4K HDR Blu Ray - Is it worth it?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,912 words · ~9 min read
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ignoring the abortion that was stereoscopic 3D Blu-ray the
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entertainment industry pushes a revolutionary New Media format down our
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throats with promises that it will completely change the way we enjoy our
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movies about once every 10 years but
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while DVD promised very mainstream
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benefits over VHS in addition to better
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image quality more convenient storage increased longevity and no rewinding
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Blu-rays option has been challenged at every stage from HD DVD and the less
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obvious image quality benefits versus DVD on the average viewers TV in the
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early days to the cost and convenience
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advantages of online streaming today so
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does 4K Blu-ray offer up an obvious
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enough benefit to bring online streaming efficient Autos back to physical Media
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or failing that is it at least enough to prompt enthusiasts to upgrade let's talk
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about
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that mass drop is hosting a drop for the high5 man ich 350 headphones which you
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can get for $999.99 check it out at the link in the
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video description let's open up with the gear
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that you'll need to enjoy your shiny new 4k Blu-rays 4K Blu-rays use the bdxl
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format which can hold up to 128 gigs on a triple layer disc but it isn't
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backwards compatible so you'll need a new player we chose the Xbox One S since
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Atmos support isn't terribly important to anyone without a redonkulous speaker
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setup in a dedicated theater room and it
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costs the same as the Standalone players anyway while having much more
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functionality next you'll need a 4K TV
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HDR support strongly preferred as we'll get into in more depth later I'll be
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using LG's signature G6 65 in OLED since
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it's one of if not the best home HDR
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experiences at the moment and representative of what will be more
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widely available in the year or two to come after that you will need more
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expensive 4K Blu-ray discs we chose
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these movies because we wanted to experience many of the different types
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of original formats that could be converted to 4K Blu-ray and finally
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you'll need the as yet uncracked htcp
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2.2 support at every Link in your data
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chain which usually means a special port
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or two on the back of your receiver and TV plus some faffing about since from my
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experience it is buggy as heck at the moment I actually ended up taking my
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receiver out of the mix halfway through our session because it just stopped
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handshaking with the Xbox One S now
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let's talk about the test our resident Cinema dor Brandon and I shut the blinds
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and chained ourselves to my couch for the better part of a day doing
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everything from watching longer uninterrupted chunks of the films to
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pausing as close to the same frames as we could and pixel peeping at least
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that's what we did once we finished bickering over what settings to use on
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the TV for HDR it was simple since all
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the normal picture profile modes are replaced with three HDR ones we just
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turned off obvious nonsense like clear motion and Edge enhancement and set it
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to HDR for a dark room but for our standard Blu-ray comparison system a PC
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playing lossless MKV rips over the network in
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mpcc we eventually settled on the ISF
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expert dark mode with neutral color temperature all those enhancements off
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and either standard or wide color gamut
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depending on the film more on that later
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first up The Lego Movie the first Blu-ray HDR experience for either of us
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since this was our first crack at AB evaluation we ended up trying to tune
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the non HDR image in TV quite a bit to
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get the most fair comparison this was one movie where widecolor gamut got
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Blu-ray close to the vibrancy of HDR
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without looking like Best Buy TV syndrome but what our compensations
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lacked was subtlety in this scene the
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HDR version looks like a bluish Shadow
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on a gray Street the Blu-ray looks like
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a blue Street as for the 4K upsampling
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there is a difference in wide shots with distant text or objects but from a
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normal viewing distance I would describe it as not a huge deal next up sario we
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found our wide gamut setting was overpowering in this film and went back
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to normal in this night scene the higher bit rate and increased color depth give
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the sky a more natural less banded appearance and in this one the parking
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lot of the bar's darkness and the brightness of the lights make the bar
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seem like a beacon or an oasis more than
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just a building HDR had a true emotional
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impact moving indoors again the difference is there in the vibrancy of
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the sign on the character's right as she walks in and in the lighting on our
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character's face as she sits at the bar in the Blu-ray version it looks like
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there's a light shining on her face in HDR she is clearly lit in multiple
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colors from multiple different sources just like she would be if she was
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sitting in a bar the Revenant was a funny one for us as a movie that was
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mostly shot in natural light at Native 4K we were expecting to be blown away
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and we did get a difference I mean look at the difference in color in the burn
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church scene here between Blu-ray and 4K
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Blu-ray but we also observed that we
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could compensate for a lot of that Difference by Shifting The Tint of the
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TV to minus 23 and in the bare scene we saw the same
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thing again leading us to agree on a couple of things one that 4K resolution
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on the disc itself had a negligible impact to the viewing experience and
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that HDR didn't affect the appearance of the lighting nearly as much as we'd
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expected it wasn't until a firit scene
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that our tint hack Was Defeated and the HDR version flexed its range muscles but
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even then while the teal cast of the first two scenes may have been closer to
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the director's Vision the more Blu like
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appearance unlike in sakario didn't
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affect the emotional impact of the scene
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um though be clear this isn't so much a criticism of the HDR Master as much as
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it is praise for the Blu-ray Master the 4K version of The Amazing
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Spider-Man 2 is simply put a
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disappointment in side by-side comparisons sure the cop cars are a
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little wider and the Shadows are a little deeper but for a 35mm film to 4k
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digital scan I was expecting more than just more accurate representation of the
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filmic look we both were Amazing Spider-Man 2 was easily the low point of
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our HDR day which is okay because our
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last title life of piie made us immediately forget about it holy actual
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balls this movie looks like the difference between a competent if
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unexceptional color grading job and
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turning the TV into a window into a completely different reality in my
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living room the visual difference once
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again isn't in the increased resolution which makes sense since it's upsampled
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from a 2K Master but rather from the
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incredible difference in the way the scenes lighting looks cloth Shadows skin
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tones this is the first movie that's made me sit up and go wow now that I've
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seen the HDR version I have no desire whatsoever to settle for the Blu-ray
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words don't do it justice it's absolutely
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beautiful which leads us pretty well into the conclusion which is is a little
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complicated first the good while I'm
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still not sold on 4K from a normal viewing distance until home TVs are 100
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in or greater HDR is not a gimmick no
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amount of tooling around with your TV's menu can simulate its effects across an
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entire film and we did try my TV's Foo
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simulated HDR mode and done right it
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dramatically improves the movie viewing experience and I'll be surprised if
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streaming HDR can compete with 4K Blu-ray HDR since traditional Blu-ray
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already blows streaming out of the water in terms of color depth though I'd love
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to be proven wrong here second up some big problems so
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first The increased cost versus the
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benefit is the highest we've ever seen
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with only AV nerds and movie Buffs
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likely to be able to tell the difference without a side by-side comparison sorry
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to all of you guys but most of the world doesn't calibrate their TV and uses the
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built-in speakers and second if we're being
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honest it's not actually here yet there's always that transition period
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every time where we have a new standard where the hardware is like sort of there
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and the standards are like sort of there but the content needs time to catch up
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and in this case even the content that does exist well frankly most of it
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doesn't benefit from it in the way that content a year or two from now will so
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for now then I'd say the money is better spent on almost anything else
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calibrating your existing TV buying literally twice as many movies or even a
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comfier couch I do plan to invest in it
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eventually when more than you know one out of five discs that I buy feel like I
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really got my money's worth but I will also be waiting for htcp 2.2 to be
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