Blu-Ray Movies on my new 1080P TV no longer feel like a Dream.

[michael zaletel]

I'm not sure how others feel about this but I recently purchased a new 55" high-end 1080P Flat Panel Television and have started watching more Blu-Ray movies. Movies just feel different when they are this pure and clean. It kind of bothers me and I am wondering how others think that might affect the art of cinematography.

Yes, I've tried the different picture settings and the optimal setting helps some but still doesn't solve the underlying psychological problem that movies no longer feel like dreams to me and so it is increasingly more difficult to get lost in the story. I feel like I'm awake looking through a window rather than daydreaming. Nothing seems left to the imagination.

Am I the only one that sees this as a challenge as we move on to 4K in the living room?

Thoughts...?

-michael zaletel

 

[Jonathan Stevenson]

IMO, I think it's more that you're not in a darkened theater, where the screen is all you have to look at. Watching a movie in your living room just doesn't quite feel the same. The level of immersion just isn't there, and your house has a much higher amount of distractions overall.

As far as the picture quality goes, I love how movies look on my 58" HDTV.

 

[michael zaletel]

IMO, I think it's more that you're not in a darkened theater, where the screen is all you have to look at. Watching a movie in your living room just doesn't quite feel the same. The level of immersion just isn't there, and your house has a much higher amount of distractions overall.

As far as the picture quality goes, I love how movies look on my 58" HDTV.

That is a good point Jonathan...but I never had this problem with our previous 55" lower-quality TV playing standard DVD movies in the living room. Perhaps I'll get used to it. Perhaps I am the only one noticing this...

-michael zaletel

 

[M Most]

I'm not sure how others feel about this but I recently purchased a new 55" high-end 1080P Flat Panel Television and have started watching more Blu-Ray movies. Movies just feel different when they are this pure and clean. It kind of bothers me and I am wondering how others think that might affect the art of cinematography.

Yes, I've tried the different picture settings and the optimal setting helps some but still doesn't solve the underlying psychological problem that movies no longer feel like dreams to me and so it is increasingly more difficult to get lost in the story. I feel like I'm awake looking through a window rather than daydreaming. Nothing seems left to the imagination.

A lot of your reaction is due to perceptual differences. Human perception is greatly influenced by factors that aren't always obvious and in ways that aren't always predictable. For instance, your perception of contrast goes up as the ambient lighting goes up. This is obvious in the sense that if your room lights are on, you see more contrast than if they're dimmed. But this combines with other factors when you're watching visual media. LCD's and plasma monitors have very little reflectance when compared with CRT's, but they are also much brighter. When we all watched CRT's we often turned the room lights down, even at home, because the room lights (and windows) would wash out the TV image. But with LCDs and plasmas this isn't the case, and since it's more comfortable to leave the room lights up (in part because the image is so much brighter anyway), we generally do. This means that with your added perception of contrast, you're going to see a lot more detail in the dark areas of the image than you ever did before. You're also going to see a lot more contrast and detail than you did in the theater, where the room is dark and the image isn't nearly as bright. Combine these factors with the fact that the screen isn't nearly as large and therefore isn't nearly as immersive, and you've got some potential explanations for why you feel the way you do.

And yes, this does have many implications for home viewing at any resolution as long as you're not sitting very, very close to the screen. The lower light levels - both in terms of ambient light and the brightness of the image itself - contribute to the "dreaminess" you can perceive when you're in a theater environment. The only way to really duplicate that at home is to set up a projection system, and run it at a lower light level than you're used to for home video. Resolution isn't the issue here. Environmental conditions are.

 

[michael zaletel]

Thanks. That makes the "Most" sense.

Do you think Blu-Ray movies primarily destined for the mass-consumer market should be graded differently to compensate for the likely environmental conditions 90% of viewers that don't have home theaters are likely to experience?

-michael zaletel

 

[Jonathan Stevenson]

I would say the differences in grading when accounting for "environmental conditions" of a house would be unnoticeable to your average person. My parents have had an HDTV for 5 years and still haven't gotten HD cable because they say "it looks fine."

 

[Steven Caesare]

I've got a 37" 1080p LCD driven by a SD DVD deck upstairs in my living room. I have a 1080p24 capable projector & 133" screen driven by a BluRay deck in my fully light controlled basement:

The combination of reflective screen (rather than tranmissive LCD), true 24p frame rate, darkened room, and immersive viewing angle makes a huge difference in the feel of the exact same movie. The projecter is also a SXRD unit (Sony's flavor of LCoS), and I find it has a much smoother look to it than either DLP or LCD, IMO...

Even though the basement is driven by the higher-fedelity source (Blu Ray), I find the combination of the above makes for the "feel" you describe.

That having been said, it seems like many more movies are shot and corrected to have a more video/stylized asthetic these days... and I find that somewhat less pleaseing in many cases.

