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Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings
- hinkley 10mo agoStranger things viewers say shut up and write a finale.
- xxdiamondxx 10mo agoProbably a good time to plug Filmmaker mode!
- elondaits 10mo agoTypically “Game” mode, on TVs, turns off post processing, to avoid the extra frames of lag it causes.
- Uehreka 10mo agoFrom what I’ve read, you want to make sure that the setting is spelled FILMMAKER MODE (in all caps) with a (TM) symbol, since that means that the body who popularized the setting has approved whatever the manufacturer does when you turn that on (so if there’s a setting called “Cinephile Mode” that could mean anything). With that being said, I’ve definitely seen TVs that just don’t have FILMMAKER MODE or have it, but it doesn’t seem to apply to content from sources like Chromecast. The situation is far from easy to get a handle on.
- tguvot 10mo agowhat about not filming entire show in darkness. or, i don't know, filming it in a way that it will look ok on modern televisions without having to turn off settings.
- intothemild 10mo agoOr specially.. stopping at season 2 of this show.
- ycombinatrix 10mo agoWhy should I change my style? Modern TVs are the ones that suck.
- thrownawaysz 10mo agoImplying that makes a bad season better. When you watch thrash settings doesn't really matter
- Quarrel 10mo agoI don't think it implies that at all. It is perfectly understandable that the people who really care about how their work was colour-graded, then suggest you turn off all the features that shit all over that work. Similarly for the other settings he mentions. Don't get me wrong, I haven't seen the first season, so won't watch this, but creators / artists do and should care about this stuff. Of course, people can watch things in whatever dreaded settings they want, but lots of TVs default to bad settings, so awareness is good.
- robomartin 10mo agoYeah, televisions come full of truly destructive settings. I think part of the genesis of this virus is the need for TV's to stand out at the store. Brands and models are displayed side-by-side. The only way to stand out is to push the limits of over-enhancement along every possible axis (resolution, color, motion, etc.). Since consumers are not trained to critically discern image and video quality, the "Wow!" often wins the sale. This easily explains the existence of local dimming solutions (now called miniLED or some other thing). In a super bright Best Buy or Walmart viewing environment they can look fantastic (although, if you know what to look for you can see the issues). When you get that same TV home and watch a movie in the dark...oh man, the halos jump off the screen. Now they are starting to push "RGB miniLED" as if that is going to fix basic optics/physics issues. And don't get me started on horrible implementations of HDR. This is clearly a case of the average consumer not knowing enough (they should not have to be experts, BTW) and effectively getting duped by marketing.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- api 10mo agoTotally agreed. I read somewhere that the only place these features help is sports. They should not be defaults. They make shows and films look like total crap.
- robomartin 10mo agoActually, they do not belong anywhere. If you look at the processing pipeline necessary to, for example, shoot and produce modern sporting events in both standard and high dynamic range, the last thing you want is a television that makes its own decisions based on some random setting that a clueless engineer at the manufacturer thought would be cool to have. Companies spend millions of dollars (hundreds of millions in the case of broadcasters) to deliver technically accurate data to televisions. These settings are the television equivalent of clickbait. They are there to get people to say "Oh, wow!" at the store and buy it. And, just like clickbait, once they have what they clicked on, the experience ranges from lackluster and distorted to being scammed.
- kevin_thibedeau 10mo agoThey're the equivalent of the pointless DSP audio modes on 90's A/V receivers. Who was ever going to use "Concert Hall", "Jazz Club", or "Rock Concert" with distracting reverb and echo added to ruin the sound.
- lanthade 10mo agoAs someone who has built multi-camera live broadcast systems and operated them you are 100% correct. There is color correction, image processing, and all the related bits. Each of these units costs many times more and is far more capable with much higher quality (in the right hands) than what is included in even the most high end TV.
- robomartin 10mo agoI speak from experience. I spend approximately twenty years developing technology for broadcast, motion picture, production and post-production. That also included systems integration, where we designed and built all kinds of facilities. The largest I was personally involved with had a $65M budget. Most people have absolutely no idea what goes into making the pixels on their screens flicker with quality content.
- throwatdem12311 10mo agoWithout even clicking I know he’s talking about motion smoothing. Went to the in-laws over the holidays and the motion smoothing on the otherwise very nice LG tv was absolutely atrocious. My sister had her Nintendo Switch connected to it and the worst thing was not the low resolution game on the 4k display - it was the motion smoothing. Absolutely unbearable. Sister was complaining about input lag and it was most definitey caused by the motion smoothing. I keep my own TV on game mode regardless of the content because otherwise all the extra “features” - which includes more than just motion smoothing - pretty much destroys picture quality universally no matter what I’m watching.
- sublinear 10mo agoI'm not even convinced anyone really watches Stranger Things, so I don't see the point. Seems like something people put on as background noise while they are distracted by their phones.
- ycombinatrix 10mo agoI think people paid attention to at least season 1 back in the day.
- mikrl 10mo agoJust for the synth intro
- ant6n 10mo agoIronically the Apple TV Netflix app really wants to soup the intro - going so far as to mute the intro to offer the “skip” button. You have to hit “back” to get the audio back during the intro. Not she why Netflix is destroying destroying the experience themselves here.
- tzs 10mo agoPeople were clearly watching through at least season 4. That show used songs that nowadays most viewers would consider to be oldies that became hits again after the episodes containing them were released. For example Kate Bush's 1985 "Running up that Hill" because a huge worldwide hit after appearing in season 4.
- cwillu 10mo ago“Running up that hill” becomes a huge worldwide hit approximately every ten years.
- TimorousBestie 10mo agoI never watched the show but I did catch the revival of interest in Kate Bush by osmosis, so I think the show probably does have some cultural impact.
- kstrauser 10mo agoYeah, kiss m'ass. I agree that some of those settings do need to be turned off. When I visit someone and see their TV on soap opera mode, I fight the urge to fix it. Not my house, not my TV, not my problem if they like it that way, and yet, wow, is it ever awful. But then getting into recommendations like "turn off vivid mode" is pretty freaking pretentious, in my opinion, like a restaurant where the chef freaks out if you ask for salt. Yes, maybe the entree is perfectly salted, but I prefer more, and I'm the one paying the bill, so calm yourself as I season it to my tastes. Yes, vivid modes do look different than the filmmaker intended, but that also presumes that the viewer's eyes are precisely as sensitive as the director's. What if I need higher contrast to make out what's happening on the screen? Is it OK if I calibrate my TV to my own personal viewing conditions? What if it's not perfectly dark in my house, or I want to watch during the day without closing all the blinds? I tried watching the ending of Game of Thrones without tweaking my TV. I could not physically see what was happening on the screen, other than that a navy blue blob was doing something against a darker grey background, and parts of it seemed to be moving fast if I squinted. I cranked the brightness and contrast for those episodes so that I could actually tell what was going on. It might not have aligned with the director's idea of how I should experience their spectacle, but I can live with that. Note that I’d also roll my eyes at a musician who told me how to set my equalizer. I’ll set it as I see fit for me, in my living room’s own requirements, thanks.
- robomartin 10mo ago> What if I need higher contrast to make out what's happening on the screen? The point you make isn't incorrect at all. I would say that TV's should ship without any such enhancements enabled. The user should then be able to configure it as they wish. Plenty of parallel examples of this: Microsoft should ship a "clean" version of Windows. Users can they opt into whatever they might want to add. Social media sites should default to the most private non-public sharing settings. Users can open it up to the world if they wish. Their choice. Going back to TV's: They should not ship with spyware, log-ware, behavioral tracking and advertising crap. Users can opt into that stuff if they value proposition being offered appeals to them. Etc.
