LG joins the rest of the world, accepts that people don’t want 8K TVs
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Because of the way the human visual system works, it's not really about absolute resolution (1080p, 4K, 8K), but about pixels per degree (PPD). You do move your eyes, and your head, to see more of a screen that's filling your visual field, rather than holding your head still while watching a big screen (or a close screen).
And as soon as you have multiple viewers of a large screen, you've got people not looking at the same point on the screen - for example, in team sports, different people look at different team members. VR headsets can use eye tracking for "foveated rendering", so that they have differing rendered pixel densities across the screen, in large part because they only have a single viewer at a time, and there's no point rendering detail you can't notice. TVs can't do that, because you have things like Super Bowl parties, and different viewers can be watching different parts of the action on screen (e.g. one person watching the ball in the middle of the screen, another looking at team preparation for what happens when the ball moves).
However, of the known limits of human vision, resolution is the one we're closest to exceeding in all cases - we're fairly confident that 100 PPD is enough to exceed the limits of human vision, which is a 50" 4K screen or 100" 8K screen at 2 metres (6 feet 6 inches) from the viewer (both of which can be built today), whereas refresh rate and dynamic range are a lot further from the human visual system's limits, even with HDR and high refresh rates on monitors.
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The complication in that is that you can distinguish the presence of fine structure beyond the point that you can resolve the individual elements (eg hair in bulk). I assume that you’re detecting the structure by doing super resolution scanning when your eye moves.
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But the enhancements to commercials! Apparently, increasing the amount of commercials in what used to be programming (currently, commercials interrupted by programs*) isn't enough. They also want even more vibrant colors and deafening sound levels as well.
*Some of which, in turn, contain commercial product endorsements. Remember when you could even pay to get commercial free content? A rapidly fading memory.
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There's two things here:
1. The 100 PPD estimate takes that into account (unlike Snellen's 60 PPD limit, based on the assumption that if each cone is always being stimulated by at least 4 pixels, we can't see the difference) - the eye on its own has a resolution limit somewhere around 30 PPD, but saccades result in the visual system having a higher resolution. It may be that we need 120 or even 150 PPD to exceed everyone's limits, but it's not a huge amount off our current display technology limits.
2. We don't appear, as far as neuroscience can tell, to actually image the world; we have a model of what the world contains, and our visual system updates that model. It's therefore entirely within human capabilities to "see" things that aren't present because we already expect that they'll look that way, and to update what we perceive when we see something that disagrees with the model.
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For TVs, sure (at your normal TV sizes and viewing distances). For PC screens, absolutely not -- people sit much closer! 1080p on a PC has been sadness from Day 1. Typical monitor resolutions actually went DOWN for a few years because of that 1080p nonsense.
If having more resolution than I actually need on my TV is a side-effect of having a decent PC display, I'll happily pay that tax.
where the hell do you get 8K 120Hz 3D content? asking genuinely, out of interest and a bit of envy..
as far as I know the only way to get that is with
https://helixmod.blogspot.com
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I'd be curious to see that difference quantified, although I'm not sure how that could be done.
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I hadn't seen that xkcd, thanks.
Good point about 1080p. The general idea, including on this thread, is that TV resolutions trickle down to computer monitor resolutions. But, has that actually happened, outside of 1080p?
Even with 4K, we have a lot of computer monitors that are 4K but do they actually have anything to do with 4K TVs? The sizes are different and the panel technology is different. What does a 27" 4K IPS panel have to do with a 65" 4K VA panel?
So the idea that we should be excited about 8K TVs because that means we will eventually all have 8K computer monitors seems suspect.
BTW, there are now two (three?) manufacturers of 5K 27" IPS computer monitor panels and 6K 32" panels, and new models with these resolutions are being introduced every few weeks. These have nothing to do with TVs.
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Projectors are great...still enjoy my 720P projector (bit under-brightness since its an earlier LED one but w/e). I'd wanted that ever since I learned you can plug a projector into a VCR when I was little.
Big perk for me...I can enjoy stuff in bed without wearing glasses with a 110 inch projection on the wall and it doesn't require a stupidly oversized thing sitting/hanging on the opposite wall.