-sc

 

[Roberto Lequeux]

A lot of your reaction is due to perceptual differences. Human perception is greatly influenced by factors that aren't always obvious and in ways that aren't always predictable. For instance, your perception of contrast goes up as the ambient lighting goes up. This is obvious in the sense that if your room lights are on, you see more contrast than if they're dimmed. But this combines with other factors when you're watching visual media. LCD's and plasma monitors have very little reflectance when compared with CRT's, but they are also much brighter. When we all watched CRT's we often turned the room lights down, even at home, because the room lights (and windows) would wash out the TV image. But with LCDs and plasmas this isn't the case, and since it's more comfortable to leave the room lights up (in part because the image is so much brighter anyway), we generally do. This means that with your added perception of contrast, you're going to see a lot more detail in the dark areas of the image than you ever did before. You're also going to see a lot more contrast and detail than you did in the theater, where the room is dark and the image isn't nearly as bright. Combine these factors with the fact that the screen isn't nearly as large and therefore isn't nearly as immersive, and you've got some potential explanations for why you feel the way you do.

And yes, this does have many implications for home viewing at any resolution as long as you're not sitting very, very close to the screen. The lower light levels - both in terms of ambient light and the brightness of the image itself - contribute to the "dreaminess" you can perceive when you're in a theater environment. The only way to really duplicate that at home is to set up a projection system, and run it at a lower light level than you're used to for home video. Resolution isn't the issue here. Environmental conditions are.

Thanks for this post Mike.

 

[A.Fetchko]

Turn off all frame interpolation.... motion enhancement. This is usually the culprit for me.

 

[Ian Laurie]

I agree with the above. Motion Flow, or any of the other manufacturer variants leave me feeling slightly nauseated and makes movies look WAY to handicap like.... taking you out of that "dream" feeling.

Edit: I typed clean.... it came out handicap. don't ask me how auto correct pulled that one off.

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

Look up mesopic vision.

 

[jaadgy akanni]

I have a big-ass Samsung LCD, and of course, my HDMI computer monitors, but let me tell y'all a secret... I've been having an affair with a little GE CRT 20" tv that I keep in another room; I just love how it looks.

 

[Sam Eilertsen]

Make sure you don't have that horrible motion interpolation feature turned on (like it is on many TVs be default), 24p is definitely part of the "dream" feeling.

 

[jimhare]

Drooling over that theatre Steven! Is that front or rear projection?

I've got a 37" 1080p LCD driven by a SD DVD deck upstairs in my living room. I have a 1080p24 capable projector & 133" screen driven by a BluRay deck in my fully light controlled basement:

The combination of reflective screen (rather than tranmissive LCD), true 24p frame rate, darkened room, and immersive viewing angle makes a huge difference in the feel of the exact same movie. The projecter is also a SXRD unit (Sony's flavor of LCoS), and I find it has a much smoother look to it than either DLP or LCD, IMO...

Even though the basement is driven by the higher-fedelity source (Blu Ray), I find the combination of the above makes for the "feel" you describe.

That having been said, it seems like many more movies are shot and corrected to have a more video/stylized asthetic these days... and I find that somewhat less pleaseing in many cases.

-sc

 

[DCC Erickson]

Sometimes a perfect image isn't perfect for the story. Sometimes in striving for technical excellence - in Hollywood especially - the story seems to come in second to the high polish. The more perfect we can make the image, the more important it is that we make certain it serves the story appropriately.

 

[Craig Ryan]

Even if you sit close enough to any TV, it's still not going to have the same immersion of a movie theater, even though with both scenarios the image fills the same portion of your vision. The reason is that your eye will be focused on a different plane when sitting really close to a TV VS watching a huge screen 30 feet away. There is a subconscious response to focusing on something large and far away where the brain will register it as "large" thus the "larger than life" feeling we get while at the movie theater, despite the resolution as Mike pointed out.

So, as Mike suggests, try a projector and a big enough screen where you can sit far enough away and yet still have a large image.

Other things to consider for any display: true 24p refresh is a must for a cinematic experience. 48hz, 72hz, and 96hz are all options. If your TV is capable of this, I would use it.

Also don't forget to adjust the image settings. Most TVs have a cinema mode, or THX ideally. Use this, but test it out and see if it's doing anything like crushing the blacks too much or blowing anything out.

And how could I forget? SOUND! Don't underestimate investing in a quality 5.1 receiver. It's half the experience.

 

[Steven Caesare]

Drooling over that theatre Steven! Is that front or rear projection?

Thanks!

It's front projection. That shot is a cheat (it's a comp, as it's impossible to get a good room shot without the lights on such that they also wash out the screen... I need an EPIC with HDRx™™!). Here's a real shot of the room from farther back so you can see the projector placement as well:

There are more pics of the completed basement theater here: http://www.caesare.com/BasementFinal/

And for those intreested in the before/during/after type of stuff, there are shots of the construction here: http://www.caesare.com/basement/

Anyway, back on topic, I also agree that any of the motion-flow enhancements should be turned off as well. I don't own any dispalys with that nonsense, and every time I've seen it I hated it.

-Steve

 

[L. Langer]

Lucky mofo. It's a shame Sony axed the SXRD consumer projectors from their product offerings. Hopefully, they will bring them back.

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

Lucky mofo. It's a shame Sony axed the SXRD consumer projectors from their product offerings. Hopefully, they will bring them back.

Not until there is serious competition in that space. I'm reminded of their ad campaign for the EX-1 "Too much camera for the money!"

That's exactly how a Sony rep told me the company felt about their consumer SXRD projectors.

 

[Ryan Lalonde]

Steven your basement is too awesome!