- 10mo ago
- avazhi 10mo agoThanks for the thought but from what I’ve heard from friends I’ll be keeping the final season unwatched just like I did with the last 2 episodes of GoT.
- CSSer 10mo agoIt's almost like you're living in an alternate universe where everything is just a little bit better.
- xenospn 10mo agoIt’s very bad.
- redundantly 10mo agoIt really isn't. I keep seeing comparisons to the last seasons of Game of Thrones, but while there is a dip in quality this season, it is no where near as bad as what happened to GoT.
- golfer 10mo agoGoT got so bad that I don't really have any desire to watch any of the seasons ever again. Killed rewatchability.
- prawn 10mo agoI rewatched it in recent weeks and enjoyed all the bits that I enjoyed years ago during the first watch. The stories I found a bit tedious first time (High Sparrow plotline, Arya and faceless men) weren't as miserable; I think I was expecting them to drag on even more. My biggest grievance on the rewatch was just how poorly it's all tied up. I again enjoyed The Long Night through the lens of 'spectacle over military documentary'. The last season just felt like they wrote themselves into a corner and didn't have time and patience to see it through. By that point, actors were ready to move on, etc.
- 10mo ago
- ycombinatrix 10mo agoThe "soap opera" effect is real, I don't enjoy it.
- laweijfmvo 10mo agochristmas day, walked into a relative’s living room to watch football and the players were literally gliding across the screen. lol
- emkoemko 10mo agofor me it ruins cinematic content, for sports i don't mind
- tartoran 10mo agoIt ruins it for me as well but from my understanding many people can't tell the difference.
- Sateeshm 10mo agoYes! A lot people can't tell the difference. It's just sad. Tells you how engaged people are with what they they watch.
- tartoran 10mo agoI briefly feel bad for them but then I remind myself who am I to judge how they perceive things? It is possible that they get the same enjoyment from the story with all the effects and artifacts these TVs have. When I was a kid we had this smallish (probably 14-15") B/W TV set in my kitchen. Sometimes my whole family would watch a movie on that TV set and we were all absorbed into the movies, it didn't matter the TV set was small and colorless, back then I hadn't even seen a TV broadcast in colors. It's all relative I guess. Sometimes I think this soap opera effect is even worse than watching movies on that small TV set form my childhood but then again, who am I to judge?
- vunderba 10mo ago
- kevinlearynet 10mo agoAll the settings in the world won't change the story.
- epistasis 10mo agoCareful what you wish for, or we might get AI-powered "Vibrant Story" filters that reduce 62 minutes of plot-less filler to a 5 minute summary of the only relevant points. Or that try to generate some logic to make the magic in the story make narrative sense.
- tguvot 10mo agoas opposite to AI-powered "Hyper Vibrant Story" filters that increase 5 minute of plot to 62 minutes of slop
- epistasis 10mo agoMuch like a chain of email AI filters that turn short directions into full-fledged emails, that in turn get summarized into short directions on the receiving end.
- smj-edison 10mo agoIt's a lossless process, right? right?
- onraglanroad 10mo agoYes, once you have the 5 minute summary you can then extend it to however long your Uber is going to take to arrive!
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 10mo agoQuibi was ahead of the curve!
- citizenkeen 10mo ago
- minimaxir 10mo agoGame of Thrones Season 8 was lambasted for having an episode that was mostly in darkness...in 2019. You'd think television production would be calibrated for the median watcher's TV settings by now.
- vanviegen 10mo agoBut that would mean that everybody is experiencing a quality level based on the least common denominator. I think TV filters (vivid, dynamic brightness, speech lifting, etc) are actually a pretty decent solution to less-than-ideal (bright and noisy environment, subpar screen and audio) viewing conditions.
- kritiko 10mo agoThis article seems to imply that the default settings are the manufacturer recommended ones for streaming movies - is that bad ux? Should Netflix be able to push recommended settings to your tv?
- spaceywilly 10mo agoThe problem is it can be subjective. Some people really like the “smooth motion” effect, especially if they never got used to watching 24fps films back in the day. Others, like me, think seeing stuff at higher refresh rates just looks off. It may be a generational thing. Same goes for “vivid color” mode and those crazy high contrast colors. People just like it more. On the other hand, things that are objective like color calibration, can be hard to “push down” to each TV because they might vary from set to set. Apple TV has a cool feature where you can calibrate the output using your phone camera, it’s really nifty. Lots of people comment on how good the picture on my TV looks, it’s just because it’s calibrated. It makes a big difference. Anyways, while I am on my soap box, one reason I don’t have a Netflix account any more is because you need the highest tier to get 4k/hdr content. Other services like Apple TV and Prime give everyone 4k. I feel like that should be the standard now. It’s funny to see this thread of suggestions for people to get better picture, when many viewers probably can’t even get 4k/hdr.
- fodkodrasz 10mo ago> Should Netflix be able to push recommended settings to your tv? No.
- lawgimenez 10mo agoWow that CGI creature looks bad. I thought it was from the Stranger Things game.
- osakasake 10mo ago[dead]
- xnx 10mo agoI hope AI tools allow for better fan edits. There's enough of a foundation and source footage to redo the later episodes of Stranger Things ... The Matrix ... etc.
- mikestorrent 10mo agoYes, I think that this is one place to be very bullish on AI content creation. There are many people with fantastic visions for beautiful stories that they will never be in a position to create the traditional way; oftentimes with better stories than what is actually produced officially. (You ever think about how many fantastic riffs have been wasted with cringe lyrics?)
- __del__ 10mo agoi often think about all the music ruined by self obsessed dorks singing soulless middle school poetry, and it's the main application of AI i'm quite excited for
- mikestorrent 10mo agoAbsolutely! Is there a name for the opposite of a "remix" - where you'd normally have the same lyrics but change the music - and instead keep the beautiful original music but put something a little more meaningful over it? Ever look at the lyrics to Toto's Africa? We can start there, someone send a poet please
- bigbuppo 10mo agoNothing is stopping you right now from buying or finding or creating a catalog of loops and samples that you can use to create your own Artistic Vision[tm]. The technology exists and has existed for decades, no AI required.
- mikestorrent 10mo agoI saw that one of my favourite electronic artists, BT, has embraced AI by making a ton of his own loops and samples and then training the AI on it so that it makes more of his music for him.
- tzs 10mo agoMy TV is from around 2017 and some of those settings definitely suck on it. I'm curious if they have improved any of them on newer TVs. Here's how bad it was in 2017. One of the earliest things I watched on that TV was "Guardians of the Galaxy" on some expanded basic cable channel. The fight between Peter and Gamora over the orb looked very jerky, like it was only at about 6 fps. I found some reviews of the movie on YouTube that included clips of that fight and it looked great on them, so I know that this wasn't some artistic choice of the director that I just didn't like. Some Googling told me about the motion enhancement settings of the TV, and how they often suck. I had DVRed the movie, and with those settings off the scene looked great when I watched it again.
- eudamoniac 10mo agoThe soap opera effect is only a problem because no one is used to it. Higher FPS is objectively better. These motion interpolation settings are now ubiquitous and pretty much nobody cares about said effect anymore, which is great, because maybe now we can start having movies above 24FPS. To preempt replies: ask yourself why 24 frames per second is optimal for cinema instead of just being an ancient spec that everyone got used to.
- techjamie 10mo agoPersonally, I have no issue watching things that are shot at 60fps (like YouTube videos, even live action) but the motion smoothing on TV shows makes it look off to me. I dunno if it's just a me thing, but I wonder if a subconscious part of my brain is pegging the motion smoothed content as unnatural movement and dislikes it as a result.
