4K HDR Blu Ray - Is it worth it?

[masterkickass7]

On 12/27/2016 at 4:21 PM, deXxterlab97 said:

I can watch Star Wars in 4K HDR

 

 

if your looking for a 4k hdr player the xbox 1s is the way to go with the $250 holiday deal

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, zMeul said:

what you didn't understand is that I'm not complaining about the HDR images, but about the standard ones - they are blurry

my standard display has zero issues with reproducing 8bit content

 

the comparison is skewed from the start if the same master wasn't used to produce the standard and HDR BluRays - that's what I'm debating

and it's very clear it wasn't

 

they are still images where YT's compression alg is minimum

if this was a single case, yes, I would say you're right .. but it's in every example

How do you know the master isn't the same?

 

Also, like I said, you are looking at a picture of a display. Of course it will look blurry and bad. Nobody who knows the first thing about displays will use the side by side images in the video to compare standard blu-ray vs HDR, because it is a terrible way of comparing the two. The blur in the standard blu-ray might just be the camera being slightly out of focus.

[xnamkcor]

19 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

How do you know the master isn't the same?

 

Also, like I said, you are looking at a picture of a display. Of course it will look blurry and bad. Nobody who knows the first thing about displays will use the side by side images in the video to compare standard blu-ray vs HDR, because it is a terrible way of comparing the two. The blur in the standard blu-ray might just be the camera being slightly out of focus.

 

No true Scotsman would ever use photography to compare video formats that can depend on the display's physical abilities.

http://i.imgur.com/LZM0moUh.jpg

 

[LAwLz]

6 minutes ago, xnamkcor said:

No true Scotsman would ever use photography to compare video formats that can depend on the display's physical abilities.

http://i.imgur.com/LZM0moUh.jpg

Indeed. The problem is that you can't strip the DRM from the new Blu-ray format... yet.

Once we can do that it will be so much easier to do proper comparisons.

[zMeul]

5 hours ago, LAwLz said:

How do you know the master isn't the same?

 

Also, like I said, you are looking at a picture of a display. Of course it will look blurry and bad. Nobody who knows the first thing about displays will use the side by side images in the video to compare standard blu-ray vs HDR, because it is a terrible way of comparing the two. The blur in the standard blu-ray might just be the camera being slightly out of focus.

the master isn't the same because the image details are not the same

 

someone here pointed out that even Sicario has different versions

[LAwLz]

5 hours ago, zMeul said:

the master isn't the same because the image details are not the same

 

someone here pointed out that even Sicario has different versions

What image details are you referring to? You mean the the creases on the cloth and the details on the seats in the boat?

That's because you are comparing a picture of a screen, vs a perfect copy of the video file.

 

 

If you take a picture with a camera of your screen, then it will look terrible. It will look very different from what the actual video frame looks like. That's why you see more details in Ciccioo's comparison. It doesn't look different because they have a different master. It looks different because one image is captured though a camera, encoded multiple times more with different lossy compression, and the other is an exact copy of the frame straight from the video file.

 

I really don't get what you're talking about. Can you please elaborate?

If you're wondering why Ciccioo's image looks so much better than the picture labeled Blu-Ray then it's because of the things I explained above. It should be obvious that a photo of a screen will look worse than just capturing the image on the screen in software.

[zMeul]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

What image details are you referring to? You mean the the creases on the cloth and the details on the seats in the boat?

That's because you are comparing a picture of a screen, vs a perfect copy of the video file.

 

 

If you take a picture with a camera of your screen, then it will look terrible. It will look very different from what the actual video frame looks like. That's why you see more details in Ciccioo's comparison. It doesn't look different because they have a different master. It looks different because one image is captured though a camera, encoded multiple times more with different lossy compression, and the other is an exact copy of the frame straight from the video file.

 

I really don't get what you're talking about. Can you please elaborate?

If you're wondering why Ciccioo's image looks so much better than the picture labeled Blu-Ray then it's because of the things I explained above. It should be obvious that a photo of a screen will look worse than just capturing the image on the screen in software.

you went off the track of the discussion I started

no, I'm absolutely not referring to Ciccioo's images - I'm only referring to standard vs HDR

[LAwLz]

17 minutes ago, zMeul said:

no, I'm absolutely not referring to Ciccioo's images - I'm only referring to standard vs HDR

So, what is your point?

