Anyone else underwhelmed by 4k blu ray disc?

slim01

slim01

slim01

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So I've waxed out on a shiny dolby vision 4k blu ray player (Panasonic 350ex or something), excellent picture quality Philips 55OLED706, then the £20 odd per film, but surprisingly, I'm actually finding 4k streaming on Netflix better quality (on the rare occasion I actually find something on Netflix with dolby vision / 4k uhd).

Something like Altered Carbon or the witcher for example looks absolutely jaw dropping on built in Netflix app.

Then I watch 4k blu ray like westworld (with dolby vision on) star trek trilogy, planet of the apes, and I'm asking myself sometimes if it's even in 4k, checking the input... But my tv says its getting 4k signal even with 1080p blu ray. Dv is only 4k though right?

I suspect this is maybe due to the disc content I'm watching, maybe not actually shot in 4k. Nature documentaries eg blue planet do look good, but maybe not even as good as Netflix shows above. And that BBC stuff used to be reference material.

Is anyone else finding this?
Used blu rays cost basically nothing in comparison.
 
Can’t say I’ve found this, although the 4k content I get via the Apple TV is impressive, it isn’t as good as disc based media. The biggest difference for me is audio quality, mainly noticeable because Atmos isn’t ‘true’ Atmos via streaming.

I’ve been consistently blown away by the quality of some 4K discs on my CX.

Likely the reason it’s still showing as 4k but with HD content is something is upscaling, either the TV or the player itself.
 
rare said:
Can’t say I’ve found this, although the 4k content I get via the Apple TV is impressive, it isn’t as good as disc based media. The biggest difference for me is audio quality, mainly noticeable because Atmos isn’t ‘true’ Atmos via streaming.

I’ve been consistently blown away by the quality of some 4K discs on my CX.

Likely the reason it’s still showing as 4k but with HD content is something is upscaling, either the TV or the player itself.
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Yeah I've turned off up scaling but the info bar on TV still says its getting 4k. Tbh though, if I can't tell, then goes without saying I'm not impressed anyway haha.

So I've heard a few people with discs say they should be better pq and audio, that's why I went this route.
Have you ever streamed the same film then also watched the disc version?
 
slim01 said:
Yeah I've turned off up scaling but the info bar on TV still says its getting 4k. Tbh though, if I can't tell, then goes without saying I'm not impressed anyway haha.

So I've heard a few people with discs say they should be better pq and audio, that's why I went this route.
Have you ever streamed the same film then also watched the disc version?
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The only streamed movies that look better than the discs IMO are the Disney+ Marvel movies which are in IMAX ratio and Dolby Vision.

The discs are the standard aspect ratio and only in standard HDR10
 
slim01 said:
Yeah I've turned off up scaling but the info bar on TV still says its getting 4k. Tbh though, if I can't tell, then goes without saying I'm not impressed anyway haha.

So I've heard a few people with discs say they should be better pq and audio, that's why I went this route.
Have you ever streamed the same film then also watched the disc version?
Click to expand...

Yeah to be honest I own quite a few titles via Apple in 4k and the separately on Disc. While I would say the quality via streaming is excellent, there is a very subtle difference with the discs. Especially when it comes to dark areas and banding. The biggest difference for me is audio, but then my system has Atmos speakers in the ceiling and the difference is noticeable.
 
A few points I've noticed after a few years of Bluray 4k discs...


All 4k discs are differ in overall brightness and quality.

Some 2k upscales can look absolutely fantastic. Better than a native 4k transfer.

The difference between HDR10 and DV is sometimes non existent.

In general a brighter transfer looks better, so if the transfer is dimmer than usual it gives the perception of lower quality.
 
My guess your Blu-ray player is upscaling the standard Blu-ray disks.

As for 4k Blu-ray movies. I find it's very source dependent. By that I mean whether it was shot on film, what type of film, 16, 35 or 70mm, what camera lens were used, the intentions of the director and cinematographer and the finished resolution of the digital intermediate the disk was struck from.

There's also the fact that even films with a full 4k digital intermediate generally have visual effects in 2k because of the cost of producing.

And as stated by someone else, a 2k upscale can look better than a full fat 4k film.

A good example is Mission Impossible Fallout. Be underwhelmed by the 35mm, slightly grainy and gritty look of some scenes (source 35mm and intent) and be totally blown way by the IMAX scenes.

It's definitely worth reading or watching reviews of 4k disks before you buy them. They most definitely aren't all created equally.
 
I find the streamed 4k stuff to still be compressed enough to notice things like black crush and occasional banding. I'd take a 1080p disc upscaled to 4k over a stream of 4k
 
slim01 said:
Isn't imax just sound? So the discs don't have dv? Man that suCks I have those discs for like £100.... And Disney plus. Lol
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On Disney+ the IMAX part is just the expanded video so more on screen (here). I find the the quality on the bigger movies is great on my system with D+. Its also half the price of Netflix which although good is pretty grainy. For £15.99 Netflix need to increase the quality imo.

The interesting bit on that IMAX site mentions "In the future, the collaboration will deliver even more enhanced audio and visual technology to Disney+, including immersive IMAX signature sound by DTS". For me this is great to see as at least they are looking to improve the quality whereas others just carry on as normal with no improvements.
 
jrwagh333 said:
Wait, the discs only have HDR10 but Disney+ has the subjectivity better DV?
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Yes.

And they are definitely better visually, even my wife can tell the difference.

You can also get this on 4k disks from different regions, same with sound tracks. I think Dredd is available in Dolby Vision on the German disk, but HDR10 on the US disk. Or you get the UK version of Cliffhanger has DV but no Atmos soundtrack compared to the US disk which does but no DV.

There also different "levels" of Dolby Vision. It can be a minimum enhancement layer or a full enhancement layer (MEL or FEL) more on that here.

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As per normal, there’s very little consistency on approaches by different groups. So we have different vid niceties (eg HDR), different resolution being provided), different resolution of how it was originally produced, different audio formats and different levels of compression.

Then they wonder why so many settle for the convenience of streaming, particularly so if you only infrequently re-watch a movie.
 
Make sure you've connected your hdmi leads into the correct hdmi ports on your player and TV as this will defrade picture quality, Also make sure your using the correct hdmi cable version and not cheap ones. One last thing, make sure your settings on both TV and player are set correctly for best settings , then off eco mode on your TV
 
I agree, a lot of the Netflix 4K HDR content looks better than discs or REMUX files played back. I think the colours are more vibrant and normally the screen is full rather than the typical black bars on disc.

Sure there may be some detail lost in the darkest bits etc if you compare but 90% of the time I think Netflix looks more detailed with better HDR/colours. I thought this for a while to be honest.

I think detail wise they are roughly equal but the colours just pop more on Netflix for me. Ive tried all the different players on PC currently using Kodi for playback as it auto switches refresh and triggers HDR. I was using MPC-BE with MadVR for years but having a nice interface plus the auto HDR is nice! I actually find Kodi HDR appears to be much closer to Netflix as well actually, better than MPC-BE with MadVR IMO I know that will trigger people haha.

For the record, I have better than 20/20 vision not that it means much with moving scenes but static scenes/images is really where 4k shines anyway.
 
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