As for the rest of the places in the house...I don't know anyone who has a livingroom screen (of any kind) that puts it beyond the bottom of the 4K threshold. Most have the sofas ~10 feet from the screen and few have more than a 60-70 inch picture size. Most have 40-50 inch TVs at that viewing distance.
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tbh I’m still on a 1080p 
I do see the improvement of 4K, but I don’t think it’s a big enough reason to shell out much extra for it. It feels a bit “uncanny valley” imo so I stuck with 1080p on my current TV. Probably need to get at least a 4K in the near future just a matter of pricing
I do see the improvement of 4K, but I don’t think it’s a big enough reason to shell out much extra for it. It feels a bit “uncanny valley” imo so I stuck with 1080p on my current TV. Probably need to get at least a 4K in the near future just a matter of pricing
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the uncanny part is stupid motion setting most tvs turn on tied with upscaling tech. turn it off and odd uncanny goes awaytbh I’m still on a 1080p
I do see the improvement of 4K, but I don’t think it’s a big enough reason to shell out much extra for it. It feels a bit “uncanny valley” imo so I stuck with 1080p on my current TV. Probably need to get at least a 4K in the near future just a matter of pricing
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But you’re asking me to turn off a feature I paid for
I understand what you mean though.
So far the lack of resolution on a 1080p isn’t so bad (like, say, the jump from 720p to Full HD) that I’m itching to upgrade tbh.
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lol. i know i normal turn that off. due to it never playing nice or not turn off when it should while gaming.But you’re asking me to turn off a feature I paid for
I understand what you mean though.
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tbh I’m still on a 1080p
I do see the improvement of 4K, but I don’t think it’s a big enough reason to shell out much extra for it. It feels a bit “uncanny valley” imo so I stuck with 1080p on my current TV. Probably need to get at least a 4K in the near future just a matter of pricing
4K in itself is, as mentioned before, is nothing to write home about given the current overcompressed streams we're getting from Neflix etc. but a 4K TV with decent HDR capability is a huge upgrade over 1080p non-HDR.
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I haven't read ALL the comments, so can't say if this has been comented on, but no one seems to be talking about the PRODUCTION of 8K video (I'm going to avoid saying 'content' 
).
When I saw manufacturers start pushing 8K TV's some years ago - I remember thinking "But how many production companies can justify producing video at that size?". It's a classic case of one industry not understanding another.
Do they KNOW how much harder/heavier/slower it is to produce video for 8K?
It's fine, you can shoot content in 8K, this isn't new... but what happens after the shoot?
Do you know how heavy and slow it is to just move around hours of raw or lightly compressed footage at 8K? Then you need to do editing, conforming, 3D VFX, cleanup, compositing, online, grading and so on.
Post production of that sort of footage, and ALL the work and computer hours that go into any shot in any tv serial, movie, commercial etc (not even talking about 'visible' fx) mean that standardising on 8K would blow the post budget on the majority of productions, for very little benefit. And make things slower.
8K is the sort of production standard that giant Marvel movies can afford - and maybe nature documentaries that have lower levels of post-manipulation (we hope). Even if they do shoot at 8K, everyone else is going to downscale the footage to 4K or HD to make it affordable and manageable to work with. Many of the most-used/affordable-to-rent cinema cameras don't even shoot above 4.5K or 6K (It's more expensive to rent an Alexa 65 or V-Raptor).
Do you want slo-mo? Good luck easily getting a 8K camera that can shoot higher than 60fps at 8K. Better to shoot at 2K or 4K so you don't have to waste time conforming, and then you can use one camera for regular and slo-mo shots.
p.s Someone is going to say "Why not AI upscale to 8K?".
Sure, but just look at The Wizard of Oz at Sphere to see how the state of the art has very noticeable errors and requires a lot of hand-holding and cleanup.
).When I saw manufacturers start pushing 8K TV's some years ago - I remember thinking "But how many production companies can justify producing video at that size?". It's a classic case of one industry not understanding another.
Do they KNOW how much harder/heavier/slower it is to produce video for 8K?