Do you not understand why you CAN NOT and I repeat NOT use the images in the video for comparison reasons?

 

Reasons why the Blu-ray picture might look blurrier than the HDR picture:

1) It is not the exact same frame. The frame they used for the Blu-ray picture might just be slightly more blurry in the original source. Everything in that scene is moving, and objects in a video that move are blurry (I am sure you are familiar with "motion blur").

2) They took a picture with a camera, which might not have had the same settings between the two shots.

3) They took a picture with a camera, which might have had its focus changed between shots.

4) They took a picture with a camera, which might not have had optimal settings for both shots. For example the Blu-Ray one seems brighter, so lowering the shutter speed for that one might have showed more details.

5) The Blu-Ray picture is slightly brighter, and any of the multiple transcodes (JPEG in camera, encoding during video editing, encoding during YouTube upload) might have been more harsh on the Blu-Ray picture because compression tends to crush very bright section and very dark sections.

6) The video was color corrected (I assume), and depending on what they used as a reference the color might be "more optimized" for the HDR picture.

 

Do you want me to keep going? Because I am sure there are several more things which might contribute to why the Blu-Ray shot looks more blurry than the HDR shot.

All of these are reasons why nobody who knows the first thing about monitor comparisons would ever try and judge a display (or in this case, content being shown on a display) by looking at a picture. Do you have any idea how many times the original source frame has been altered before the final image you see was produced?

 

1) The TV settings were changed between the two shots.

2) The image captured by the camera sensor is not perfect, and will therefore alter the look of the frame.

3) The processing done on the image by the camera will alter how it looks.

4) The image gets transcoded in their editing software, and this alters the way it looks.

5) The video was then color corrected, which alters the way it looks.

6) After that they do some weird transcoding again (don't know in what exact order they do things in, but LMG seems to like transcoding things back and forth several times), which yet again will change things in the image.

7) After that it gets uploaded to YouTube, which once again changes things around because there is another transcoding stage.

8) Then it gets streamed to your computer, which may or may not have video "enhancements" done by for example your GPU (I have my GPU set to not do any post-processing of its own, but I think the default is that it does. It's default on AMD at least).

9) After that the image gets sent to your display, which I am sure is not a perfect display and will therefore alter the look of the image once again.

 

Do you see now why it is such a idiotic idea to try and rely on the side-by-side comparison photos to determine what SDR vs HDR looks like? Not even the SDR (aka Blu-Ray) image from the video will look anything like it does if you play the video on your own computer, because if you do that then almost all of the 9 steps I listed earlier will be gone.

 

Again, looking at the side-by-side comparison images to judge what one or the other looks like,

it's like if you tried to judge the taste of a meal, by looking at a picture of it... After your friend had already chewed it and spat it out. The pictures in Linus' video bears almost no resembles to what the video looked like in real life (as far as details and color goes).

[zMeul]

1 minute ago, LAwLz said:

Reasons why the Blu-ray picture might look blurrier than the HDR picture

this is bullshit

the two BluRay used are UHD

[LAwLz]

2 hours ago, zMeul said:

this is bullshit

the two BluRay used are UHD

What are you on about? I really don't understand what you are arguing about. Can you please elaborate? Do you object to something in the video and if so, what? 

 

Why do you think both are UHD? 

[xnamkcor]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

All of these are reasons why nobody who knows the first thing about monitor comparisons would ever try and judge a display (or in this case, content being shown on a display) by looking at a picture.

You can take pictures of the same frame.

You can manually focus shots and never change the focus between shots.

You can not change settings between shots.

You can not use JPG or YouTube

You can use the same shutter speeds on both shots.

You can not color correct the images.

 

Those aren't reason why you can't do it, those are just reasons it might go wrong in some instances.

[dalekphalm]

5 minutes ago, xnamkcor said:

You can take pictures of the same frame.

You can manually focus shots and never change the focus between shots.

You can not change settings between shots.

You can not use JPG or YouTube

You can use the same shutter speeds on both shots.

You can not color correct the images.

 

Those aren't reason why you can't do it, those are just reasons it might go wrong in some instances.

Even doing all of those things (Which, SHOULD be done) will only MITIGATE potential differences between the comparisons, not completely eliminate them.

