4K ruins movies

Last week I took a short vacation and stayed at my uncles beach house.  He has a very cool media room with a big 4K tv.  It's the curved one popular from a year or two ago.  Netflix and Prime were already logged in so we could watch some movies in the evenings.

And it's terrible!  Something about the hyper crisp image, which looks awesome for a panoramic nature shot in the store demo, makes everything look like a Mexican soap opera.      Is this just me being a curmudgeonly soul?  I feel like I have fine clarity from my 7 year old LG flat screen in 1280 dpi, but really my whole family found the 4k effect to be distracting from the movie experience.

Anyone else? 

I remember having a similar reaction to standard HD when it first came out, "This is so clear it almost looks weird..." and then I got used to it to the point where I'd go over to my mother's house and her old TV was almost unwatchable (they bought an HD flatscreen shortly afterwards). 

I wonder if he had the motion smoothing option turned on.  It causes the picture to have the look and feel like a TV soap opera. 

https://hometheaterreview.com/what-is-soap-opera-effect-and-how-to-make-it-go-away/

I hate that every TV is shipped like this from the factory. 

Hollywood laziness ruins movies, 4K makes gaming come alive.

In reply to KyAllroad (Jeremy) (Forum Supporter) :

Try 4k pornography and report back

Yeah, motion smoothing is gross and terrible.

I have a 55" 4k TV in my living room. I can't really tell the difference between a 2k and 4k for the exact same episode of The Grand Tour or other 4k options.

But our eyeballs are also about 12' away. Which is why I want to upgrade to a 75" TV.

In reply to z31maniac :

I really didn't notice much difference with my first 4k tv, then I got another one with the full hdr 10 bells and whistles treatment, and yea there's a definite difference now.

z31maniac said:

I have a 55" 4k TV in my living room. I can't really tell the difference between a 2k and 4k for the exact same episode of The Grand Tour or other 4k options.

But our eyeballs are also about 12' away. Which is why I want to upgrade to a 75" TV.

I've got a 1080 and a 4k literally next to each other in the living room, for video game purposes. There is definitely a difference. 

Motion smoothing is indeed the devil.  I have our television set to "game" mode on the Roku input since that is the only way to totally turn it off on mine.

It makes everything look too shiny or too directly lit.  It has the uncanny ability to turn "Blade Runner" into something that looks like it was made for the scifi channel in 2003.

Also note that most movie directors want you to turn it off as well

https://thenextweb.com/basics/2019/02/14/what-is-motion-smoothing/

I wasn't going to get a 4k TV except it was pretty much the only option in the size I wanted. But for the price, it was a bargain. Even the stuff that isn't 4k seems fine from the couch. We've been watching old Top Gear episodes, they look fine.

I'm waiting for 4k projectors to drop in price so I can upgrade my rec room setup. If it looks great huge X wide at 1080p, then 4k will be stunning.

slefain said:

I wasn't going to get a 4k TV except it was pretty much the only option in the size I wanted. But for the price, it was a bargain. Even the stuff that isn't 4k seems fine from the couch. We've been watching old Top Gear episodes, they look fine.

I'm waiting for 4k projectors to drop in price so I can upgrade my rec room setup. If it looks great huge X wide at 1080p, then 4k will be stunning.

The entry level ones are under 2k at this point..... it's getting there. 

Rev and M, hmmm.

It is a cheapy LG I bought almost 4 years ago. And I've never really messed with the settings much other than to turn down the I'M IN A STORE UNDER FLORESCENT LIGHTS BRIGHTNESS. 

Unfortunately, I don't get to use the PS4 Pro in 4k mode. Even with a 4k Onkyo receiver and all the latest HDMI cables, the "handshake" for the DRM garbage makes the screen go black frequently and at random intervals. Many phone calls to Sony, LG, and Onkyo have not been able to fix the problem. But I've read plenty of other people have the same issue. So I've had to lock the PS4 in 1080p so it's actually useable for gaming, since that seems to be the only work around. 

Gotta love spending thousands on electronics and when they don't work the companies just get to go, "Well, hmm, sorry about that."

I've read the article, and I think I have at least a marginal understanding of what it's discussing.

My decision is that I'm a peasant who doesn't need to know any of this.

4K is awesome. What you're describing is motion smoothing, which is fine for sports but horrifying for everything else. Turn that crap off.  

Like everyone else said, motion smoothing is beyond annoying. I have a 55" 4K Vizio in my living room, and it has a pretty great picture for what it is. Smoothing has never been turned on. 

Hated the picture on my 4K Samsung at first until I turned off a bunch of the advanced picture settings. It’s amazing how uncanny and artificial the picture looks with them active.

I'm still at 720 plasma. berkeley it. No one is unhappy here. 

As was mentioned, it's not the picture resolution it's the image smoothing/artificial framerate speed (soap opera effect) that ruins it. I do wish had a little bit of smoothing on my projector (Epson 8350) because it is a little juttery on fast sweeps/pans in movies... but for gaming works great with minimal lag... it's the reason I haven't upgraded, most projector have a worse lag compared to it. 4K lets you see finer detail and a littke more clarity, but it's not a huge jump that makes 1080P irrelevant. Gaming or watching movies on a 110" 16:9 screen from just under 9' away is absolutely immersive... about same viewing experience as being in a movie theater.

My brother got one of the TVs that would uprender to 60 frames per second and we watched a few movies. There's just something about the standard 24 fps for that dramatic "I'm watching a movie" feel that if you switch to a multiple of 30fps everything looks like a home video. Like for real. And not in a good way.