Movies HD made lesser

GO TO BED!

 

Hehehe.  A lot of the CG in KFH has always been rough.  I think it's just something that should be accepted as a part of the film's cartoony charm, since that's really what it is. 

I'm fully aware that I probably just didn't have some settings correct (I still own and watch all my movies on a large CRT), but the last two Harry Potter movies I watched in HD on a large flat screen (Chamber of Secrets and Deathly Hallows 1) looked absolutely awful. They were flat with poor lighting. Every ounce of makeup was visible. The effects, and their integration with the people and sets around them, looked like junk. The movies looked just like BBC productions. I tried to convince myself that it led to a quaint experience, given the wealth of British actors on the screen, but in the end, it was just awful.

I've seen such fluctuation in Blu Ray quality from movie to movie. It's the main reason that I'm still sticking primarily with DVD's. That and higher amount of obscure catalogue titles.

I saw about 10 minutes of How To Train Your Dragon on a massive screen at a local TV store.

 

It didn't ruin it for me but god DAMN there's a shit load of detail in that flick - almost too much.  I felt like it must be how autistic kids see the world, you could focus on EVERYTHING so you saw nothing.

 

I'd probably get over it but it was weirdly jarring.  Even my daughter said "Dad, what's wrong with that picture?".  

 

But then we only have a 29inch tube TV at home.  Got it when we moved to NZ and have had no compelling reason to change up (since I hardly ever get to watch the movies I want to watch at home anyway)

Seriously?

 

First Blu-ray on a nice 1080p tv is absolutely amazing...don't front.

 

Second catalog titles on Blu-ray are usually crappy unless it is a special edition. Look for 50g discs. 25g is more likely to be DVD quality.

 

Third. Harry Potter was disppointing because, frankly, they are not very good. Seriously, it's the same movie everytime and visually they kind of suck. Read the book....not the e-book.

 

Fourth, I had a 32" hd tv for years. Bulky as hell, but beautiful picture. I would never go back to it now that I have a 50". Also, just because it is flat screen and "hd" doesn't necessarily guarantee good picture. Do research. Many are subpar and will disappoint. Prepare to spend a decent chunk of change. $1000+

 

Fifth, will this line of posting lead someone to cleverly respond with something I could never see coming, knocking me off my high horse with a jab such as...

 

Sixth..."you are douche"?

While certainly not "lesser", the 2001: A Space Odyssey blu is so immaculately clear that you can see the imperfections in the studio backdrops in the "Dawn Of Man" sequence. I thought I had blotches of crud on my screen & trued furiously to wipe it off before realizing what the problem was.

I haven't seen the blu-ray of it, but it seems like in terms of atmosphere and style, watching the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre in HD would be less true to the film than watching it on VHS or something.  It's meant to be viewed as a dirty, muddy, out-of-focus piece of film.  I know a good HD transfer would bring out the nastiness of the original film, but having the view obscured even more by crappy transfers and dubs feels more appropriate.

I actually noticed that too!

The trippiness of the stargate sequence in 2001 takes a hit in HD as well. In standard def there are long stretches of abstract high contrast shapes and colours, and in HD it becomes immediately apparent that it's Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon processed through a one colour filter (I actually first noticed this when I saw a 70mm projection, but it's true of HD as well).

For the most part the dvd HEAT looks ok upscaled, but the green screen in the Hollywood hills really stands out. It probably looks worse on blu-ray.

I have the Blu, and I didn't find that to be the case. The picture has more clarity, but it's still grainy and grimy and intense, and not overly color-corrected. 

I can't think of what it's called, but I've encountered a feature on some HDTVs that I guess is supposed to smooth out movement on screen, presumably doing something with the framerate, and while it seems like it might be good for sports (or maaaaybe other things shot on video) it makes movies look like absolute SHIT. On two occasions I've politely intervened and turned it off on the TVs of friends and family because it was driving me nuts, and even though they didn't consciously notice it or deliberately turn it on, they agreed that it looked much better after turning it off. It makes CGI animated films look like old video game cut scenes and makes live action movies look like super cheap shot on video DTV fare. Really weird. The worst is that I've actually seen it in use on display models at electronics stores. I don't understand how anyone could look at a movie playing on a TV with this feature turned on and think it's supposed to look like that, or worse yet think that it looks good. Pure speculation but this could explain some of the stuff you guys are describing, especially Kerry Martin's experience with the HP films.

Yeah, motion interpolation. 

 

At least you can turn it off.

Yeah, that's it. I love that there's even a term for the problem I described, the Soap Opera Effect.  And yeah, it's good you can turn it off, but it appears to be one of those technical things like aspect ratio where the average person doesn't necessarily know something is wrong or know how to fix it. I guess ignorance is bliss, but it bothers the obsessive nerd in me because they're not seeing the movie the way it's meant to be seen, nor getting the best possible picture out of the expensive TV they bought.

Well, that's a relief.  Maybe the opposite would work on the remake though.  Dub it onto a VHS a few times over and put it though an RF modulator, really muck the picture up.  It might make it play a little better.

That's a setting on your TV that amps up the frame rate so it looks like video. A pal has it on his TV and we watched chunks of Clash of the Titans on it marveling at how it destroyed any sense of "film" the image had. On the technical side it looked like a stage play or after school special on TV.

 

Great tool for serious film nerds though as it blows all the tricks and craft so you can see how everything is put together.

 

It's officially called "Motion Interpolation" but your TV may have a different name for the actual setting:

http://www.google.com.au/search?sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&safe=off&site=&source=hp&q=new+tv+weird+frame+rate&btnK=Google+Search

The slang term that pops up on a search is "The Soap Opera Effect".

 

Uhhhh

Don't fret, I think he has us both on ignore. 

I had my Xbox set to output dvds at 1080i. My tv was also set to 1080i. The picture looked ok but every minute or so these jagged lines would appear on the screen. Only for one frame but it was very noticeable. Maybe it's because they are region 2 dvds and they don't like the 1080i interlocking setting. It stopped when I set it to 1080p.