[xnamkcor]

1 hour ago, dalekphalm said:

Even doing all of those things (Which, SHOULD be done) will only MITIGATE potential differences between the comparisons, not completely eliminate them.

Seems odd to list them as reasons why you can't use photographs then.

[dalekphalm]

19 minutes ago, xnamkcor said:

Seems odd to list them as reasons why you can't use photographs then.

If in person, your list of constrictions could certainly work - but over any sort of online distribution where any compression/encoding, etc, is happening, it's up in the air.

[zMeul]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Why do you think both are UHD? 

do I think? if you actually followed what I posted, I showed two versions of Life of Pi, both UHD and only one HDR

 

---

 

on a related note, today I got my own LG HDR10 TV and I will try to do my own testing

Edited December 31, 2016 by zMeul

[xnamkcor]

1 hour ago, dalekphalm said:

If in person, your list of constrictions could certainly work - but over any sort of online distribution where any compression/encoding, etc, is happening, it's up in the air.

Are you trying to bring up the inherent loss of information in digital/quantised media as opposed to real life or analog media? Or are you making a false assumption that the internet is incapable of hosting digital media without lossfully compressing it?

[dalekphalm]

5 minutes ago, xnamkcor said:

Are you trying to bring up the inherent loss of information in digital/quantised media as opposed to real life or analog media? Or are you making a false assumption that the internet is incapable of hosting digital media without lossfully compressing it?

Obviously you can host "raw" video footage (In this context, "raw" footage would either be direct unedited footage from the camera recording the footage, or uncompressed capture footage). But either the video clips would be ridiculously short, or the file sizes would be so large as to be impractical.

 

But I am mostly referring to the fact that if you're uploading footage to the Internet, there's highly likely to be compression and/or transcoding happening. Even if no compression is present, any transcoding happening would alter the images, even if those alterations are quite small.

[xnamkcor]

6 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Obviously you can host "raw" video footage (In this context, "raw" footage would either be direct unedited footage from the camera recording the footage, or uncompressed capture footage). But either the video clips would be ridiculously short, or the file sizes would be so large as to be impractical.

 

But I am mostly referring to the fact that if you're uploading footage to the Internet, there's highly likely to be compression and/or transcoding happening. Even if no compression is present, any transcoding happening would alter the images, even if those alterations are quite small.

We're speaking of photographs, not footage.

50MB doesn't seem that unreasonable for a photo when detail is important.

Why would it be highly likely that a video you are uploading for the sake of detailed comparison be compressed or transcoded? Are you trying to set up a false scenario where YouTube being a popular service means that a person uploading files is more likely to use compression?

All you have to do is not transcode the media and upload it to a file service. Dropbox and Drive and OneDrive don't transcode(unless you tell it to).

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, xnamkcor said:

We're speaking of photographs, not footage.

50MB doesn't seem that unreasonable for a photo when detail is important.

Why would it be highly likely that a video you are uploading for the sake of detailed comparison be compressed or transcoded? Are you trying to set up a false scenario where YouTube being a popular service means that a person uploading files is more likely to use compression?

All you have to do is not transcode the media and upload it to a file service. Dropbox and Drive and OneDrive don't transcode(unless you tell it to).

Comparing photos, sure - but that definitely limits your comparison abilities. You shouldn't be comparing just single frames. You need to compare entire clips, in my opinion, to see a proper representation.

 

Furthermore, you'd need HDR compliant on all aspects, including your computer and monitor.

 

I'm not talking about some hypothetical (Well some random dude could do this) situation. I'm talking about a legitimate reviewer with a large audience doing a comparison. They're going to use reliable wide spread services to host the content. Dropbox and other similar services are not going to be a good way to distribute the content to the masses. Dropbox in particular is eliminating (or maybe already has? Not sure on the timing) public links.

[xnamkcor]

17 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Furthermore, you'd need HDR compliant on all aspects, including your computer and monitor.

If you bring that up, then nothing you do, ever, will be good enough, unless the person already bought an HDR display.

[dalekphalm]

Just now, xnamkcor said:

If you bring that up, then nothing you do, ever, will be good enough, unless the person already bought an HDR display.

Indeed - it's certainly an interesting dilemma for reviewing a product in which most viewers won't be able to accurately see the difference (since very few own an HDR display yet).

