Okay, now I see the source of the HD problem....

[MovieStuff]

I picked up a BluRay player to go in my daughter's room and the player only had HDMI outputs and not RGB component. I had always used RGB component on all my HD hookups for our Sony Grand Vega as well as our various Vizio HD monitors spread around our house and the shop. RGB always look perfect and even 24P HD looks just terrific and very film like. But I had to use HDMI to connect the new BluRay player to my daughter's HD set.

-WELL!-

When I popped in my favorite remastered original series Star Trek BluRay (my official HD testing tool), I was horrified to see that everything that had been shot on film back in the 60s looked like live video. It was just awful. Our HD sets all have the 120-240 cycle refresh rate and, apparently, if you use the HDMI inputs, they have some sort of fucked up "motion smoothing" circuit that blends one frame/field into the next. Dunno exactly what they are doing but it sucks fetid pond water.

As an experiment, I brought in another BluRay player that had both RGB and HDMI outputs and ran them into the RGB and HDMI inputs of the HD set and then switched back and forth between them. Sure enough, even on the old player, everything that was coming in via HDMI looked like crappy soap opera video while everything coming in via RGB component look like film.

So what this tells me is that when people complain about how even 24p HD looks like video all the time, my guess is they are watching the input via HDMI. If they were to switch to RGB component HD, then it would leave out this fucked up smoothing function and everything would look much better.

At least that's what's happening in my house.

The worst part is my daughter said, "I like it! Makes it look more real."

Urg.....

Now to switch back to RGB when she's not looking.....

Roger

[themagickite]

this is usually a default option on the TV, i think sony call it motion flow...
i always turn it off every house i go to, even if i don't really know the people.

remember hdmi is not to blame, it's just a harmless port, it's the software in the screen which is to blame. all those black correctors, motion flow, super colour enhancer, type things make the image look so horrible, the black correctors make the scene look like its fading all the time
it's horrible to think that even if you shoot your perfect movie in manual mode on beautiful film, the tv people watch it on is gonna make it look like auto-exposed interlaced video GAH!!!!!

computer monitors with hdmi inputs are a much better choice than hdtvs i reckon.

[metaT8]

We also have to keep in mind that humans tend to cling to what they are accustomed to. Probably an evolutionary hold-over in the limbic system that learned - the devil you know is safer than the devil you don't.
In modern times it expresses itself as the stereotypical "generation gap". You know, the crotchety old man screaming WHEN I WAS YOUR AGE... or "THIS MUSIC THE KIDS ARE LISTENING TOO...!

Frankly, it's no surprise that you daughter found the 120 Hz image to be superior. She is not looking at the image through the prism of your experience. Her reference point is in-the-moment and untainted by years of growing accustomed to another imaging technology.
Ask yourself this. If the pioneers of motion picture were able to achieve a 120Hz image like the one that your daughter is looking at - do think that they would have chosen their 16 fps hand cranked square image over the modern one ? I don't.

I've learned that everything in life is a trade off in some way. Even technological advances come at the expense of another part of the evolutionary equation.

I remember a few years back when they were shooting Rachael Ray in 24P because of the "buzz" about 24P. And you know what? My brain didn't accept it. It just looked "wrong" to have a goofy cooking show look like cinema. After I explored my reaction to it I realized that it was the same "limbic" conditioning at play. If I had been watching a feature film the 24p would have been what my brain expected, what I was conditioned to, and would have been pleasing. But I have also been conditioned to accept the look of 60i for goofy television shows. So, Rachael Ray in 24p was quickly changed back to 60i.

And the older we get, some of us tend to appreciate the beauty in that which is not perfect. While others may simply lash out aggressively to that which is unfamiliar without fully comprehending why.

I am a professional musician, music producer and all around music lover. So, for me, the debates were always about the new audio formats. In my lifetime the technology has evolved from full frequency analogue recordings being played back through large speakers to, now, highly compressed (both data and audio) music usually listened to through cheap ear-buds.

In the music world, convenience has become the dominant factor in the evolutionary equation. And as a music producer, I'm guilty of enjoying those conveniences. But I still appreciate the benefits and inherent beauty in the preceding technologies and am able to articulate that to younger people. Some of them understand and others don't.

When it come to film, for me, it's all about having options. I love film and have been a super 8 shooter my entire life. Even when video emerged I understood the reasons why I preferred super 8 for some applications.

Today my deepest passion is still the reversal films. I find negative film boring and would almost prefer to shoot digitally and treat the footage to look like negative film.
Reversal on the other hand is almost impossible to imitate digitally. And I love having the ability to create my own, often crude, methods for transferring it.
The one caveat is that I work on very esoteric, artistic projects. Not so much Doco or "feature" style story telling.
Everyone's experience and priorities are different.
But for me, when reversal super 8 is gone that will be the day that the True super 8 experience will be dead.
And I'll be sad.

And for the record. I don't like the look of 120HZ either. But I suspect I will grow accustomed to it someday.

[grainy]

We also have to keep in mind that humans tend to cling to what they are accustomed to. Probably an evolutionary hold-over in the limbic system that learned - the devil you know is safer than the devil you don't.
In modern times it expresses itself as the stereotypical "generation gap". You know, the crotchety old man screaming WHEN I WAS YOUR AGE... or "THIS MUSIC THE KIDS ARE LISTENING TOO...!

...And for the record. I don't like the look of 120HZ either. But I suspect I will grow accustomed to it someday.