- kstrauser 10mo agoThe motion smoother also has to guess which parts of the picture to modify. Is the quarterback throwing the ball the important part? The team on the sidelines? The people in the stands? The camera on wires zooming around over the field to get bird’s eye views? When it guesses wrong and enhances the wrong thing, it looks weird. Also imagine the hand of a clock rotating at 5 minutes’ worth of angle per frame, and 1 frame per second. If you watched that series of pictures, your brain might still fill in that the hand is moving in a circle every 12 seconds. Now imagine smoothing synthesizing an extra 59 frames per second. If it’s only consider the change between 2 frames, it might show a bright spot moving in a straight line between the 12 and 1 position, then 1 and 2, and so on. Instead of a circle, the circle of the hand would be tracing a dodecagon. That’s fine, but it’s not how your brain knows clocks are supposed to move. Motion smoothing tries to do its best to generate extra detail that doesn’t exist and we’re a long way from the tech existing for a TV to be able to do that well in realtime. Until then, it’s going to be weird and unnatural. Film shot at 60FPS? Sure. Shot at 24 and slopped up to 60? Nah, I’ll pass.
- Izkata 10mo agoPersonal guess based on the impression I get from my parents' TV: You know how when you pause video while something is moving quickly, that object is blurred in the frame? Motion smoothing has that to work with, and causes the blur to persist longer than it should, which is why it looks bizarre - you're seeing motion blurs for larger movements than what's actually happening. Like the object should have moved twice the distance for the amount of blur, but it didn't. Something recorded and replayed at a high framerate wouldn't have this problem.
- zzo38computer 10mo agoI thought there is such a thing (although probably some TV sets do not have) as "film maker mode" to do it according to the film maker's intention (although I don't know all of the details, so I do even know how well it would work). "Dolby Vision Movie Dark" is something that I had not heard of. (However, modern TV sets are often filled with enough other junk that maybe you will not want all of these things anyways)
- freitasm 10mo agoIf only the directors didn't make everything so dark and hard to see. Also stopped messing with sound, making it impossible to hear dialogues.
- jerlam 10mo agoI'm surprised they didn't mention turning off closed captioning, because understanding the dialog is less important than experiencing the creator's intent.
- etempleton 10mo agoI haven’t experienced issues understanding dialogue in Stranger Things, for what it’s worth.
- tartuffe78 10mo agoIt helps that they're mostly shouting explanations at each other.
- etempleton 10mo agoHaha, this is very true. They really narrate what they are doing.
- pupppet 10mo agoNetflix shows in particular are ridiculously dark.
- etempleton 10mo agoHeavily compressed.
- lostlogin 10mo agoIf you check it will say the resolution is AMAZING. Despite being a subscriber I pirate their shows to get some pixels.
- brador 10mo agoMy screen, my settings, my experience.
- mrbadguy 10mo agoYour film, too?
- sholladay 10mo agoWhen people say “creator’s intent”, it sounds like a flavor. Like how food comes out of the kitchen before you put toppings on it to make it your own. But vivid mode (et al) literally loses information. When the TV tries to make everything look vibrant, it’s effectively squishing all of the colors into a smaller color space. You may not be able to even tell two distinct objects apart because everything is similarly bright and vibrant. Same with audio. The famous “smile” EQ can cause some instruments to disappear, such as woodwinds. At the end of the day, media is for enjoyment and much of it is subjective, so fine do what you need to do to be happy. But few people would deliberately choose lower resolution (except maybe for nostalgia), which is what a lot of the fancy settings end up doing. Get a calibration if you can, or use Filmmaker Mode. The latter will make the TV relatively dark, but there’s usually a way to adjust it or copy its settings and then boost the brightness in a Custom mode, which is still a big improvement over default settings from the default mode.
- pupppet 10mo agoThe fact that I have to turn on closed captioning to understand anything tells me these producers have no idea what we want and shouldn’t be telling us what settings to use.
- retrac 10mo agoPerhaps a mixing issue on your end? Multi-channel audio has the dialog track separated. So you can increase the volume of the dialog if you want. Unfortunately I think there is variability in hardware (and software players) in how to down-mix, which sometimes results in background music in the surround channels drowning out the dialog in the centre channel.
- josephg 10mo agoIs there a way to do this in vlc? I run into this problem constantly - especially when 5.1 audio gets down mixed to my stereo setup.
- mikepurvis 10mo agoIt's reasonable for the 5.1 mix to have louder atmosphere and be more dependent on directionality for the viewer to pick the dialog out of the center channel. However, all media should also be supplying a stereo mix where the dialog is appropriately boosted.
- CoffeeOnWrite 10mo agoMy PS4 Slim was not capable of this at the device level. An individual app could choose to expose the choice of audio format, but many do not :(
- ludicrousdispla 10mo agoIt's an issue even in theaters and is the main reason I prefer to watch new releases at home on DVD (Dune I saw in the theater, Dune 2 I watched at home.)
- 10mo ago
- metadat 10mo agoWhat about the "AI Enhancement" settings? Are those still good?
- astrange 10mo agoDynamic Contrast = Low is needed on LG TVs to actually enable HDR scene metadata or something weird like that. 60->120hz motion smoothing is also useful on OLEDs to prevent visual judder; you want either that or black frame insertion. I have no idea what Super Resolution actually does, it never seems to do anything. Also, as a digital video expert I will allow you to leave motion smoothing on.
- esperent 10mo agoI assume super resolution is for upscaling old content. Try it on a 240p YouTube video and see what it does there.
- astrange 10mo agoApparently it's tied to the Sharpness setting in an obscure way such that it depends on the setting for that.
- emkoemko 10mo agonoo motion smoothing is terrible unless you like soap operas and not cinema, black frame insertion is to lower even more the pixel persistence which really does nothing for 24fps content which already has a smooth blur built in to the image, the best is setting your tv to 120hz so that your 24fps fits evenly and you don't get 3:2 pulldown judder
- astrange 10mo ago> noo motion smoothing is terrible unless you like soap operas and not cinema That's what's so good about it. They say turning it off respects the artists or something, but when I read that I think "so I'm supposed to be respecting Harvey Weinstein and John Lasseter?" and it makes me want to leave it on. > black frame insertion is to lower even more the pixel persistence which really does nothing for 24fps content which already has a smooth blur built in to the image That's not necessarily true unless you know to set it to the right mode for different content each time. There are also some movies without proper motion blur, eg animation. Or, uh, The Hobbit, which I only saw in theaters so maybe they added it for home release. > he best is setting your tv to 120hz so that your 24fps fits evenly and you don't get 3:2 pulldown judder That's not really a TV mode, it's more about the thing on the other side of the TV I think, but yes you do want that or VFR.
- abtinf 10mo agoIs there a setting to make it stop being orange and blue? Such color grading is an instant tell the show (or video game) is creatively bankrupt trash.
- nntwozz 10mo agoMad Max: Fury Road has entered the chat.
- perryizgr8 10mo ago> It’s gonna destroy the color, and it’s not the filmmaker’s intent. I don't care about the "filmmaker's intent", because it is my TV. I will enable whatever settings look best to me.
- lostlogin 10mo agoIt’s funny to read about respecting content on that site, which has no respect for their own content. Yes, I usually run add blockers, Pihole etc, I’m away from home and temporarily without my filters.
- franky47 10mo agoEspecially when the "content" is a blatant AI summary: > Duffer’s advice highlights a conflict between technological advances and creators' goals. Features like the ones he mentioned are designed to appeal to casual viewers by making images appear sharper or more colorful, but they alter the original look of the content. By asking fans to turn these features off, he is stressing the importance of preserving the director’s vision.