 

And that's a big problem with reviewing HDR content. Now, I'm not sure how still images will come into play here. Can a still image accurately reproduce an HDR screenshot on a non-HDR display? @LAwLz and @AshleyAshes you seem pretty knowledgeable about the subject. Would a screenshot (assuming on an HDR display, uncompressed) be able to recreate the image accurately on an SDR monitor - even say a 10bit prosumer one?

[AshleyAshes]

8 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

And that's a big problem with reviewing HDR content. Now, I'm not sure how still images will come into play here. Can a still image accurately reproduce an HDR screenshot on a non-HDR display? @LAwLz and @AshleyAshes you seem pretty knowledgeable about the subject. Would a screenshot (assuming on an HDR display, uncompressed) be able to recreate the image accurately on an SDR monitor - even say a 10bit prosumer one?

You also have to considder the dynamic range of the camera.  For example my Canon prosumers T2i and T4i (It's been a while since college when I bought them, sue me. :P) still only have about 12 stops of dynamic range where as HDR10 on a proper HDR screen can manage about 18 stops of dynamic range, yes, even in raw format.  The capability of the sensor also has to be considdered.  Though you could use an HDR bracketed photo where multiple exposures are taken and merged that might work.

But to be honest, it's a YouTube channel doing a review of video content were proper visualization of the hosts experience requires a rather expensive pipeline end to end, from cameras, to editing software to the display used to consume the content.  The real value isn't in the images seen in Linus' reviews, it's in the words he says to describe the experience.  If you otherwise want to see a side by side HDR comparison, get away from YouTube and go to an electronics store.

 

Most of the argument here is kinda like debating the best way to demonstrate color television to prospective consumers using only black and white television.

[xnamkcor]

5 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Indeed - it's certainly an interesting dilemma for reviewing a product in which most viewers won't be able to accurately see the difference (since very few own an HDR display yet).

 

And that's a big problem with reviewing HDR content. Now, I'm not sure how still images will come into play here. Can a still image accurately reproduce an HDR screenshot on a non-HDR display? @LAwLz and @AshleyAshes you seem pretty knowledgeable about the subject. Would a screenshot (assuming on an HDR display, uncompressed) be able to recreate the image accurately on an SDR monitor - even say a 10bit prosumer one?

Using "false colors" and scrolling through the gamut, you won't see the real image or perceive a lot of the artistic intent, but it would be a way of looking at the full gamut of the HDR with a display with a smaller gamut.

 

I wonder if a manufacturer could make a backlight that strobes off and on at 120Hz so that it could display both light and dark within the same 60 FPS frame.

[dalekphalm]

5 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

You also have to considder the dynamic range of the camera.  For example my Canon prosumers T2i and T4i (It's been a while since college when I bought them, sue me. :P) still only have about 12 stops of dynamic range where as HDR10 on a proper HDR screen can manage about 18 stops of dynamic range, yes, even in raw format.  The capability of the sensor also has to be considdered.  Though you could use an HDR bracketed photo where multiple exposures are taken and merged that might work.

But to be honest, it's a YouTube channel doing a review of video content were proper visualization of the hosts experience requires a rather expensive pipeline end to end, from cameras, to editing software to the display used to consume the content.  The real value isn't in the images seen in Linus' reviews, it's in the words he says to describe the experience.  If you otherwise want to see a side by side HDR comparison, get away from YouTube and go to an electronics store.

 

Most of the argument here is kinda like debating the best way to demonstrate color television to perspective consumers using only black and white television.

Indeed - since I knew I was watching it on an SDR screen, when I watched the review, I used the side-by-side comparisons to accent Linus' descriptions of the differences.

 

Plus we just bought an HDR 4K TV at work, and I've seen a few clips (not many) and I could see the difference myself. However, we lack a 4K UHD Blu-Ray player to see actual HDR Blu-Ray movies.

[xnamkcor]

7 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Most of the argument here is kinda like debating the best way to demonstrate color television to prospective consumers using only black and white television.

Put the color TVs in a store where people walk by or shop. Then again, color was an amazing change in visuals. HDR is maybe a 10% increase, less so to older people. Even worse when display units are blown out instead of properly calibrated. Or when a bad company DVD or Blu-Ray demo reel is used to show off a display, but the compression in the media itself is so bad that it never gets the chance.