Annihilation UHD...or the pitfalls and perils of reviewing A/V quality (1 Viewer)

[Carlo_M]

Full disclosure, this isn't really a full review of Annihilation UHD, and my comments may even bleed into TV Displays, but it's also a commentary of the perils and pitfalls of placing too much trust in one reviewer with one review setup.

I bought this title sight-unseen and enjoyed the film. I have never read the book, though I understand it differs quite greatly from it.

But seeing the open spots for reviewers on HTF, watching this title twice made me think of how tough a job reviewing for A/V quality is, especially upon second viewing. Note: for all equipment I have the very latest firmware.

My first viewing was on my Oppo 203 to Samsung KS8000 4K HDR setup. I've done the normal setup changes (disabled all the motion/screendoor effect stuff, dialed in brightness, contrast, color, etc.). During certain dark scenes there was a lot of murkiness and shadow detail loss. I wondered if this was the transfer or my set. I adjusted several settings, like Smart LED (from OFF to all other settings). Nothing seemed to make it go away. What gave me an inkling that it may be setup related vs. transfer related was that the black bars (it's a 2.35 film) sometimes looked a little less black than other times. The Samsung is an edge lit TV.

So the second time I viewed it, I used my Sony X800 to Sony XBR 900E 4K HDR set...which is full array local dimming. Watching those very same scenes yielded a tremendous improvement on gray/dark area quality. This isn't a blanket statement on all gray/dark area viewing, just on those where the overall scene is already very dark.

So had I reviewed this on my Oppo/Samsung setup, I would have given slight marks downwards for the gray/dark scenes. But on my Sony/Sony setup, I would have given a near perfect score.

Just some thoughts on this based on a recent viewing of a movie I liked. I appreciate what the HTF reviewing staff does, and can totally sympathize that you do not have an easy job! Keep up the good work, all!

 

[Robert Harris]

Full disclosure, this isn't really a full review of Annihilation UHD, and my comments may even bleed into TV Displays, but it's also a commentary of the perils and pitfalls of placing too much trust in one reviewer with one review setup.

I bought this title sight-unseen and enjoyed the film. I have never read the book, though I understand it differs quite greatly from it.

But seeing the open spots for reviewers on HTF, watching this title twice made me think of how tough a job reviewing for A/V quality is, especially upon second viewing. Note: for all equipment I have the very latest firmware.

My first viewing was on my Oppo 203 to Samsung KS8000 4K HDR setup. I've done the normal setup changes (disabled all the motion/screendoor effect stuff, dialed in brightness, contrast, color, etc.). During certain dark scenes there was a lot of murkiness and shadow detail loss. I wondered if this was the transfer or my set. I adjusted several settings, like Smart LED (from OFF to all other settings). Nothing seemed to make it go away. What gave me an inkling that it may be setup related vs. transfer related was that the black bars (it's a 2.35 film) sometimes looked a little less black than other times. The Samsung is an edge lit TV.

So the second time I viewed it, I used my Sony X800 to Sony XBR 900E 4K HDR set...which is full array local dimming. Watching those very same scenes yielded a tremendous improvement on gray/dark area quality. This isn't a blanket statement on all gray/dark area viewing, just on those where the overall scene is already very dark.

So had I reviewed this on my Oppo/Samsung setup, I would have given slight marks downwards for the gray/dark scenes. But on my Sony/Sony setup, I would have given a near perfect score.

Just some thoughts on this based on a recent viewing of a movie I liked. I appreciate what the HTF reviewing staff does, and can totally sympathize that you do not have an easy job! Keep up the good work, all!

Try 4k projection vs SONY 4k OLED sometime. No easy answer.

 

[Carlo_M]

Try 4k projection vs SONY 4k OLED sometime. No easy answer.

Yeah my hope/dream is a 4K front projector at some point. I'm now at a 65" FALD LED 4K HDR, and it seems to me the next logical step is FP, unless 75" and 85" go way down in price.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I appreciate what the HTF reviewing staff does, and can totally sympathize that you do not have an easy job! Keep up the good work, all!

I'll do my best

I really enjoyed reading your post on this. I'm not in the UHD realm yet, but I can definitely sympathize as a BD reviewer (and heck, just as someone who watches an awful lot of movies at home). I've worked in the TV and film industries in way or another since high school, so I think I've built up a decent knowledge base over the years on how things should look, and whether an issue I'm seeing is related to the display device itself, or something with the disc itself, or whether that was just the way the filmmakers intended it to look. And I have both a projector and a plasma TV, and I think both are pretty accurate, but it's nice to have them both attached to the same disc player and streaming devices so that if something doesn't seem quite right, I can check it out on both displays back to back to try to better understand what I'm seeing. If I'm reviewing a disc here and something doesn't look the way I think it should, I will make a point of viewing it on both displays to try to rule out the display device as a cause for the issue.