- jason_oster 10mo agoYou might want to setup WireGuard on your Pihole device [1], so that you can VPN to it for DNS resolution remotely. It's crazy good. (And it can also be used as a full VPN, if you want to access anything remotely.) [1] https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/vpn/wireguard/ https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/vpn/wireguard/
- nwellinghoff 10mo agoHe is absolutely right. The soap opera effect totally ruins the look of most movies. I still use a good old 1080p plasma on default. It always looks good
- SOLAR_FIELDS 10mo agoI watched the most recent avatar and it was some HDR variant that had this effect turned up. It definitely dampens the experience. There’s something about that slightly fuzzed movement that just makes things on screen look better
- asimovDev 10mo agofrom what I heard, the actions scenes are shot in 48 fps and others are in 24 fps or something along those lines. You might be talking about that ?
- Sateeshm 10mo agoDrives me insane when people say they can't tell the difference while watching with motion smoothing on. I feel for the filmmakers.
- 4star3star 10mo agoThe soap opera effect drives me nuts. I just about can't watch something when it's on. It makes a multimillion dollar movie look like it was slapped together in an afternoon.
- iknowstuff 10mo agoNope, nope, I can't watch 24-30hz without my eyes bleeding during camera pans.
- ceejayoz 10mo agoMy parents’ new TV adds a Snapchat like filter to everything. Made Glenn Close look young instead of the old woman she’s supposed to be in Knives Out. Turning it off was shocking. So much better. And it was buried several levels deep in a weirdly named setting.
- Shorel 10mo agoAnyone who mentions: "the soap opera effect" is someone who used to watch soap operas. The reason they dislike it, is their own bad taste. I like how it looks because it is "high quality videogame effect" for me. 60 hz, 120hz, 144hz, you only get this on a good videogame setup.
- jeauxlb 10mo agoIt is a well-known description for what each brand calls something different. As I wait in a physiotherapist office I am being subjected to a soap opera against my will. Many will have seen snippets of The Bold and the Beautiful without watching a single episode, but enough to know that it looks 'different'.
- IggleSniggle 10mo agoJust because someone has different taste doesn't make it bad taste. Books have lower resolution still, and they evoke far greater imaginative leaps. For me, the magic lies in what is not shown; it helps aid the suspension of disbelief by requiring you imagination to do more work filling in the gaps. I'm an avid video game player, and while FPS and sports-adjacent games demand high framerates, I'm perfectly happy turning my render rates down to 40Hz or 30Hz on many games simply to conserve power. I generally prefer my own brain's antialiasing, I guess.
- PunchyHamster 10mo agobooks have infinite resolution thanks to AI decompression filter
- ChoGGi 10mo agoDo framerates effect antialiasing?
- IggleSniggle 10mo agoIn the broadest sense of the word, aliasing refers to a problem where an insufficient number of samples create a misrepresentation of an intended signal source. I was being a bit poetic, because in graphics programming, where the term "antialiasing" is most often encountered by lay audiences, antialiasing generally refers to X/Y sampling coordinate correction rather than representations across time. It's not usually considered a major issue in vision, because our brains naturally fill in the gaps pretty easily across time for motion (they already naturally do this for eg blinking, you don't see your eyelids when you blink). So usually antialiasing across time is only an issue in audio domains for the layperson, where a misrepresentation of a sample might be perceived as an entirely different pitch, since our ears need >40k samples per second (for accurate high pitches) vs the 24 samples per second that we are accustomed to getting in old fashioned film. When our eyes "miss" a frame or two, our brain is happy to fill in the gaps, ie "antialiasing." Edit: to clarify, I'm suggesting that some people might prefer to let their brains "fill in the missing frames" rather than see the extra frames shown explicitly. For example, you might be more likely to notice visual tearing at 60Hz than you are to take note of visual tearing at 24Hz when you're already accustomed to filling in the missing pieces, or to a greater extreme, across two panels of a comic strip portraying motion.
- andersa 10mo agoRelease your movie in native 120 fps and I'll turn off motion interpolation. Until then, minor flickering artifacts when it fails to resolve motion, or minor haloing around edges of moving objects, are vastly preferable to unwatchable judder that I can't even interpret as motion sometimes. Every PC gamer knows you need high frame rates for camera movement. It's ridiculous the movie industry is stuck at 24 like it's the stone age, only because of some boomers screaming of some "soap opera" effect they invented in their brains. I'd imagine most Gen Z people don't even know what a "soap opera" is supposed to be, I had to look it up the first time I saw someone say it. My LG OLED G5 literally provides a better experience than going to the cinema, due to this. I'm so glad 4k60 is being established as the standard on YouTube, where I watch most of my content now... it's just movies that are inexplicably stuck in the past...
- 0-_-0 10mo agoHear hear. 24 FPS is an abomination for fast movement.
- KingMob 10mo ago> Every PC gamer knows you need high frame rates for camera movement. Obviously not, because generations of people saw "movement" at 24 fps. You're railing against other people's preferences, but presenting your personal preferences as fact. Also, there are technical limitations in cameras that aren't present in video games. The higher the frame rate, the less light that hits it. To compensate, not only do you need better sensors, but you probably need to change the entire way that sets, costumes, and lighting are handled. The shift to higher frame rates will happen, but it's gonna require massive investment to shift an entire industry and time to learn what looks good. Cinematographers have higher standards than random Youtubers.
- andersa 10mo ago> You're railing against other people's preferences, but presenting your personal preferences as fact. It is a fact that motion is smoother at 120 fps than 24, and therefore easier to follow on screen. There are no preferences involved. > Also, there are technical limitations in cameras that aren't present in video games. Cameras capable of recording high quality footage at this refresh rate already exist and their cost is not meaningful compared to the full budget of a movie (and you can use it more than one time of course).
- nntwozz 10mo agoI read a lot of comments here that freeze my blood, what needs to be said is that there is something called creative intent. For those unfamiliar with the term you should watch Vincent Teoh @ HDTVTest: https://www.youtube.com/hdtvtest https://www.youtube.com/hdtvtest Creative intent refers to the goal of displaying content on a TV precisely as the original director or colorist intended it to be seen in the studio or cinema. A lot of work is put into this and the fact that many TVs nowadays come with terrible default settings doesn't help. We have a whole generation who actually prefer the colors all maxed out with motion smoothing etc. turned to 11 but that's like handing the Mona Lisa to some rando down the street to improve it with crayons. At the end of the day it's disrespectful to the creator and the artwork itself.
- account42 10mo agoYou can argue about defaults but in my home my preferences trump those of the creator in my book.
- tiku 10mo agoAnd how about the content garbage? Not spoilering anything but man...
- simianparrot 10mo agoYeah this season started off decent but by the penultimate episode it’s nosedived off a cliff…
- LanceH 10mo agoThe first four episodes this season weren't good. The whole D&D metaphor already felt played out but is instead leaned on heavily again. The pop references are plentiful, but 5 seasons of the same references also gets old. The military is straight up a bad guy now and one way to handle them is straight up killing them in gunfights. Then the release of the next three were just so much worse. More of the same bad stuff, but now they're rewriting the bad guys, good guys, and world setting. Major characters have fallen to the wayside, other side characters are now main. Tons of stupid, "I'm angry at you" followed by splitting up while being hunted by monsters, or hashing out some grievance while being chased by monsters in an end of the world scenario. The cast is not awkwardly cute anymore. They are full grown adults playing children. I can forgive this as I know the difficulties in getting a production together. But it does make the petty squabbles -- which are constant -- more unbearable. I'll watch the last episodes at they come out this week, but I have low hopes. It would be nice to see something actually wrapped up nicely even if the show is stumbling to the finish. So help me though, if they win through the power of friendship and love...
