will blue ray ever become mainstream?

Pretty sure it's all fine. Just any dark scene has no detail.

FWIW i'd agree with you on this. I've got a pretty decent Sony HW40 projector - dark scenes on Blu Ray's look fantastic - i put it down to three things ;

Dark scenes shot on digital often use gain - not unlike higher grain film with looses some detail.

Sky Broadcasting in 1080i not p and relatively low bitrate which again looses detail.

Having a larger screen which shows up such problems.

Its quite noticeable changing between very dark scenes in underground buildings and the outdoor lit scenes.

I could be wrong but I don't think a sky box can be adjusted in terms of output settings for full range colour?
 
Video range: Standard vs Full range

Standard is the correct setting. You shouldn't need to change the dynamic range to "Full" for anything other than console gaming and PC use. Video has a shade range from 16 to 235 on the RGB data range of 0-255. So, 16 is video black, and 235 is video white. That gives a dynamic range of slightly less than RGB Data, but it maintains the safety zones of below black and above white. This is the industry standard at the moment.


Gamma: Part of the reason why blacks look crushed.

LCD/LED TVs have these matte black screens to help boost contrast and make the picture "appear" punchy and dynamic. Fighting against that is the backlight used to illuminate the pixels and create the scorching whites and high brightness of a typical LCD/LED.

Another trick to enhancing punch is to screw up the gamma so that dark shadow detail is obscured. Setting the gamma correctly with the basic TV controls on many LCD/LED TVs makes the picture look a bit washed out because the controls are a little too coarse. Some TVs have more sophisticated controls that allow the gamma to be adjusted at multiple IRE settings. This gives the opportunity to have the set maintain a decent black level at 0 IRE (16 RGB) and yet produce sufficient brightness in the low IRE range to properly illuminate shadow detail.


Bit Depth at Low IREs: Another reason for crushed blacks

RGB data 8 bit colour. That is to say that it produces 256 shades (0-255) for the three primary colours. Video works on a slightly smaller dynamic range (16-235). 235 RGB represents video white, and the bit depth available to describe the subtle shade differences at these higher IREs is fairly large. 16 RGB represents video black. The bit depth available to describe the subtle shade differences at low IREs is very much smaller than with high IREs. In essence, the colour palette at low IREs is restricted because of the nature of digital. These limitations are acceptable with Blu-ray and DVD, but once the film is resampled and encoded for transmission via digital satellite and Freeview then the shade differences at low IREs are often lost as part of the averaging process in MPEG compression.
 
I think the issue is that the majority of the general public don't really care that much about quality, convenience is king which is what has driven the transition of music from CD quality audio to crappy MP3's a backwards step by anyone's standards and it is what will prevent blu ray and 4k stuff becoming mainstream anytime soon. Most people are happy with DVD quality and love the convenience of streaming media, the market for people who are actually interested in quality is comparatively tiny hence the huge number of people fighting over those crappy TV's at Tesco last year while the mainstream media didn't even notice the death of plasma technology!
 
when does this ever happen?

sky shows re-runs pretty much all day everyday, 75% of the content on sky is re-runs. if you miss anything on normal tv you can catch it on things like iplayer, 4od, etc.
Actually it happens quite frequently in this house. It might not be so much of an issue for a person living alone, but there are three people here making demands on Sky. Sometimes it's two programmes on at exactly the same time. Other times it's one recording starting as another finishes. The catchup services don't act as a proper substitute either.

Yes, on occasions it's possible to find a late night/early hours repeat to avoid a recording clash; but not always.
 
Actually it happens quite frequently in this house. It might not be so much of an issue for a person living alone, but there are three people here making demands on Sky. Sometimes it's two programmes on at exactly the same time. Other times it's one recording starting as another finishes. The catchup services don't act as a proper substitute either.

Yes, on occasions it's possible to find a late night/early hours repeat to avoid a recording clash; but not always.

when I had sky I used the phone app to find out all the alternate times of the show I wanted to record and always set them for the 1-4 am slots on the HD channels. that way it was extremely rare if anything did clash.

their phone app is really brilliant for this kind of thing. tbh though i don't watch much tv. mainly movies and big shows like GoT, Walking Dead and live sports.
 
Its for when there's 3 things on at 9 and non of them are repeated during the week.

I've often had occasions where there's been three things on at once, but I've never encountered something that isn't repeated at least once or made available on-demand later.

Considering how many regular channels are still SD, there's really no point making +1 channels HD.
 
when I had sky I used the phone app to find out all the alternate times of the show I wanted to record and always set them for the 1-4 am slots on the HD channels. that way it was extremely rare if anything did clash.

their phone app is really brilliant for this kind of thing. tbh though i don't watch much tv. mainly movies and big shows like GoT, Walking Dead and live sports.
Thank you for trying to teach me to suck eggs. :rolleyes:

Yes, I'm well aware of the phone app. There's also an online programmes guide as well as the box's own advance search function. However, none of that helps on those occasions where there are still clashes. Can you not accept that this problem does occur for other people?
 
