wow really? crap literally looks TWICE as good to me in HD. VERY HARD for me to sit through SD anymore.
I can see a little higher quality in Blu-Ray than broadcast HD, and tween HD and SD there is a significant improvement. I thought everybody could see that. Interesting that some don't.

"I still don't have an HD TV."

Kelly,
Some see the forest, and some see the trees.

Ist es doch alf wenn
-- Beethoven

;?)

Yes, Kelly, I was asking you. I occasionally run across people like yourself that make the statement that HD isn't that much better than SD and I just have to scratch my head and wonder what they aren't seeing. To me, it's night and day. I asked how far you were sitting from your HDTV because watching HD vs widescreen-SD from across the room can certainly equalize the HD advantage. I sit about 6 feet from my 50" screen and Blu-ray content looks spectacular. I didn't realize that you didn't even own an HDTV.

I also run across people that say that Blu-ray isn't much better than broadcast HD and I wonder about that, too. Broadcast HD is MPEG2 at a maximum of bitrate of just over 19 Mbps, in high action scenes with a fair amount of detail, it occasionally turns into a blocky mess. I've never seen that on Blu-ray. Most broadcast HD channels have additional subchannels sharing the bandwidth and the HD bitrate is often closer to 12-15 Mbps, with MPEG2 that's usually not enough. Nevertheless, in general, it always looks significantly better to me than SD.

I first saw HD video in 1985 and lusted after it until I could afford to be an "earlier" adopter in about 2000. SD footage just looks so prehistoric to me now.

hmmmm...... my brother bought a nice new 50" HD Sony and matched it with a Sony Blu-Ray player..... watched it for 6 months and enjoyed it a lot.

Then, I visited him and we watched a blu-ray....

me "um.... is that a BluRay or DVD?"
him "blu-ray. why?"
me "that's not HD"
him "sure it is! It is an HDTV, connected to a matched Sony Blu-ray via HDMI"
me "It is NOT showing us HD"

I followed the wires, checked the manuals... some "Auto-setup" thing tween the tv and player did not negotiate correctly and he was watching nice clean, upscaled 480p Blu-Ray! I reset the setups and got it working and his jaw dropped. REAL HD now.

I wonder if this is happening to other people out there? Plugged in, but some buried setting isn't quite right, so HD doesn't look all that good on their new Uber HD TV.

I don't think the real point, or what's being communicated by most, is that people can't tell the difference between different resolutions. I believe at least all on this forum can. But resolution does not equal perception.

The aesthetics of a viewing experience is completed by what the viewer's mind adds to whatever resolution is being presented, and that will differ in each viewer. My point is that I believe very few TV viewers or theater-goers are saying, "I didn't quite get the experience I wanted. If only there was higher resolution..."

Once your attention is directed to resolution, or lack of it, the entire experience is then affected. When that happens, the whole expectation of the viewing experience changes and the resulting perception reflects that expectation. And, I believe, the impact of the content is diminished.

I have noticed that Bluray is consistantly the best while OTA live is next or even the same. My cable and satellite experience has not been good. Commercially recorded HD broadcast stuff is highly variable with to many defects. Example: NCIS, CSI MIami. Don't know how they record those programs but it ain't good (after 4 or 5 showings)especially in low light and sunset/sunrise trick lighting stuff. One face will have a yellow tint and the other one green in the same picture with huge amounts of grain. Then I will switch to live NEWS and it will be dead on the money.
JJK

hehehehe those shows suffer badly from OCCD: Over Color Correction Disorder

"Once your attention is directed to resolution, or lack of it, the entire experience is then affected. When that happens, the whole expectation of the viewing experience changes and the resulting perception reflects that expectation. And, I believe, the impact of the content is diminished. "

The content affects our perception of resolution.
It's hard to tell the difference between 1K and 4K when the camera was pointed at a white wall. Then again it's possible to see the difference between matte white and semigloss paint regardless of resolution, it depends on how wide it was shot.
DP and directors know this, they (hopefully) shoot within the limitations of the medium and their budgets.
Viewing angle makes a difference too. IMAX is not shot the same as a movie intended for television. On an IMAX screen you probably don't want someone's face filling the frame.

Bob.

You're right with your statements, Bob. Maybe my philosophical meanderings led away from what I was getting at: I can't imagine any cinematic story that I'm engrossed in where I would become distracted by a detail that would bring 4K vs. 2K screen resolution to the forefront of my attention. If I find myself counting the blades of grass in a panorama, the movie is obviously not very good. And if I'm sitting near enough to my home television where only 4K is satisfying, then I can't be enjoying the entire frame that the cinematographer painstakingly composed.

I WOULD be distracted going to a movie theater, or watching my 60" at home and seeing crappy SD low quality fizzy vision. After going to get my eyes checked, I would figure out who runs that theater chain and stop giving them money. The bar has been set for years now.

Only movies where I find high quality distracting, is where they thought cool graphics, or artsy-fartsy coloring would make it LOOK great to cover for the lack of decent plot.

I could enjoy Batman: The Dark Knight on my tiny Android, my computer screen or my big TV. But, if I had the option available right now, I would MUCH RATHER see all the glorious detail 4K can give it. BRING IT ON!!

John Dennis, Glad to see others have similar experiences to mine.

I heard one news report of an 8K screen being shown at CES. Given the visual acuity of the average human and the size limitation of most viewing rooms that mortals can afford, I'm wondering if the law of diminishing returns is beginning to kick in.

Add to this the fascination with very shallow DOF and most of the screen real estate will be the be pixel-peeped to determine which set displays the best bokeh.

Atom12, that's quite correct. I can tell whether i'm looking at SD or HD at a glance. No problem there. What i'm saying is that while i can tell a screen is showing HD, it doesn't look enough better than SD to make the viewing experience any different for me. If i enjoy what i'm watching, i enjoy it JUST AS MUCH in SD as i do in HD.

Honestly, the difference between 480 lines and 1080 lines just really isn't that much on a geometric scale.

>> i really can't find myself caring or even noticing if i'm watching SD or HD.

I am the complete opposite. One of the first blu-rays I bought was Planet Earth from BBC. It has some spectacular footage. Some pieces are shot in SD though. I found the transitions from HD to SD and back extremely jarring, and today find my self skipping the SD chapters unless I am specifically looking for (for example) a jumping shark.

HOWEVER. When discussing HD vs SD with friends, I always pull out this blu-ray to illustrate my point. I play forwards, backwards and all around the HD->SD jumps, and 90% of the people I show it to notice no difference. The other 10% go "WOW".