It's fine, you can shoot content in 8K, this isn't new... but what happens after the shoot?
Do you know how heavy and slow it is to just move around hours of raw or lightly compressed footage at 8K? Then you need to do editing, conforming, 3D VFX, cleanup, compositing, online, grading and so on.
Post production of that sort of footage, and ALL the work and computer hours that go into any shot in any tv serial, movie, commercial etc (not even talking about 'visible' fx) mean that standardising on 8K would blow the post budget on the majority of productions, for very little benefit. And make things slower.
8K is the sort of production standard that giant Marvel movies can afford - and maybe nature documentaries that have lower levels of post-manipulation (we hope). Even if they do shoot at 8K, everyone else is going to downscale the footage to 4K or HD to make it affordable and manageable to work with. Many of the most-used/affordable-to-rent cinema cameras don't even shoot above 4.5K or 6K (It's more expensive to rent an Alexa 65 or V-Raptor).
Do you want slo-mo? Good luck easily getting a 8K camera that can shoot higher than 60fps at 8K. Better to shoot at 2K or 4K so you don't have to waste time conforming, and then you can use one camera for regular and slo-mo shots.
p.s Someone is going to say "Why not AI upscale to 8K?".
Sure, but just look at The Wizard of Oz at Sphere to see how the state of the art has very noticeable errors and requires a lot of hand-holding and cleanup.
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There's a reason I don't watch broadcasts any more. Heck this trend started at LEAST as far back as the 90's, and from what people older than me have said, the 80's I consider the "standard" I compare to was also an increase over decades earlier than that. I remember seeing jokes and gags cut off to cram in more commercial, then they started shimmying the ending credits to one side to jam in a commercial, then they started stuffing ad banners into shows to such a degree it got parodied in Family Guy (with... some very unfortunate extensions to that joke). And then... well I was done, I'd moved onto streaming. But, number must go up. ALWAYS UP OR WE'RE DEAD! So, they add in a commercial tier, and number must go up, so removing ads becomes more expensive, and more expensive. Ars has a good balance, aside from the occasional ad that, in a couple seconds, suddenly rolls down the whole content of the page so I click on the ad instead of the article I wanted. THAT annoying stuff, but other than that I haven't minded what this site does, and it's ad free tier remains affordable (not that I've signed up for it yet).
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ISTR that the exact same set of whinings accompanied the launch of 4K, and the industry eventually learned to deal with it, although it probably took longer than the TV makers would have liked. If the demand was actually there, the studios would have dragged the production industry kicking and screaming into 8K workflows, and the equipment makers would have seen that and eventually come to the rescue with even faster CF Express cards, HDMI ports, USB and/or Thunderbolt connectors, NAS, etc. But the demand never materialized; the equipment makers did nothing beyond building a few 8K cameras; and the production industry never used them because the studios never asked for them.I haven't read ALL the comments, so can't say if this has been comented on, but no one seems to be talking about the PRODUCTION of 8K video (I'm going to avoid saying 'content'
When I saw manufacturers start pushing 8K TV's some years ago - I remember thinking "But how many production companies can justify producing video at that size?". It's a classic case of one industry not understanding another.
Do they KNOW how much harder/heavier/slower it is to produce video for 8K?
It's fine, you can shoot content in 8K, this isn't new... but what happens after the shoot?
Do you know how heavy and slow it is to just move around hours of raw or lightly compressed footage at 8K? Then you need to do editing, conforming, 3D VFX, cleanup, compositing, online, grading and so on.
Post production of that sort of footage, and ALL the work and computer hours that go into any shot in any tv serial, movie, commercial etc (not even talking about 'visible' fx) mean that standardising on 8K would blow the post budget on the majority of productions, for very little benefit. And make things slower.
8K is the sort of production standard that giant Marvel movies can afford - and maybe nature documentaries that have lower levels of post-manipulation (we hope). Even if they do shoot at 8K, everyone else is going to downscale the footage to 4K or HD to make it affordable and manageable to work with. Many of the most-used/affordable-to-rent cinema cameras don't even shoot above 4.5K or 6K (It's more expensive to rent an Alexa 65 or V-Raptor).
