UHD Review A Few Words About A few words about...™ Ran -- in 4k UHD (1 Viewer)

[Robert Crawford]

Care to elaborate? I haven't had this issue with any other 4K disc. They've all looked terrific.

There have been countless 4K disc releases in which various people have stated the video presentation appears too dark on their display or screen. It's been a constant complaint since the first 4K discs releases.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Every 4k I owned looked too dark until I upgraded to a QLED so don't throw rocks from glass houses.

 

[Worth]

I found a lot of things looked too dark until I switched off Dolby Vision. Plain vanilla HDR 10 looks much better on my system.

 

[usrunnr]

There have been countless 4K disc releases in which various people have stated the video presentation appears too dark on their display or screen. It's been a constant complaint since the first 4K discs releases.

I felt that way about "Spartacus" in 4K, and I returned it, but I haven't heard anyone else voice that so i thought perhaps it was my screen. No issue with any other 4K though.

 

[JoshZ]

All HDR content is encoded with dynamic range beyond what a consumer television or projector is capable of displaying. The HDR has to be tone-mapped down to the actual capabilities of the display. Most of the time this is done in the TV/projector itself, though for disc content it can be done in a UHD player. Some people invest in expensive outboard video processors (Lumagen, MadVR) to do it for them.

The quality of tone-mapping can vary wildly from device to device. Many displays rely on metadata encoded in the content to indicate how bright the image should be, but that metadata is very frequently inaccurate or missing altogether. (Disney, which owns almost half of Hollywood, never uses it.)

That's why some people will watch a piece of HDR content and say it looks too dark, while others will watch the same thing and say it looks fine. Their respective screens are tone-mapping the content differently.

In theory, Dolby Vision and HDR10+ are supposed to resolve this problem by forcing the display to tone-map content a specific way, but even those formats have their issues and look terrible on some screens.

 

[sbjork]

Care to elaborate? I haven't had this issue with any other 4K disc. They've all looked terrific.

Tone mapping. Everyone's mileage varies.

 

[sbjork]

In theory, Dolby Vision and HDR10+ are supposed to resolve this problem by forcing the display to tone-map content a specific way, but even those formats have their issues and look terrible on some screens.

Even with the frame-by-frame tone mapping with JVC, and the Theatre Optimizer firmware that takes screen gain, size, and the life of the bulb into account, it still isn't 100% set-and-forget. Maybe 75%; but not 100%. At this point at least, HDR still requires input from the viewer.

 

[David Norman]

Is the BD region 2?

Finally got a copy -- the BD disc in the Best Buy Steelbook is Region A locked.

 

[JoshZ]

Even with the frame-by-frame tone mapping with JVC, and the Theatre Optimizer firmware that takes screen gain, size, and the life of the bulb into account, it still isn't 100% set-and-forget. Maybe 75%; but not 100%. At this point at least, HDR still requires input from the viewer.

With my JVC NX7, I'd say the Frame Adapt HDR function does a good job close to 90% of the time. But every once in a while something will require manual intervention. Most recently, that's Wheel of Time on Amazon, which looks like garbage at my default setting and demands that I turn the tone-mapping down.

 

[sbjork]

With my JVC NX7, I'd say the Frame Adapt HDR function does a good job close to 90% of the time. But every once in a while something will require manual intervention. Most recently, that's Wheel of Time on Amazon, which looks like garbage at my default setting and demands that I turn the tone-mapping down.

I've never actually had to turn it down, just up. The Mid setting is fine most of the time, though. I haven't watched Wheel of Time, but the funny thing for me is that what little streaming that I do usually looks better turned up, not down. Maybe that's because of how different streaming devices output the signal?