Arjunprakash

Soli said:

Arjunprakash said:

spliff monkey said:

 Not sure why WilliamLondon and others think 4K is so long off. I got into it with him already. Pissing and moaning every time somone makes a suggestion that 4K would be a welcome addition for playback support are the only ones who make the discussion a drag. It's funny how somone mentions something innocuous like 4K and people like WL get their panties in a bunch. Relax bro. You don't have to buy into it. 

That said, you can buy allot of content in 4K. Just search Amazon and you'll see that the major releases are available in 4K. Star Trek, Star Wars, Deadpool, War Craft, Bourne, Mad Max etc etc.  Content availability isn't the problem one might think at this point. Sure not everything will be 4K but I don't think everything has to be. It wasn't that way when 1080 first came around.  Apple just hasn't offered it up yet as a digital download. I'm sure they have just been waiting for Tv's to get into consumer hands and content to ramp up. That time is close, so I don't think hating on people who would like 4K support to go along with their shiny new TV's are being asses. That's the wrong attitude. Looking at you WilliamLondon. Not unlike others, I'll be happy to see some juicy 4K content get released. The color improvement alone is reason enough, even if 1089 resolution is sufficient for a viewer. 

You realize that all of the movies you listed except for Star Wars: The Force awakens were not even shot in 4K.  All of those films except for Star Wars (shot on film) were shot on the Arri Alexa which has a 3.4K sensor.  4K isn't all that important.  What is important is HDR and other expanded color spaces (Dolby Vision etc.) but those can come with 1080 as well.

You say they weren't shot in 2160p/4K which makes a UHDTV useless, but then you know they were shot 3.4K which is considerably higher than 1080p. Sure, we all know HDR is great, but more pixels so we have a larger set without losing pixel density is also very, very helpful. The notion that I an 80" TV looks the same in 1080p as 2160p in a normal living room setup is ridiculous.

Most of the movies that were listed had a 2K Digital Intermediate.  So they were brought down to 2K resolution during the post production process to make the master DI.  In fact Bourne and Mad Max were shot 2.8K on different versions of the Alexa.

Most of the movies we see in theaters still are projected from a 2K master.  So I really don't think 4K is all that important.

I own a 4K TV that I bought for its HDR capabilities (Wanted to cheaply be able to view HDR content that I shoot).  And I can say at a normal viewing distance 4K content and 1080p content is very similar especially when streamed.  The bitrate differences alone make the 1080 footage actually usually look cleaner (less compression artifacts, noise in the shadows, etc.).  Of course my set is only a 65 inch not an 80 inch you are talking about.

I've watched 8K prototype projections in both Rec.709 and Rec.2020 and at even 8K in Rec.709 the images are not that special.  But in Rec.2020 the images have an almost 3 dimensional quality to it.

So I assert that resolution at this point is not actually that important.  I do think HDR is super important.  

The gold standard in Hollywood is still the Arri Alexa, even though there are cameras from other companies that shoot 8K now.  The reason for this is that there is so much more to the quality of an image than resolution (dynamic range, noise, highland roll off, black detail, shutter artifacts, lens sharpness etc.). In fact many cinematographers use diffusion filtration in front of the lens even HD cameras to get rid of that sharp edge in order to make images more cinematic. 

4K content is not really available because of this aside from Netflix and Amazon's 4K offerings (they mandate their shows be captured in 4K and have a 4K DI).  But then we come back to the compression issue when the content is delivered to our sets.

I would rather have higher bitrate 1080p images on a TV than the same bitrate 4K images.

spliff monkey said:

 Not sure why WilliamLondon and others think 4K is so long off. I got into it with him already. Pissing and moaning every time somone makes a suggestion that 4K would be a welcome addition for playback support are the only ones who make the discussion a drag. It's funny how somone mentions something innocuous like 4K and people like WL get their panties in a bunch. Relax bro. You don't have to buy into it. 

That said, you can buy allot of content in 4K. Just search Amazon and you'll see that the major releases are available in 4K. Star Trek, Star Wars, Deadpool, War Craft, Bourne, Mad Max etc etc.  Content availability isn't the problem one might think at this point. Sure not everything will be 4K but I don't think everything has to be. It wasn't that way when 1080 first came around.  Apple just hasn't offered it up yet as a digital download. I'm sure they have just been waiting for Tv's to get into consumer hands and content to ramp up. That time is close, so I don't think hating on people who would like 4K support to go along with their shiny new TV's are being asses. That's the wrong attitude. Looking at you WilliamLondon. Not unlike others, I'll be happy to see some juicy 4K content get released. The color improvement alone is reason enough, even if 1089 resolution is sufficient for a viewer. 

You realize that all of the movies you listed except for Star Wars: The Force awakens were not even shot in 4K.  All of those films except for Star Wars (shot on film) were shot on the Arri Alexa which has a 3.4K sensor.  4K isn't all that important.  What is important is HDR and other expanded color spaces (Dolby Vision etc.) but those can come with 1080 as well.