Do you want slo-mo? Good luck easily getting a 8K camera that can shoot higher than 60fps at 8K. Better to shoot at 2K or 4K so you don't have to waste time conforming, and then you can use one camera for regular and slo-mo shots.
p.s Someone is going to say "Why not AI upscale to 8K?".
Sure, but just look at The Wizard of Oz at Sphere to see how the state of the art has very noticeable errors and requires a lot of hand-holding and cleanup.
(I have a Canon EOS R5, which I think was the first mass-market non-smartphone camera that let you shoot 8K. I've never even tried to shoot 8K on it, because--well, what's the point?)
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There's also links back to "traditional" film here if people want to watch classic movies that were shot on film, not in digital formats.
Note that all of these are useful approximations, not guaranteed facts, but it gives you a quick-and-easy way to go from "this movie was shot on this size film" to "what TV resolution is needed to get the sort of quality that first run projections in the best cinemas had back when the film was first out?"
If a film was shot on 16mm film, you're going to see similar quality to first run projections with a 1080p display.
If it was shot on 35mm film, you're going to see similar quality to first run projections with a 4K display.
If it was shot on 70mm film using 5 perforations per frame (Panavision variants of 70mm, for example), then you'll need an 8K display to keep up with what people saw on the first run. That's films on this WIkipedia list of 70mm films - noting that it wasn't unknown for films (e.g. E.T, Indiana Jones, Star Wars) to be optically enlarged from 35mm (4K equivalent, roughly) to 70mm for "deluxe" projection, since this limited it to cinemas that had decent equipment (even though there wasn't any more detail present).
And if it was shot on 70mm film using 15 perforations per frame (film-based IMAX, for example), then a 12K or even 16K display is needed to keep up with the detail people saw in the best auditoriums on the first run.
IMO, this is what pushed 4K to mainstream recordings, more than anything else - we have a huge back catalogue of 4K quality content on 35mm film, and production with digital cinema kit needed to be at least as good as 35mm film to avoid directors having a point when they refused to move from 35mm to digital. In contrast, there isn't a huge back catalogue of things filmed on 70mm film, nor is there a significant swell of people refusing to move to digital unless their product is going to be at least as good as they used to produce on 70mm.
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Oh, it doesn't give you 4K quality on the monitor. What it does is it gives you 1080p resolution, but scaled in such a way that you don't lose on image quality - it's literally a quadrupling of the number of pixels on screen that map to a given pixel in the GPU. Because it's an even multiple of the resolution, there's no smearing or fidelity loss in displaying the image on screen.
The point is that this way, I can use the 4K monitor as a 4K monitor for my day to day work, giving me sharper text and images, whilst dropping the resolution in games in a way that doesn't result in sub-optimal scaling.
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The funny thing about that is that most of the Marvel movies, including all the Avengers movies, are mastered at 2K. Though one advantage you get from a home 4K stream or disc of those movies, besides higher bitrate, is that you get higher color resolution than the 1080p version. Color resolution in video is almost always at half the linear resolution of the luminance.
I'd like to see some high frame rate nature documentaries. When Apple announced one of their Apple TV devices a few years back, they announced that they were working on some HFR content, but nothing has come of that, as far as I'm aware.
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Calling it 'whinings' betrays a certain attitude to the issues I mentioned.
Various large post houses have gone bankrupt and shut down based on the demands of the studios. No one needs to dragged 'kicking and screaming' into anything: Post professionals aren't a bunch of lazy luddites, and this is far from just an issue of what throughput advances the industry cooks up.
The point is that you can't double or triple the resolution of your intended destination delivery and expect that it will get done in the same amount of time and need the same amount of care and eyeballs on it. It will take longer and/or need more people, it will need some more magic equipment upgrades... and that means it's more expensive...
Budgets however have stayed flat or dropped.