- simianparrot 10mo agoYeah I agree with all of this. Having seen the final episode now, while not as bad as Game of Thrones, it's very reminiscent. It's like they never had any idea how they'd wrap it up and just wrote something that checks the boxes to wrap up a series without much thought. I was going to write a lot more but I just want to not think about this anymore, I'm so disappointed. It seems like the best we can wish for from Netflix shows is that they get cancelled before they turn into whatever this became...
- joduplessis 10mo agoScreen settings would be least of the problems with season 5 unfortunately.
- eviks 10mo agoAre there any creators that evolved and shoot at high frame rates that eliminate the need for motion interpolation and its artifacts or is the grip of the bad old film culture still too strong? (there are at least some 48fps films)
- DoctorWhoof 10mo agoMost of the issues (like "judder") that people have with 24fps are due to viewing it on 60 fps screens, which will sometimes double a frame, sometimes triple it, creating uneven motion. Viewing a well shot film with perfect, expressive motion blur on a proper film screen is surprisingly smooth. The "soap opera" feel is NOT from bad interpolation that can somehow be done right. It's inherent from the high frame rate. It has nothing to do with "video cameras", and a lot to do with being simply too real, like watching a scene through a window. There's no magic in it. Films are more like dreams than like real life. That frame rate is essential to them, and its choice, driven by technical constraints of the time when films added sound, was one of happiest accidents in the history of Arts.
- _flux 10mo ago> Most of the issues (like "judder") that people have with 24fps are due to viewing it on 60 fps screens That can be a factor, but I think this effect can be so jarring that many would realize that there's a technical problem behind it. For me 24 fps is usually just fine, but then if I find myself tracking something with my eyes that wasn't intended to be tracked, then it can look jumpy/snappy. Like watching fast flowing end credits but instead of following the text, keeping the eyes fixed at some point. > Films are more like dreams than like real life. That frame rate is essential to them, and its choice, driven by technical constraints of the time when films added sound, was one of happiest accidents in the history of Arts. I wonder though, had the industry started with 60 fps, would people now applaud the 24/30 fps as a nice dream-like effect everyone should incorporate into movies and series alike?
- dontlaugh 10mo agoI have a 120 fps TV. Panning shots at 24 fps still give me an instant headache. Real is good, it’s ergonomic and accessible. Until filmmakers understand that, I’ll have to keep interpolation on at the lowest setting.
- spullara 10mo agothat article ends with AI slop (perhaps all of it) "Duffer’s advice highlights a conflict between technological advances and creators' goals. Features like the ones he mentioned are designed to appeal to casual viewers by making images appear sharper or more colorful, but they alter the original look of the content. By asking fans to turn these features off, he is stressing the importance of preserving the director’s vision."
- bob1029 10mo ago> Whatever you do, do not switch anything on ‘vivid’ because it’s gonna turn on all the worst offenders. It’s gonna destroy the color, and it’s not the filmmaker’s intent. To be fair, "vivid" mode on my old Panasonic plasma was actually an impressive option compared to how an LCD would typically implement it. It didn't change the color profile. It mostly changed how much wattage the panel was allowed to consume. Upward of 800w IIRC. I called it "light cannon" mode. In a dark room, it makes black levels look like they have their own gravitational field despite being fairly bright in absolute terms.
- boilerupnc 10mo agoI miss my old Panasonic Plasma. I chose to leave it with my old home because of its size and its age. It was rock solid after 10+ years with many cycles to go. Solid gear! Sigh…
- UltraSane 10mo agoPlasma displays died because they couldn't be made in 4k resolution at an affordable price and they use 10 times as much power as LCD or OLED.
- larusso 10mo agoI setup my TV (LG OLED CX) with filmmaker mode in all relevant places and turned off a lot of nubs based on HDTVs [1] recommendations. LG has definitely better ways of tuning the picture just right than my old Samsung had. For this TV I had to manual calibrate the settings. The interesting thing when turning on filmmaker mode is the feeling of too warm and dark colors. It will go away when the eyes get used to it. But it then lets the image pop when it’s meant to pop etc. I also turned off this auto brightness [2] feature that is supposed to guard the panel from burn it but just fails in prolonged dark scenes like in Netflix Ozark. [1] https://youtu.be/uGFt746TJu0?si=iCOVk3_3FCUAX-ye https://youtu.be/uGFt746TJu0?si=iCOVk3_3FCUAX-ye [2] https://youtu.be/E5qXj-vpX5Q?si=HkGXFQPyo6aN7T72 https://youtu.be/E5qXj-vpX5Q?si=HkGXFQPyo6aN7T72
- beloch 10mo ago"Duffer’s advice highlights a conflict between technological advances and creators' goals. Features like the ones he mentioned are designed to appeal to casual viewers by making images appear sharper or more colorful, but they alter the original look of the content." ------------------------ Settings that make the image look less like how the material is supposed to look are not "advances". Q: So why do manufacturers create them? A: They sell TV's. Assume that every manufacturer out there is equally capable of creating a screen that faithfully reproduces the content to the best ability of current technology. If every manufacturer does just that, then their screens will all look extremely similar. If your TV looks like everybody else's, how do you get people strolling through an electronics store to say, "Wow! I want that one!"? You add gimmicky settings that make the image look super saturated, bizarrely smooth, free of grain etc.. Settings that make the image look less like the source, but which grab eyes in a store. You make those settings the default too, so that people don't feel ripped off when they take the TV out of the store. If you take a typical TV set home and don't change the settings from default, you're typically not going to see a very faithful reproduction of the director's vision. You're seeing what somebody thought would make that screen sell well in a store. If you go to the trouble of setting your screen up properly, your initial reaction may be that it looks worse. However, once you get used to it, you'll probably find the resulting image to be more natural, more enjoyable, and easier on the eyes.
- beeflet 10mo agowhy even bother with "TV Screens"? Why not just get a big computer monitor instead, like 27" or something
- pvdebbe 10mo agoI don't know what kind of a joke you tried here, but I think a vast majority of TV screens can be put in game or PC mode, and all the input lag and stupid picture processing goes away. I run a 43" LG 4K TV as a PC monitor and never have I had a (flat screen) monitor with a faster response rate! My cinema TV is an old FullHD 42" Philips that has laughably bad black levels. I run it also in PC mode but the real beauty of this TV is that without further picture processing it produces nice and cinemalike flat color that is true to the input material that I feed it. Flashy capeshit will be flashy and bright, and a muted period drama will stay muted.
- neoden 10mo agoAt first I thought it's about turning off settings that allow me to watch garbage TV shows (or garbage ending seasons of initially decent TV shows in this case)
- ramax9 10mo ago> regular backup of your mail. Google's Takeout service is a straightforward way to achieve this. Takeout is a horrible way to do regular backups. You have to manualy request it, it takes a long time to generate, manual download... I only use it for monthly full backups. Much better way for continous incremental backups is IMAP client that locally mirrors incomming emails (Mutt or Thunderbird). It can be configured to store every email in separate file.
- saghm 10mo agoI'm guessing this is supposed to be for a different thread?
- croisillon 10mo agoi believe you came from another posting?
- ifh-hn 10mo agoThis is the best comment to randomly appear in the thread. I love a good chuckle in the morning. Kinda wish I knew the thread this was meant for.
