I bought my last TV fourteen years ago and haven’t had one at all for the past three, however I decided to shell out and purchased a swish Samsung with sound-bar and bass speaker.
It’s very neat, my question is could you please recommend some recent movies to make best use of it, for the spectacle I mean but if it’s a good movie so much the better.
I do like sci-fi in particular but haven’t been following recent trends, last ones I saw were The Martian, Arrival and Interstellar…actually it might be worth picking up a 4K version of the latter.
Give us a little more criteria to work with. Do you like superhero movies? How about Godzilla and King Kong? A recent thread discussed Conan the Barbarian, not that good altogether IMHO, but certainly filled with striking visuals.
Or do you prefer real(ish) life movies, and how about contemporary action flicks? Baby Driver is a enjoyable viewing experience that has the action time and edited to synchronized with an exciting sound score that even my less than optimal musical ear can appreciate. All of the Mission Impossible movies fit in that category I think, though I haven’t watched any recently.
Well I’ll watch pretty much anything in any genre if its good but really this was just so I could appreciate the spectacle. I don’t dislike superhero movies but don’t find them very memorable.
One thing to keep in mind before you upgrade other equipment to 4K (if you haven’t already) is viewing distance. You have to be really close to a 4K tv to notice the difference between 4K and HD.
If your set is 65", you should be sitting between 4 and 8 feet away to perceive the improved quality of 4K. If you’re more than that, there’s no point in getting 4K media or hardware (e.g., Blu-ray player, streaming device, etc.).
When I bought my first (so far only) 4K set, a 50" that was the largest the would fit in the space, I thought I’d get a 4K Roku. But since we’re sitting about ten feet away, the enhanced resolution isn’t visible. I’m hoping to get a 65- or 75-inch set sometime, and rearrange the seating so we’re close enough to get the benefit.
As for movies, any of the short nature documentaries shot on IMAX film will have the absolute highest quality. Or the handful of Hollywood films shot on IMAX film (mostly by Christopher Nolan) or standard 70mm (e.g. Tarantino’s Hateful Eight). Here’s a site with more than you ever want to know about 70mm: In70mm.com
I’d go with Master and Commander, which won best the cinematography Oscar when competing with final chapter of Lord of the Rings. Although Lord of Rings would also be a very good choice.
When we bought our first 4K TV (because Mr. Legend needed it for work), we got one that was way too big for our teensy living room. It’s good to know that we’ve been properly appreciating our video quality!
The thing that I most enjoyed watching recently, in terms of visual pleasure, was Better Call Saul. I could just about re-watch a lot of it with no sound.
As someone who used to work at Blockbuster, I can tell you that every time a new format came out, we would always play The Fifth Element, Independence Day, and one of the Indiana Jones movies to really show off the technology.
Interstellar was already mentioned. Thinking about the HD movies in my collection that really show up well on a large-screen HD TV, Titanic and Jurassic Park in 1080p are fantastic (I don’t have 4K).
Good call. Should be an excellent test of the soundbar too. I have got an old fashioned multi speaker surround sound system and M&C is a film that really shows it off, with all the creaking and howling and explosions. Gladiator is another great film for being imersed in sound. And now I feel very old because my dvd copy of M&C must be at least 19 years old now!
As that link says, and as I mentioned above, “IMAX cameras and film stock are rarely used for mainstream films; the cameras are heavy and the film stock is expensive.”
It goes on to say that “since 2002, some feature films shot with IMAX digital cameras or on original 35mm film stock have undergone IMAX Digital Media Remastering (DMR) processing for showing both in 70mm IMAX theaters and in IMAX Digital theaters.”
However, this does not mean that a Hollywood film available on DVD or streaming will be available in the IMAX DMR edition, or even if it is, that the difference between it and a standard version will be visible in home video. The latest IMAX digital projection systems are 4K (and older ones are only 2K), so DMR films are mastered at 4K, which was superior when most conventional digital theatrical projection was 2K and all home video was HD (a little less than 2K). But now that pretty much everything is 4K, the differences are subtle at best, and not worth paying any premium for in the home video space.
However, as I said above, the short science and nature documentaries shot on IMAX film (and the few features shot partly on IMAX film) were mastered at 6K or 8K (sometimes even higher) and that difference does show up even when released to 4K home video.
Here is Wiki’s list of those films, although only a fraction of them have been released to home video.
(I say this as someone becoming increasingly wrinkly).