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Not to mention... what medium are we going to STORE that 8K video on to sell at home? Sure, it can be put on streaming, but that's already a compromise at 4K and even 1080P, requiring a lot more compression than the already compressed disc versions, and the artifacts are already noticeable at 4K. They had to cram in multiple layers on Bluray to get that working, and in order to get even MORE data, if more layers just aren't possible, increased data density will be a major challenge. The move from CD to DVD to Bluray required shifting the color spectrum into higher and higher (meaning physically narrower) wavelengths, and the next step up from blue rays is going to be ultraviolet, which unfortunately means a change in materials since current materials do not handle that wavelength well. Go further than that, the housing won't be enough to keep those rays escaping, so lead will be needed, and higher than THAT, frankly it's too much of a hazard to mass produce and stick in people's homes. At least x-ray producing CRTs were aiming those rays out the back of the set so people didn't have to worry about exposure. Imagine gamma rays constantly spewing upwards from one of these things and a cat falling asleep on it.
Of course, moving from discs to cartridges is a feasible option, until you get to manufacturing costs. Sure, an SD card can hold a heck of a lot more data, but not at the prices 4K Bluray currently sells at. Expect a dramatic price increase to own physical movies if it moves to that format, and of course they're going to want to implement some kind of DRM. The 4K DRM ended up being removed from modern processors already, since it was meant to be enforced at that level. But alright, you throw the 8K file on a modern SD express card, charge customers an arm and a leg for that new copy of the Super Mario Bros movie (the 90's one), and it's DRM free on top of all of that. It's doable, but considering how shrunk the market space is going to be for those due to price and the need for an SD card slot at a very high speed to play it, who's got what's needed to play these things back? The move from DVD to Bluray saw a shrink in movie sales, and the move to 4K has reduced it enough that major companies like Phillips are dropping out of optical drive production entirely. The future really is digital, but none of them want to increase their data costs even further by streaming, or even just straight allowing downloads, of 8K movies. We'd enter a new war between ISPs and content providers over that too.
And now this! With TV manufacturers giving up on 8K, it looks like resolution is going to stall once again. Honestly, I'm fine with that. While I love that there's plenty of film preservers who keep 16K digital copies of the raw film, no one's going to see that. If you want that ultimate film experience, you're just going to have to get a film projector and find those old reels. If you want a good enough experience, a 4K HDR disc is going to satisfy almost anyone. (I love my 4K release of Superman: The Movie, film grain and all.) 8K may be feasible in another 20 years, but not this day.
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Yours eyes, absolutely. Maybe even turn your head. I'm talking about actually needing to change the position of your head in 3D space, like by shifting your body left or right.
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UHD Blu-ray is the final optical disc format. It itself was a pretty minimal incremental improvement over Blu-ray compared to DVD to Blu-ray. No new interactivity features, UI is still 1080p, it's really just the same interactive stuff (which is by far the most complex part) with some minor hardware improvements to allow for an extra layer and slightly better density, and support for 10-bit UHD profiles and levels.
No one is working on any next get optical format at this point. Optical's long-term cost advantage has been declining rapidly compared to SSD for local storage, and modern home broadband can offer much better throughput and vastly better latency than optical disc.
Bitrates aren't that comparable either; there's a whole lot of constraints to how content needs to be encoded for Blu-ray that don't apply to streaming which increase bitrate requirements. A good 50 Mbps streaming can be as flawless as a 80 Mbps Blu-ray encode.
Physical media is just expensive too. Manufacturing, shipping, uncertain tariffs, inventory, dealing with unsold inventory. The incremental cost per customer is way less for streaming than disc. And that's up front costs before you know if there's an audience.
But the big point is that disc sales are dropping quickly year-on-year. Customers don't want them in big enough volume to justify the capital costs of a making a disc for higher and higher minimum bars of popularity.
It's not so much that the move between video standards caused the market to shrink, but that the market was shrinking due to streaming at the same times. Bear in mind that Netflix streaming launched pretty early in the post HD-DVD Blu-ray period. Amazon's UnBox and other video on demand storefronts were also popping up in the late aughts.
No home has a film projection system that can offer anything close to the contrast ratio and detail of a $1000 HDR TV these days! Physical reflective screens, projection optics, vibration, low maximum light transmission due to heat reasons, etcetera. While film negatives can have incredible detail and f-stops, most of that was never viewable when a movie was playing back. Actual projected film has a very low maximum contrast ratio and brightness. Even streaming 4K HDR titles will often show tons of detail that wouldn't be visible on any analog film projector.