- croisillon 10mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46384153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46384153
- almostkindatech 10mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46384153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46384153
- saghm 10mo ago> Duffer’s advice highlights a conflict between technological advances and creators' goals. Features like the ones he mentioned are designed to appeal to casual viewers by making images appear sharper or more colorful, but they alter the original look of the content. I know I'm pretty unsophisticated when it comes to stuff like art, but I've never been able to appreciate takes like this. If I'm watching something on my own time from the comfort of my home, I don't really care about what the filmmaker thinks if it's different than what I want to see. Maybe he's just trying to speak to the people who do care about seeing his exact vision, but his phrasing is so exaggerated in how negatively he seems to see these settings makes it seem like he genuinely thinks what he's saying applies universally. Honestly, I'd have a pretty similar opinion even for art outside of my home. If someone told me I was looking at the Mona Lisa wrong because it's "not what the artist intended" I'd probably laugh at them. It doesn't really seem like you're doing a good job as an artist if you have to give people instructions on how to look at it.
- snozolli 10mo agoIf someone told me I was looking at the Mona Lisa wrong because it's "not what the artist intended" I'd probably laugh at them. That's arguably a thing, due to centuries of aged and yellowed varnish. You can watch whatever you want however you want, but it's entirely reasonable for the creator of art to give tips on how to view it the way it was intended. If you'd prefer that it look like a hybrid-cartoon Teletubby episode, then I say go for it.
- knorker 10mo agoTo me it's not about art. It's about this setting making the production quality of a billion dollar movie look like a cardboard SNL set. When walking past a high end TV I've honestly confused a billion dollar movie for a teen weekend project, due to this. It's only when I see "hang on, how's Famous Actor in this?" that I see that oh this is a Marvel movie? To me it's as if people who don't see it are saying "oh, I didn't even realise I'd set the TV to black and white". This is not high art. It's... well... the soap opera effect.
- dontlaugh 10mo ago
- knorker 10mo ago> Duffer’s advice highlights a conflict between technological advances and creators' goals I wouldn't call it a "technological advance" to make even the biggest blockbuster look like it was filmed with a 90s camcorder with cardboard sets. Truemotion and friends are indeed garbage, and I don't understand how people can leave it on.
- saltysalt 10mo agoIs this the Hollywood version of "worked on my PC"?
- xeonmc 10mo ago“What do you mean you don’t have an HDR calibrated color grading monitor to watch my film?”
- eterevsky 10mo agoIt's a good advice, if you are watching on a reference monitor in a dark room.
- yrcyrc 10mo agoA guide to disable the soap opera effect on most brands https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/what-is-the-soap-opera-effect-in-tvs-and-how-to-turn-it-off/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/what-is-the-soap-...
- omnicognate 10mo agoIt would help if TV manufacturers would clearly document what these features do, and use consistent names that reflect that. It seems they want to make these settings usable without specialist knowledge, but the end result of their opaque naming and vague descriptions is that anybody who actually cares about what they see and thinks they might benefit from some of the features has to either systematically try every possible combination of options or teach themselves video engineering and try to figure out for themselves what each one actually does. This isn't unique to TVs. It's amazing really how much effort a company will put into adding a feature to a product only to completely negate any value it might have by assuming any attempt at clearly documenting it, even if buried deep in a manual, will cause their customers' brains to explode.
- hsbauauvhabzb 10mo agoThe purpose of the naming is generally to overwhelm consumers and drive long term repeat buys. You can’t remember if your tv has the fitzbuzz, but you’re damn sure this fancy new tv in the store looks a hell of a lot better than you’re current tv and there really pushing this fitzbuzz thing.
- omnicognate 10mo agoThat doesn't preclude clearly documenting what the feature does somewhere in the manual or online. People who either don't care or don't have the mental capacity to understand it won't read it. People who care a lot, such as specialist reviewers or your competitors, will figure it out anyway. I don't see any downside to adding the documentation for the benefit of paying customers who want to make an informed choice about when to use the feature, even in this cynical world view.
- nkrisc 10mo agoThat costs money.
- hsbauauvhabzb 10mo agoWhy let a consumer educate themselves as easily as possible when it’s more profitable to deter that behaviour and keep you confused? Especially when some of the tech is entirely false (iirc about a decade ago, TVs were advertised as ‘360hz’ which was not related to the refresh rates). I’m with you personally, but the companies that sell TVs are not.
- pmdr 10mo agoHe's right about the settings. Why would these be the default? Who watches TV that way? Unfortunately settings won't help Season 5 be any better, it verges on being garbage itself, a profound drop in quality compared to previous seasons.
- mnky9800n 10mo agoLet’s just have Sarah Connor be in it for no reason being angry all the time for no reason.
- KingMob 10mo agoI like the idea that Linda Hamilton's actually playing Sarah Connor here. "After battling Skynet her whole life, Sarah Connor has vowed to even the playing field... no matter what the cost. Coming soon in Terminator: Hawkins!"
- jz10 10mo ago> Duffer’s advice highlights a conflict between technological advances and creators' goals. Features like the ones he mentioned are designed to appeal to casual viewers by making images appear sharper or more colorful, but they alter the original look of the content. By asking fans to turn these features off, he is stressing the importance of preserving the director's vision. is it just me or does this article's last paragraph feel particularly AI generated.. whether the author did use AI or not isnt my main gripe -- it's just that certain wording (like this) won't be free from scrutiny in my head anymore :(
- zkmon 10mo agoMy Advice: Turn off your TV. Anything that you watch on TV is garbage.
- system2 10mo agoStranger Things creator is not aware of how stupid most Netflix viewers are. They literally watch algorithm-generated TV shows all day long, and he expects to explain relatively technical things to them. Good luck, Mr. Creator.
- pelorat 10mo agoIf your TV supports a "gaming" mode, I always recommend enabling that, because it usually turns off all the "enhancements". TV's should not try to be anything more than a large monitor.
- sspiff 10mo agoIt turns of any features that introduce latency - it will still mess up the colour space/brightness/saturation/... on most TVs.
- theshrike79 10mo agoFilmmaker Mode is the one you want. It's specifically set up to disable all "enhancements".
- ubermonkey 10mo ago"Game mode" on my Samsung absolutely does some goofy vibrancy thing to the color balance that is, at least to me, antithetical to watching well-created film and TV.
- account42 10mo agoIt also boosts brightness of dark scenes which turns black frames into a horrible gray smudge.
- vintagedave 10mo agoFrom the first four episodes released before Christmas, I feel far more worried if the season is worth watching at all, not what TV settings to use. The tone felt considerably different: constant action, little real plot, character interaction felt a shallow reflection of prior seasons, exposition rather than foreshadowing and development. I was cringing during the “Tom, Dick and Harry” section. From body language, the actors seemed to feel the same way.
- moshib 10mo agoIt also feels like they took some of the things people enjoyed in previous seasons like cultural references and protagonists using analogy to explain things, and just put way too much of that in this season. It's good in moderation, but this season it feels excessive.
- nelox 10mo agoChristopher Nolan and Paul Thomas Anderson made a similar appeal a few years ago. The soap opera effect is my pet bugbear and is the first to go. https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/christopher-nolan-paul-thomas-anderson-filmmaker-mode-tv-setting-1202169326/ https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/christopher-nolan...
- suncore 10mo ago24 fps looks like shit. Hurts my brain. Ain't turning off smooth motion :-)
- danielktdoranie 10mo agoDo most people still watch stuff on their TVs? I haven’t used my TV for anything in 2 years. I usually consume content on my smartphone or computer.
- khalic 10mo agoThe real garbage is that article
- swiftcoder 10mo agoShades of the game of thrones creators telling us our TV settings were at fault when they decided to release an entire episode filmed in the dark?
- amelius 10mo agoGarbage in, garbage out.
