I just bought a brand new HDTV with all the bells and whistles. It’s a 40" 120hz 1080p LCD with 50,000:1 contrast ratio. It looks fantastic, particularly sports. Movies are another matter however. I watched King Kong on TNT HD tonight and it looked really quite bad. The problem was I could see all the special effects too well. I could tell distinctly where the green screen was. I could see how phony a rubbery prop looked. In scenes that included a green screen, CGI, live actors, and props you could make out each element clearly. I’ve seen this movie in the theater and on standard def and always thought that the effects were the one thing about that film without fault, so clearly it’s not the movie. In fact most any special effect looks bad on this TV. On top of that scenes filmed with just the actors somehow have that weird too real appearance I’ve always found soap operas to have. Anyone else experiencing this?
I saw it with LOTR, but I guessed it was because it was the third time I saw the movie.
Local news anchors. Eeeeehchhh.
Yeah, and that is one of the reasons actors and actresses hate going on television at the Academy Awards etc. because they know that scar from that zit they had in high school is now going to be visible.
They did an article back around awards season talking about how makeup people in Hollywood have had to create whole new products and use new methods to compensate for close ups in HDTV.
Just wait until you see the remastered HD versions of TV shows from the 60s. You haven’t seen Star Trek until you’ve seen the quarter inch of pancake makeup on Nimoy’s mug.
Yeah, what the heck is that? It’s something I’ve always wondered. They even look more “real” than the news. What kind of film technique does this, and why does it come off as so horrible when all it’s doing is making things look less fake?
That might be due to digital HD cameras that are increasingly being used in movies these days. Though they didn’t use them in King Kong, so maybe not.
I had the same thing when watching King Kong. Especially the dinosaur stampede scene just looked awful.
Most other movies look fine so I think the special effects in King Kong are just not that good.
The big ape himself however looked amazing.
We were just talking about this on the way to work this morning! I brought up that black and white movies used to use chocolate syrup as blood since it worked quite well for the purpose at the time, and how I thought something similar was going to have to happen to compensate for the increased resolution with HDDVDs and BlueRay. Interesting.
I was reading about this awhile back. I don’t recall the exact article, but it said something to the effect of real things are going to start looking fake, and fake things (CGI) are going to start looking real. Something about the “snow” in the picture, or something like that. Does anybody have any more detail about this?
I have noticed this when watching Blu-Ray on a full 1080p set at Best Buy.
Watching scenes from Spiderman 3 the elements on screen have a cut-and-paste appearance and don’t blend together.
The ultra-realistic look may be good for 100% computer generated features ala Pixar or 100% live action features like Braveheart, but the mixing of live action with computer generated f/x just comes across poorly IMHO.
I don’t find it real at all. It looks nothing like how things actually look to me.
I understand porn is a bit of a disaster when played on a large, Hi-Res screen. The mind boggles.
That’s odd, because when you see a movie at the theater, you’re seeing way more resolution than you’re getting on your 1080p HD TV. While I certainly see the seams in visual effects when they’re particularly egregious, it’s not like the HD is revealing anything you wouldn’t have seen when viewing it at the movies. Of course, if you’re used to watching it only on a standard screen, then yeh, NTSC resolution can hide a lot.
John Madden in HD. shudder
It’s all about light:
Set lighting is not going to receive the same loving-tender care that it does when a movie is being filmed.
In addition, film has certain characteristics in light/color sensitivity that make it look very different from cheap video.
just wait until you’re old enough to need (but not have) glasses. It all blurs nicely together.
You have heard right. On another message board there is a real pornographer who will sometimes answer questions about the industry. He pretty much hates HDTV simply because it shows all of the flaws of the talent.
In theory, at least. In reality, the film’s resolution is being slaughtered thanks to a whole lot of “don’t care” by the theater - as long as there’s an image on the screen and sound coming from the speakers, they don’t care that it’s not perfectly focused, and that the projector lamp housing isn’t set up correctly, and they’ll never clean up that blotch and streak on the screen caused by someone throwing their soda at it.
I often wait for movies to come out on DVD because the theatrical presentation is more likely than not, to be worse than what I can see at home.
As for the root of the OPs question - yes, a lot of stuff is being put into HD without enough thought - old movies and even old TV shows that probably don’t deserve remastering - the other day, I came across a listing for Hogan’s Heros on an HD channel.
Want to see something really scary - the Blue Man Group in HD. In standard def, their faces look smooth, but in HD closeups, they’re pretty nasty. It’s like someone painted them blue, then shook out a vacuum cleaner bag over them.
I’m so glad that other people feel the same way about HD as I do. My folks want to get an HD tv but I am trying to talk them out of it because I hate the look of the picture. It’s TOO clear. My parents look at me like I’m crazy when I say this, but the screen hurts my eyes! Maybe it’s because I’m used to crappy tv screens or maybe it’s because I have very light colored eyes and the brightness of the colors is too much for my eyes…I don’t know. Why oh why do you hurt me so HD?!
HD hurting your eyes is almost certainly not caused by the increased resolution. Try turning down the backlight and contrast a little bit.