There's a reason why the only real film showings these days are IMAX; that's massively bigger frames that can handle a lot more light than standard 35mm projection. Everything else is digital projection, which is a much better audience experience than any theater had 25 years ago.
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Thank you for adding to that. It seems that between these three posts, there's endless reasons why 8K just isn't the future. One tiny point to clarify, I didn't mean to suggest that it was the format switching that caused sales to go down. I was merely pointing out that they had, without speculating on what led to it (most likely streaming). That, and even console makers want to move away from optical media.
If I'm being honest, I don't mind moving away from storage media for all my digital goods. I have a huge collection of it, and it'll only get bigger, but that's only for preservation. DRM and the move to remove options to download video as something that can be stored locally are the bigger threat. For example, totally in favor of how music is distributed on stores like iTunes or bandcamp, to the point I haven't even bothered with music streaming because I'm fine just owning my music outright and getting exposed to new content as I browse online (youtube alone has exposed me to so very many new small time artists). There's no DRM and lossless storage. GOG is another good example. DRM-free and compiled installer executables make it very easy to get into it. The rumors they're trying to port GOG Galaxy to Linux will also mean longevity if the mythical "year of Linux" ever arrives. But... it's that DRM, it's the lack of easy ways to get access if they're removed from a service (those GOG installers are a godsend), those are why I keep my big archive of movie-films for viewing with your eyes.
My comment about film in a home theater was a bit tongue-in-cheek as well. Of course that's pretty prohibitive for most people, and film degrades in time and is a fire hazard if not properly stored.
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Sadly i neither have the content nor the screen. While i use that 8K TV 8 hours a day for work (& pleasure) it's neither 120Hz (at 8K) nor glasses free 3D. But as i spent some time with a glasses free 27" 4K 3D @ 160Hz monitor, a Valve Index and a 115" 4K TV, i think that's what it takes to a) make 3D on a desktop/tv shine: 4K per eye (thus an 8K panel) @ 120Hz and b) to take advantage of >100" TVs: 8K.
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I’m the dumbass who bought a 3-D TV when they still cost $1300.
After Avatar, I ate the advertising up and was so convinced it was the future. It even could upscale any content to 3-D.
But no one wanted the glasses and I ended up the asshole who used it like twice. Just for gaming.
After Avatar, I ate the advertising up and was so convinced it was the future. It even could upscale any content to 3-D.
But no one wanted the glasses and I ended up the asshole who used it like twice. Just for gaming.
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Sony added in the 3D TV feature on the PS3 in a big patch, and a couple games even had 3D added to rereleases like Arkham Asylum. I never did get the chance to try that out... and frankly I'm not all that interested at this point. If I REALLY want to see that content in 3D, I'll invest in VR.
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That ASUS is a 32" 4K, but ASUS did release a 32" 8K late last year, and it is now available. US $8,799 — PA32KCX — it is the only 8K monitor on the market at the moment, and it is a big step forward, well beyond the discontinued Dell, with a 4,032-zone MiniLED backlight, true 10-bit color, and DisplayHDR 1000 certification.
https://www.asus.com/displays-desktops/monitors/proart/proart-display-8k-pa32kcx/
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I agree, though didn't know about the denoise > compress > re-noise pipeline. Apologies, but as a cinematographer in the film industry I'm skeptical of the denoise and re-noise process maintaining the original noise characteristics.
And as a colorist, noising is an aesthetic tool that I use a lot, usually in subtle ways. Just don't mess with my noise damnit!
As for color banding, that's caused by compressing the 10, 12, or 14-bit depth raw footage down to 8 bits. 8-bits have only 256 possible luminance (brightness) values, which isn't enough to hide banding in smooth gradients (like a clear sky, sunset, etc). Though a low-bitrate compression will definitely make banding more noticeable.
