replaced plasma for the true black color you crave.

Agreed...but we're still about 5 years off until they can get the quality control up and the cost down. It does stop you in your tracks, though, when walking by one.

[letsgocards89]

Ouch. All plasmas available cost many thousands of dollars.

OLED has basically replaced plasma for the true black color you crave.

I'm completely out of the loop on TV's. Still love my Panasonic, but I'm back in the market for a budget 2nd TV. Time to head over to AVS to figure out which TV's are the end of the world no good.

This site is very helpful as well:

http://www.rtings.com/

[TimeForGuinness]

Ouch. All plasmas available cost many thousands of dollars.

OLED has basically replaced plasma for the true black color you crave.

I'm completely out of the loop on TV's. Still love my Panasonic, but I'm back in the market for a budget 2nd TV. Time to head over to AVS to figure out which TV's are the end of the world no good.

This site is very helpful as well:

http://www.rtings.com/

++...AVS is an amazing source, but goddamn, sometimes you just wanna know two things: is it decent? will it last?

[Tambourine Man]

It's the most anal website I've ever read but kinda worth it. Thanks lgc! I'm checking that site now.

[ghostrunner]

Film has pretty much always been HD, has it not?

35mm is roughly 4K.

Indeed. So when you see "The Wizard of Oz" or an old Western on HDTV, that's how it's supposed to look.

The Soap Opera Effect is actually a popular nickname for the motion smoothing function found in many modern HDTVs. Some of the more official-sounding names for this function are motion interpolation, frame interpolation, or motion estimation/motion compensation (MEMC). They all describe the same thing: that super-smooth effect that makes film sources look like video on your TV

I haven't had a chance to read this for understanding - but it kind of confirms it is a thing. my initial question -would renting non-HD version for an HDTV - I don't think that will help matters to get rid of the effect.
http://hometheaterreview.com/what-is-so ... t-go-away/

HD and the motion smoothing aren't really related, other than the fact that HD tv's are capable of it.

When you see a movie in HD, it's supposed to look crisp. It's not supposed to look like a soap opera or a broadcast event. The effect can be turned off on the TV, and you still have HD. I would always get the HD version, and I would turn off the motion smoothing. Motion smoothing is something TV manufacturers came up with.

I wouldn't think buying the non-HD version would help. You're viewing it on an HD tv, so it's still going to try and smooth the motion.

Like Third says, motion smoothing is fine for sports and live events. That's about it.

[Freed Roger]

I wouldn't think buying the non-HD version would help. You're viewing it on an HD tv, so it's still going to try and smooth the motion.

Like Third says, motion smoothing is fine for sports and live events. That's about it.

Thanks, that is sort of what I was gathering.

Do you think some of the soap opera effect gets mitigated by eventual brain adaption to the way we view it?

Reason I say this -we first got an HDTV around Xmas time a few years back - and old classic movies were all over it. I noted the soap opera effect immediately. Now, I don't notice it as much. I know visuals are a tricky thing -a chunk of it is our imagination and learned perception.

[Arthur Dent]

Film has pretty much always been HD, has it not?

35mm is roughly 4K.

Indeed. So when you see "The Wizard of Oz" or an old Western on HDTV, that's how it's supposed to look.

Roughly, anyway. 1080p still lacks the full resolution and dynamic range to reproduce film with total fidelity, but it's a fine enough approximation for most people. 4K is an even bigger step up. Beyond that you're well into tech geek territory.

When viewing at home, the vast majority of the time, you are limited by the fidelity of the compressed source material and not the resolution of your screen. In fact, there's almost no sources available where advertised 4k actually adds anything of value due to bandwidth limitations. In any case, you'd need a pretty big screen before it would be worth it, even with source material actually encoded with the bits to take advantage of 4k.

If people want to geek out on something that actually matters, color space and calibration is a much better target but harder to market since it is more complicated and 4k >>> 1080p! type claims aren't possible.

Frame rates are an excellent target too as the the standard 24fps of film is well withing the perceptual range -- that's why the soap opera effect is so obvious. But people are so used the film rate, that I don't know how much interest there is in "improving" this aspect. I wonder if films had standardized on 60 fps, which is objectively more realistic, if we'd see 24fps movies as strange looking.

[cardsfantx]

4K Bly rays (I believe they're calling them hd blu ray), are coming out in the next several months so you'll have that option for 4K as well.

Also means you'll have to buy all new discs, so...