I hear you on this but I also think today's adults are in a unique position to compare a huge variety of media with each other in real time. Also (some) adults have the vocabulary and perspective to evaluate images differently than children, for better or worse.
I see why the daughter thinks the video-look is more "real", since it is associated with live television and homemade video, instead of polished productions. Whether that's better or worse is just a matter of taste.
You can get a couple of painters going on oil vs. acrylic in the same way. I don't think it's an accident, though, that cinaste types almost universally love film over video. They take it very seriously. Most people don't want to see black and white films becuase they look "old", and just want a few laughs before they have to go back to work. Do their opinions count? Sure -- they're the majority. But the minority in this case are expected to care more and are looked to for expertise.
On the other hand, I bet you can find some folk purists who still think Dylan sold out when he went electric, and who cares what they think? ha ha ha.

[kuparikettu]

I remember that even as a child I was able to notice the difference between the shows shot on video and film. I didn't really know why there was such difference, but I did prefer those which were shot on film.

It's rather amusing though that it wasn't until I was about 16 years old that I realized that there is a whole world of shooting movies not on either analog or digital video, but on film. I'm really grateful to those Finnish people writing about super-8 on Internet forums, as it was really eye opening experience to see some good footage shot on film online. And where that has taken me... http://www.kutsumuselokuva.net (sorry, trailer atm only in Finnish and I'm not even the cinematographer but director of that film!)

Anyway, not to get too far from the topic: I really think that this motion enhancing thing in the new TVs is awful. I mean, why do they even have it enabled as a default in demo mode? I certainly wouldn't buy a TV which would make the majestic films look like cheap soap operas. When I go see a fiction, I really want to see a story and something that doesn't feel too real.

Well, I guess in the end it's a matter of taste.

[Tscan]

I just got my first Bluray player last month and using the HDMI cable. Film still looks like film on mine. I also noticed right away that standard DVD's look a lot better through the HDMI cable... My first test was the original remastered "Star Wars" and it looked better than I had ever seen it on a TV.

However, I was at a sports bar for the Super Bowl this year and they were running multiple HDTV's around the bar. Half of the TVs looked like total video on film originated commercials... it was weird, and the other half looked like film. Maybe it's the set?

[super8man]

I am doing the opposite on my Sharp Aquos - I am using my 60Hz 42inch tv as a monitor and streaming www.fromsportcom.com and watching NHL hockey via the net. When you fullscreen the feed, it gives the video a film look. My friend commented on that and he is NOT a film or tech guy. He thought the feed looked old school. There's even depth to the image. And yeah, it's through a HDMI connector (not that that has anything to do with it).

Today is a rather bewildering but fascinating time. There are more formats and more physical connectors for the home user than ever before.

So Roger, turn off that Sony software stuff and watch the image stream with as little tv-processing as you can.

[themagickite]

It's not surprising that DVDs look better over HDMI, it's a digital format being sent over a digital connector to a digital TV, rather than being converted to an analog signal and back again which would degrade the image, but all those image enhancers are going to degrade the image too!

So Roger, turn off that Sony software stuff and watch the image stream with as little tv-processing as you can.

SO TRUE!

i was talking to a guy from sony at a presentation of their new F3 s35 handheld camera (nice camera, for a digital :lol: ) and we were talking about TVs, he said that all those image enhancing functions are to make the screen look as visually loud as it can get so they can compete with other brands doing the exact same thing so that they can look the best under fluorescent lighting in a shop. Personal viewing experience isn't really considered

I could tell the difference when i was a kid too, i used to prefer the look of pall interlaced video, i had a soft spot for it considering the ridiculous amount of Doctor Who I used to watch on VHS. All the location film material looked muddy in comparison to studio video camera stuff, but now when you watch it on DVD it's the other way round as they've rescanned all the film footage, it's now the video that looks muddy and the film looks beautiful.
An important thing to consider, as video formats and digital codecs improve, digital material can degrade depending on how many conversions it needs to have to still be viewable whereas film gains quality with these advances.

[etimh]

When I popped in my favorite remastered original series Star Trek BluRay...

Sad to hear that William Campbell died today. Awesome as the "Squire of Gothos" and wasn't he a Klingon in the Tribbles episode?

On topic, I admittedly don't know much about the technical side of all this electronic connection stuff, but I have a region/code-free blu-ray player that I still run through a 32-inch CRT television, connected with component RGB cables. Everything I play through the player, blu-ray and DVD, looks beautiful and amazing to me.

Then again, I have no idea what I might be missing.

Tim

[Tscan]

Well I was used to watching DVD's on my HDTV through RCA cables. I was blown away when I saw how clean the images were with an HDMI cable. And when it comes to Bluray discs, you can see the grain on some shots. But what a difference you feel with film grain compared to digital noise. I recently watched a show shot with the ARRI D21 and the noise was god awful in the darker scenes.

[dgs8film]

I had the same problem when I first connected my Samsung 46". The default refresh rate was set to smooth motion. Once I changed the refresh rate everything looked fine...

[reflex]

Ah, Roger. Thanks for bringing up one of my pet peeves. Modern video equipment is a schmozzle of conflicting standards and features. My wife and son will cheerfully watch stretched SD content on our new set, even though everyone suddenly has heads shaped like rugby balls.

I've also noticed dramatic differences when uprezzing DVD content to 720 or 1080. My DVD player is awful compared to the uprez performed by my TV. But it shipped to me with the feature turned on, spewing out weirdly aliased 720p when I plugged it into my TV.

I fear the problem will only go away once every TV ships with some sort of streaming box (Netflix, Apple TV, Google TV) built in. Even then, I'm sure people will find a way to override the defaults.

[As an aside, the new Star Trek TOS transfers are absolutely stunning -- you can see the painted plywood and the makeup is suddenly theatrically clear. It feels like we used to accidentally watch the series through parchment paper.]