- cooper_ganglia 10mo agoThe only garbage I'm turning off is Stranger Things. How did they manage to keep going after the train-wreck that was Season 3??
- port3000 10mo agoMore importantly, I wish I could turn off the entire Samsung 'Smart' TV UI and bring back HDMI, TV, and Apps. I get bombarded with ads and recommendations every time.
- bt1a 10mo agoI have my LG TV dumbed down with some firewall rules in OPNsense. Something similar may help you
- port3000 10mo agoInteresting, perhaps a project for the holidays. Thanks for the tip
- sirmarksalot 10mo agoI keep all that stuff off my LG TV by keeping the ethernet cable unplugged and let Apple TV handle all the streaming stuff. I still somewhat resent that I need to wait for the software to boot up just to change inputs, but at least I don't get ads. Hopefully Samsung works the same way?
- Bloomy22 10mo agoIt's so annoying that the only way to stay "online" is to decline the privacy policy, etc. But by doing that, you lose access to the app store and the ability to update the firmware. I hate my damn Samsung Smart TV, even though it (almost) doesn't show any ads in my country/region. Its bloatware makes even the most basic use of the TV infuriating.
- YmiYugy 10mo agoI’m not turning off motion smoothing. I don’t like the ghosting it can introduce but I hate the stutter artifacts from fast motion at 24fps with a passion. I get that people who grew up on 24fps movies and 60fps soap operas have a negative association with HFR, but I didn’t and I dread the flickery edges you make me see. (yes, even with frame rate matching)
- MarkusWandel 10mo agoMy main computer monitor, ancient now (a Dell U2711), was a calibrated SRGB display when new and still gives very good colour rendition. Are movies produced in this colour space? No idea. But they all look great in SRGB. A work colleague got himself a 40" HD TV as a big computer monitor. This is a few years ago. I was shocked at the overamped colour and contrast. Went through all the settings and with everything turned to minimum - every colour saturation slider, everything that could be found - it was almost realistic but still garish compared to SRGB. But that's what people want, right? Overamped everything is how those demo loops at Costco are set up, that's what sells, that's what people want in their living rooms, right?
- callc 10mo ago> But that's what people want, right? Overamped everything is how those demo loops at Costco are set up, that's what sells, that's what people want in their living rooms, right? I just want accurate colors to the artists intent, and a brightness nob. No other image “enhancement” features
- naiv 10mo agoWith many modern TVs just turning off energy savings will already enhance picture quality by a magnitude.
- fleroviumna 10mo ago[dead]
- jug 10mo agoSince people will at large not do this because they don't read Screenrant and how this needs to cut though the massive social media noise and we're looking at millions of viewers, what is the consequences with this particular episode? Viewing issues, or is it meant to be dark but won't be? Last time I heard this reasoning about bad TV settings was during the infamous GoT episode that was very dark. Producers generally don't warn about TV settings preemptively as if to warn, so it makes me a bit concerned. Stranger Things already face complaints about S5 lately, having viewing issues on the finale would be the cherry on top.
- urlads 10mo agoFilm maker mode if your TV has it works well for this.
- urlads 10mo agoFilm maker mode turns most of this garbage off if your TV has that setting.
- Hamuko 10mo agoI'm almost ashamed to admit that I keep my LG C1 on the "natural" motion smoothing setting, since I watch a lot of anime and it really smooths out panning animations without making live action look like soap operas.
- sevensor 10mo agoWhat is the “soap opera effect?” Mentioned in the article, but I haven’t heard of it. Also, this is probably just because I’m old, but a lot of recent TV seems inadequately lit, where you can just barely see part of one character’s face in some scenes. It’s like they watched Apocalypse Now and decided everything should be the scene with Marlon Brando in the cave.
- codelikeawolf 10mo agoIt's called motion interpolation, but a lot of TVs call it "motion smoothing". It artificially increases the frame rate. I don't really know how to describe it, but I find it a little disconcerting and I immediately turn that feature off when I buy a new TV. It almost makes the motion look more "real life" in a bad way.
- sevensor 10mo agoAh, thank you. I’ve seen that, and it’s horrible!
- Arubis 10mo agoI can spot Samsung panels from a distance because they've always got a nausea-inducing motion "enhancement". No idea if this is a setting or always on because it's such a turnoff that I'll never purchase one.
- ubermonkey 10mo agoit's a setting. We have a Samsung and out of the box it was awful, just like every other modern TV, but with the goofy bullshit turned off it looks amazing. (How did we decide on it if the defaults are terrible? A neighbor bought the same one on sale and figured it out ahead of me.)
- mattacular 10mo agoThe soap opera effect (caused by motion smoothing and similar settings) is the one that bugs me most. It's good for sports where the ball is in motion and that's it. Makes everything else look absolutely terrible, yet is on by default on most modern tvs.
- Exuma 10mo agoTurning off soap opera setting on every single person I visit... and watching their reaction ... "dude...... I've been arguing with my wife about this and she thinks im crazy!!!"
- mgaunard 10mo agoMost of those features exist to compensate for low-quality TVs. The guy should just advocate for people to buy $2k+ TVs instead of $200 ones.
- ilamont 10mo agoRegarding the darkness trend, a great HN comment from a few years ago by @atoav who worked as a director of photography: Movies have dark scenes nowadays mainly because it is a trend. On top of that dark scenes can have practical advantages (set building, VFX, lighting, etc. can be reduced or become much simpler to do which directly translates into money saved during shooting). If I had to guess, the trend of dark scenes are a direct result of the fact that in the past two decades we our digital sensors got good enough to actually shoot in such low-light environments. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35398576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35398576
- BonoboIO 10mo agoNext optimization: Black screen
- randerson 10mo agoI'd pay good money for a dumb 4K OLED TV that does nothing but show whatever is coming in through the HDMI port. I use a Playstation 5 for everything including Netflix, Apple TV and so on. But every time I turn on the PS5, my TV detects the Playstation and automatically changes the TV's Sound and Video modes to "Gaming", which makes dialog difficult to hear on TV. So I change the setting manually using its horrible remote control, only for it to change back to Gaming the next time I use it.
- Scoundreller 10mo agoYou just gave me an idea. I have a “modern” Samsung Tv with the 8 button or whatever remote. Always a pain to change source. I think I could get a proper aftermarket Samsung remote for their older models with 100 buttons and not have to use the menus as much.
- thesuitonym 10mo agoSceptre makes them, and they're not terribly expensive, although in the US the price has gone up significantly for some strange, remote reason.
- dpark 10mo agoDo they actually make OLEDs? I haven’t bought a tv in quite a while but last I looked dumb OLED TVs didn’t exist.
- thesuitonym 10mo agoI could have swore they did, but looking at their current lineup it appears I'm wrong.
- warmwaffles 10mo agoAbsolutely love my dumb Sceptre TV. Colors aren't super fantastic, but for the casual observer, it is just fine and gets the job done.
- BrokenCogs 10mo ago
- neom 10mo agoI know this sounds extreme but I get actually angry/frustrated and often just can't watch peoples TVs. I don't watch TV myself but if I go to someones house and they have the TV on and it's one of those "enhanced" TVs, it boils my blood. I went to film school, I have emmy's, I've watched hours long conversations about frame rates and dynamic range choices and so many aspects of the creative process that the TV then...removes, heck sometimes I see these smart TVs playing something and I can't even tell what framerate it might even be in, sometimes it looks like in one scene it's 60p and in another is like 300p, then back to 24p? it's so jarring. I'm really surprised people even like these features/manufacturers think they're good defaults. Really grinds my gears!!! </rant>
- Aurornis 10mo ago> I don't watch TV myself but if I go to someones house and they have the TV on and it's one of those "enhanced" TVs, it boils my blood Let people enjoy things. If you don’t even watch TV yourself, it shouldn’t bother you how other people enjoy their own TV. If someone enjoys frame interpolation for their private watching, so what?