Thank you for trying to teach me to suck eggs. :rolleyes:

Yes, I'm well aware of the phone app. There's also an online programmes guide as well as the box's own advance search function. However, none of that helps on those occasions where there are still clashes. Can you not accept that this problem does occur for other people?

No, PS struggles to see things from other people's points of view it's his way or you're an idiot.
 
Well it sounds exactly like crushed blacks. Either that or their compression methods extract detail from dark scenes.

Could possibly be a hdmi handshake issue or your TV is set to limited and the box is outputting full range.

My TV can apparently detect what the input is and adjust on the fly but it sometimes doesn't work. Recently bought a decent hdmi cable and now it works all the time.

I'll have a proper look at the settings tonight.

So, my setup:

Amp - Pionoeer SC 2024
TV - LG 55EC930V OLED
Sky HD box input
Intel gen 5 NUC for Kodi

Playing blu ray rips from the NUC, well it looks perfect. Most TV content played from the NUC starts to suffer, especially if it's a 720p source. The higher 1080p ones start to look good.

Watching TV from the Sky box is fine for sports but anything that has dark scenes, such as Game of Thrones (a lot!) then it starts to suffer.

I think it's a case of my TV which is simply not forgiving, or my eye for detail where I'm happy with how a BD rip looks but not lower quality.

I've checked on my Sky box, can't find any RGB settings, I've looked on the amp and the TV, couldn't spot any and I don't know where within Openelec I'd find anything.
 
In your position I would pay £300 to get the tv calibrated. That way you know for sure it's the source and not your settings. Shame to have such a great tv and not have it calibrated tbh.
 
£300 for a calibration...!! Nice little earner that....

I found the OLED a bit lacking with non native content.
 
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I've already been in touch with HDTV Test to come and look at it, just never booked it. I'll look at getting it done as I'm spending a lot more time watching stuff on it these days.

Hello Chris

Many thanks for getting in touch. I'd like to quote you £320 to calibrate your LG 55EC930V for 2D only, or £400 for both 2D and 3D, including my travel expenses from Manchester.

I realise my price is not the cheapest among UK calibrators, but I believe you get what you pay for. Specific to your TV, my strengths are:

1) I know the exact white point to use (the traditional D65 standard may introduce green tinting on LG OLED TVs even if the calibration charts look perfect);

2) I have spent extensive time with the LG 55EC930V when I was reviewing it, so I know the exact correct settings for [TruMotion], [Edge Enhancer], etc without needing to fumble around at your place:

http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/55ec930v-201412163962.htm

3) I have calibrated a few LG OLEDs, and the owners have been over the moon with the results. Here's a testimonial on AVForums:

https://www.avforums.com/threads/lg-55ec930v-oled-tv.1898778/page-126#post-21588270

Please let me know if you're interested, and we can sort out a time and date. Any questions, just ask.

Warmest regards
Vincent Teoh
Editor & ISF Calibrator
HDTVTest
 
£300 for a calibration...!! Nice little earner that....

I found the OLED a bit lacking with non native content.

your paying for their expertise, time and hardware/software.

£300 is nothing for a £2000 tv.

would you be shocked if I told you some photographers charge £10K to do a wedding and others charge £100?

what do you think the difference is? quality ;)
 
I bought my own meter and do mine myself. I set it up so it looks good to me I'm not bothered if it's not reference spec as long as it looks good.

Native 1080p on the OLED looked great to me but anything under even 720p looked naff and sd TV was awful even my non fussy wife said it looked bad.

I don't think it's an issue just LG skimping on the electronics to bring down the price or just OLED panels are a bit more fussy with non 1080p material.
 
I bought my own meter and do mine myself. I set it up so it looks good to me I'm not bothered if it's not reference spec as long as it looks good.

Native 1080p on the OLED looked great to me but anything under even 720p looked naff and sd TV was awful even my non fussy wife said it looked bad.

I don't think it's an issue just LG skimping on the electronics to bring down the price or just OLED panels are a bit more fussy with non 1080p material.

how much did the meter cost though? are they not £100ish for a half decent one? I imagine a professional calibrator would be using top quality equipment worth a lot more.

Again as I stated above. You could hire a photographer for your wedding for £100 that uses a polaroid. Spend a lot more and you get a professional with £10K worth of cameras and lenses, etc.

Same could be said for anything. Some guy might pay somebody £4 to wash their car another might take it to a professional detailer and hand over £400.

If their happy to pay for a superior service then so be it.
 
Yeah in a way I miss my P50GT50 as it looked better to me looking at lower quality inputs.

But then again I watched my Skyfall BD rip tonight and it blew me away. Not just the dark scenes but the IQ and colours in general.
 
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