I’m assuming that you guys are actually talking about HDR vs SDR (not 4k vs whatever) with these color issues and as such should really be using the correct terms as to not confuse anyone.
if you look at my original post on this matter (quoted above), I would doubt there’d be confusion. in addition, i’ve admitted a few times that i’m new to this. obviously this means that i might not be using the correct terms.
I believe they’re talking about taking a 4K HDR disc, downscaling it to 1080p, and converting to SDR; then they’re comparing that with a 1080p SDR bblu ray and saying that the 1080p blu ray looks better.
That doesn’t strike me as an entirely realistic expectation, unless the 1080p SDR has some serious mastering errors, or some serious video compression artefacts.
I’m sure the Vero 4K can do a good job of the conversion, but the conversion is still being done by a computer and not by a human mixing engineer. The original 1080p disc was created by a human who could make everything look subjectively as good as possible, tweaking things moment by moment, scene by scene, title by title. There’s no way a machine will ever do that job as well as a person can.
Sam was too quick for you. 
I tried a bit of Avatar and a bit of Life of Pi and both are playing with variable-depth subtitles. I can’t say for certain that they’re displaying at the correct depth - on Avatar they tend to be a little closer to the viewer than seems necessary, but that could very well be what’s intended.
Given how far forward Avatar is pushing the text even with Kodi’s central setting set to 0, I’m now even more persuaded that the central subtitle depth setting should be ignored for variable-depth subtitles and only used for subtitle tracks that don’t have their own depth information.
We’re talking about 4K HDR titles and how many of them look too dark and bland on our Epson 5030UB projector (1080P and SDR). The HDR to SDR tone mapping still needs a bit of work on the Vero 4K. The only way to mitigate the dark image is to adjust the brightness and contrast per 4K title on the Vero 4K.
A few 4K titles look as good as or better to my eyes on my projector than my 1080p rips. Eg, Aquaman. It’s bright and colors are rich. The biggest reason for wanting to watch many 4K titles vs their 1080p BluRay counterpart, at least for me, is for the upgraded Atmos or DTS:X audio. Many Blurays only have TrueHD or DTS-HD MA. Yes, we can remux, but would rather not have to do that if I can avoid it.
I agree about atmos, which is great. another reason for me is only having to rip one disc.
if there is no noticeable difference between a 4k disc and 1080p blu rays on my epson 5030, then i can just rip the 4k. if i rip a 4k disc, once i do get a 4k display the image quality most likely will be better than 1080p.
however, if the IQ is noticeably worse with the 4k vs blu ray on the epson 5030, then i either have to rip both discs now or rip the 1080p now and later replace it with the 4k. that’s more work and also more drive space.
if someone doesn’t buy a lot of movies, that isn’t an issue. however, that’s not my case.
I was well aware of exactly what you were talking about. The problem is that when the term “4K” is used shorthand for 4K HDR, when the conversation has nothing to do with resolution this is confusing for others, requires support staff to try to parse context, and is just generally speaking, poor practice.
You weren’t and that is why I informed you otherwise. I don’t know why you seem to have taken offence to this. I worded my response as innocuous as possible.
Now that you have been informed why are you still using the wrong terms? Is this some kind of passive aggressive BS?
Not yet. They don’t have anyone else that uses 3D and 3D is no longer actively developed or supported so it’s lower priority.
We can see that they downloaded the affected bitstream from our server though.
I will push them again soon.
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You’re absolutely right. But seeing what my Panasonic UHD player does with HDR optimizer on and using the HDR->SDR conversion settings, it does look pretty great. Our HDR->SDR conversion (even the 4.9 one) is far from that atm - especially as there’s no way to tweak it (which Panasonic doesn’t do via contrast and brightness settings that also do exist on top). Not sure it can get to where Panasonic has gotten it, but if it could be done, most probably wouldn’t notice whether it’s a converted HDR title or a native SDR title without a direct comparison or a very good memory.
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Context is key. Anyone reading our conversation knows what we are referring to. Please relax, your snobby attitude is off-putting.
i agree. will not comment or reply any further to him/her.
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I very much hope you’re right. The point I was trying (and probably failing!) to make was that if anyone expects a 4K HDR disk converted to 1080p SDR to look consistently better than a native 1080p / SDR disc, they may need to moderate their expectations. Expecting it look nearly as good in most cases is more realistic, IMO.
Cool! I really hope you’ll be able to fix this. That issue aside, the Vero 4K+ is shaping up to be an absolute powerhouse for 3D playback - handles all file formats, lovely image quality, pass-through of any audio format you’ll find on a 3D disc, and now depth-correct 3D subtitles as well - great stuff.
i too have been very happy with the 3d playback (mkv) and with atmos. having both in the same box is awesome.
There is nothing snobby about expecting users testing development details to use the appropriate technical terms for those details. Failure to use the proper widely accepted and understood terms for the various aspects that are being discussed is confusing, time consuming to suss out, and certainly misleading. If someone is refusing to speak in clear, concise, and easily understood manner, then their input here is far less useful or desired. If you don’t understand that proper terminology is a requirement in a technical development setting or simply refuse to use them out of some childish spite, then please remove yourself from the thread so that the adults can carry on improving and developing the final product .
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Calm down, everybody. We are talking about 4k blu-rays here which afaik are always HDR, so there’s little chance of confusion.
While the industry is using terms like SDR BT2020 what chance have we techies got?
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Thanks Graham.
In @darwindesign’s defence, I would say it is imperative to be concise with the terminology we are using (just from industry experience working with engineers in various fields), this is especially true not only for anyone to pick up the conversation without revisiting previous posts to gain ‘context’, but things can naturally be taken out of context very quickly.
Additionally, whilst one would usually presume 4K UHD = HDR, to my slight surprise, I’ve recently encountered 4K UHD titles that are NOT mastered in HDR format:
General
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 4
File size : 49.0 GiB
Duration : 1 h 50 min
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 63.8 Mb/s
Movie name : Color Out of Space 4K
Encoded date : UTC 2020-02-21 03:58:19
Writing application : mkvmerge v43.0.0 ('The Quartermaster') 64-bit
Writing library : libebml v1.3.10 + libmatroska v1.5.2
IMDB : tt5073642
TMDB : movie/548473
Video
ID : 1
Format : HEVC
Format/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile : Main 10@L5.1@High
Codec ID : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC
Duration : 1 h 50 min
Bit rate : 59.9 Mb/s
Width : 3 840 pixels
Height : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 10 bits
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.301
Stream size : 46.1 GiB (94%)
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709
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