Your Blu-rays don't suffer from this because they are encoded at a sufficiently-high bitrate at 10-bit depth (which has 1024 possible luminance values), and you're watching them on a 10-bit (or 8-bit+FRC) capable TV or monitor
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UHD BDs are 10b, but plain Jane BDs were still 8b. On a good screen, that can make a bigger difference than the spatial resolution bump.I agree, though didn't know about the denoise > compress > re-noise pipeline. Apologies, but as a cinematographer in the film industry I'm skeptical of the denoise and re-noise process maintaining the original noise characteristics.
And as a colorist, noising is an aesthetic tool that I use a lot, usually in subtle ways. Just don't mess with my noise damnit!
As for color banding, that's caused by compressing the 10, 12, or 14-bit depth raw footage down to 8 bits. 8-bits have only 256 possible luminance (brightness) values, which isn't enough to hide banding in smooth gradients (like a clear sky, sunset, etc). Though a low-bitrate compression will definitely make banding more noticeable.
Your Blu-rays don't suffer from this because they are encoded at a sufficiently-high bitrate at 10-bit depth (which has 1024 possible luminance values), and you're watching them on a 10-bit (or 8-bit+FRC) capable TV or monitor
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Adding "grain" to a "cleaned up" image defeats the whole point of keeping it in the first place. Namely, the grain is literally what filmed movies are made out of. Those grains are the constituent parts OF the image, the equivalent of pixels. Grain removal techniques are, unavoidably, removing detail. Putting a layer of digital noise back in after the fact doesn't restore those details, it just adds in a blur to hide the too-smooth look that removing those details brought in. I'd much rather store the image, grain and all, and focus on techniques that remove actual damage to the film, like frame by frame comparison to remove damage from individual frames. I appreciate that kind of digital restoration.
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Grain is literally random noise. It's extremely hard to compress.
I'm not making a statement either way whether it's "correct" or not. It's one method that allows the next generation codecs to compress video so much. I know AV1 and H266 support it. Trying to compress particularly grainy video often looks like shit if you're targeting a certain bitrate or leads to really poor compression because it's just not really compressible. So it's not a question of keeping the grain or removing it. It's a question of trying to recreate a video at an acceptable quality. We do all kinds of tricks that "remove" data, but most/all people can't even notice. People perceive changes in luminance more than chroma, so that UHD BD that's the best quality version of a film you can get your hands on likely has subsampled chroma (I actually don't know if anything gets released YUV444 on UHD BD, but it does allow for it I think). No one notices that there's also half or quarter the color resolution.
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I guess we could be talking past each other a bit, so I'll clarify I'm talking specifically of film grain, not static or interference on broadcasts or noise in recordings in particularly... radioactive environments. In the specific case of film grain, the physical grains in the film are what you're seeing, and they make up the image itself. I understand if it makes it hard to compress, so if removing film grain is what it takes to make a movie compressible, at least don't digitally add it back in later. It... doesn't help.
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I know how film works.
You get little grains of silver crystal that is noise. It shows as randomly distributed artifacts that are due to the film itself. It's not a representation of the image the camera "sees", it's a defect in the medium. Some people like it, like some people like that movies are 24fps.
Your options are try to encode those defects as they are in the source, remove them entirely, or denoise but classify the noise so something comparable can be added back.
The first doesn't work very well. You need higher bitrate, so the compression isn't as effective. You can get artifacts in the grain as the encoder falls on its face.
The second is viable, but choosing a recording medium is often an artistic choice. No one chooses film because it makes their life simpler, so anything filmed (ha) now was a conscious decision. Removing the grain is modifying that. But at least it makes the video compressible.
The third is shooting for having your cake and eating it too. Film grain is random in that it's a defect of the media and there's no real correlation from frame to frame, but it's relatively uniform. Think of it like throwing a fistful of sand on each frame. Where the sand lands is random, but if you use the same sand from the same hand every time, you'll have roughly the same amount of the same size grains distributed across the frame. So if you remove the noise but tell me you made it by throwing 50mL of #0000 quartz sand at the frame, I can do the same thing. Is it going to be identical? No, but that doesn't really matter. You didn't hand place every grain on every frame. You picked "X amount of graininess" and where the exact grains landed was random. You'd never notice the difference, but you would notice if it was missing.
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