- neom 10mo agoYou're right. I've thought that before and made, I guess brief, peace with it...And frankly, it's TV so who cares? All my objections and frustrations are around how it should be enjoyed and how the creative process and artists should be respected all my interpretations of how I think it should be - ofc a recipe for frustration. So you're right: at the end of the day, who cares, if people enjoy the show, they enjoy the show... thanks for reminding me. :)
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- episode404 10mo agoThat's a weird thing to be so insistent on defending.
- 10mo ago
- easterncalculus 10mo agoIt's funny too because the show doesn't even need most of the screen real estate. The most impactful scenes are kept to the middle third of the screen so that they can be cropped in vertical video for edits on TikTok and Instagram. That's on top of the repetitive dialogue crutch, designed so that you don't even have to stop scrolling on your phone to follow the plot on your TV. It's all slop now.
- TheRealPomax 10mo agoThis "article" looks like it's just AI summarizing what someone else said, somewhere else. Not an original thought or comment to be found in it about the subject matter, just "A said B. Then they said C. Then they even called that D".
- mat0 10mo agoI don’t follow Stranger Things, so I cannot speak about the quality of the show, but I clicked on the link to see which settings the guy was talking about and I was surprised about how awful the CGI of that shot looks like. It’s hideous. Looks worse than 10 year old video games. What is that about? Am I going crazy?
- MadameMinty 10mo agoI see it. Overworked special effects artists, I suppose. It's funny how well some movie CGI from the 90s holds up in comparison.
- speedgoose 10mo agoI didn’t watch the show too, and I agree. Though I’m not convinced that excellent CGI would significantly improve the scene.
- y-c-o-m-b 10mo agoIt does look terrible in that video, but I watch on a projector and it actually looks good on it, so I think this is simply an artifact of watching a phone recording of a TV.
- zoklet-enjoyer 10mo agoYeah, I'm just going to skip that show entirely.
- npodbielski 10mo agoWill that fix the story?
- _cs2017_ 10mo agoWould appreciate any comments about whether this is good advice for LG G5. And if it is, does it apply only to movies / TV shows, or also to other video sources (like youtube, gaming, etc)?
- mensetmanusman 10mo agoIf people were smart, the stream would have an encoded set of settings recommendations that the TV would prompt you to enable if you desire.
- lingrush4 10mo ago[flagged]
- pkulak 10mo agoEh, it just fell into the trap of “too much magic”. By the end, every single plot element was created by something magic the audience has never seen before, then eventually solved by another magic thing no one had seen before. It happens a lot.
- burtonator 10mo agoIt was a show that should have been two seasons, which they stretched into five.
- sssilver 10mo agoFunny because seven years ago Tom Cruise did a PSA about this exact same thing for Mission Impossible [1], during which he said “filmmakers are working with manufacturers to solve this issue”. I guess seven years later it’s still not solved. [1] https://youtu.be/1J0Dan0WaZk?si=fPH8uL3FhaiCKIRy https://youtu.be/1J0Dan0WaZk?si=fPH8uL3FhaiCKIRy
- iknowstuff 10mo agoThe 120Hz / "soap opera effect" is a matter of perspective. I hate the judder and blur during 30Hz camera pans. Love interpolated smoothness.
- pitched 10mo agoI was a huge fan of the high-framerate Hobbit films. It made the huge battles much easier to follow and I felt like I picked up a lot more of the details. Such a shame it never had a retail release.
- nosianu 10mo agoNever mind the battles and action scenes, just any scenes with normal movement of the camera. There is a lot of panning in the initial scenes of The Hobbit (opening scene is the fall of Erebor). I watched that movie initially with the new higher frequency, and everything was soooo smooth. When I rewatched it, every single time I have to experience the terrible, terrible choppy, hard-to-see-anything lower frequency transformations and I cry. This is the 12st century, and the movies can't even pan across some landscape smoothly? In that first viewing I saw everything in those caves, it was so easy. Oh how I miss that.
- account42 10mo agoIt's really infuriating that after decades of dealing with the implications of NTSC video systems not supporting 24 FPS the Blu Ray designers chose not to support 48 FPS even though 60 FPS is supported.
- zaptheimpaler 10mo agoSame. I actually was fine watching 24/30FPS on an older TV, but on the 120Hz screen it just looks incredibly juddery without a little motion smoothing.
- scuff3d 10mo agoIt seems to be different for everyone. My wife and her Dad don't even notice the smoothing affect. It drives me and my brother absolutely fucking nuts on the other hand. It makes things basically unwatchable for me, it's so distracting.
- Romanulus 10mo ago[dead]
- nitwit005 10mo agoIf you have a shared office setup, the monitor display modes are quite a nuisance. People will change them, and you'll have to sit there figuring out why the screen has a green tint.
- pipes 10mo agoCan anyone explain why my Samsung s95b oled TV film maker mode is so dark? I'm a parent with young kids and I just do not have time to delve into all the settings. I've managed to stop films looking like soap operas but I'm not sure exactly what I've adjusted. Also, if I'm watching from my pc on the same TV using VLC player is it a mistake just to leave the TV on "game mode" ? This seems to work fine, but I've no idea how that interacts with settings on the TV. One last rant, it seems to have a setting that uses a light sensor to darken the picture if the room is dark. It seems to be nearly impossible to turn off except through some service menu nonsense I really don't want to touch. The only temp fix is turning the TV on and off again, which I've resorted to when I literally couldn't see what was going on in the film.
- Bloomy22 10mo agoWhat TV model do you have? I just tried Filmmaker mode on my Samsung S95B and, like you, I find it very dark. Another flaw of this TV is that if the edges of the screen darken (like the borders in widescreen movies), the entire panel goes dark.
- pipes 10mo agoQe55s95bat I didn't know about the other bug. I wonder if that is actually what I'm seeing rather than the dark room thing I'm talking about.
- hero4hire 10mo agoGamers do the same thing. AI frame-gen Film grain Chromatic aberration Motion blur Once the TVs became video cards with filtering and fake refresh rates this was always our fate. Monitors and default video card drivers have had issues in the past. You'd think the TVs would update their filters with as much spyware data mining they do. But alas, your TV will likely never improve by software in any significance. History has proven that. Disabling all the features to the hardware spec is best, never connecting a smarttv to the net. Interested in any true exceptions.
- everdrive 10mo agoPeople rightly decry the "smart" aspects of modern TVs, but these are quite bad as well. I really just want a display. I don't want: HDR, frame interpolation, weird dynamic coloring, etc, etc. It's the equivalent of a kid for first learned to use photoshop.
- scuff3d 10mo agoFrom what I've seen, the quality of the TV it's viewed on is the least of this season's problems.
- NoSalt 10mo agoHA ... it's a good thing my TV isn't good enough to have any of those fancy options. Take THAT, big TV!
- why-o-why 10mo agoFunny I just posted the exact same thing last week, but for everything and not just Stranger Things (which I don't even watch): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46369860#46370881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46369860#46370881
- squarefoot 10mo agoThat crap should be turned off regardless of the material being watched. It's just rubbish put there to write in the advertising crazy, and completely bogus, contrast and resolution numbers, or to fake audio features that have no other reason to exist than putting one more bullet point when advertising that model. I wish signage displays were a bit cheaper because as of today they're the best possible less enshittified screens to watch stuff on.
- wazoox 10mo agoWell, TV sets defaults have been tailored for the maximum showroom impact (loud colours, flashy effects) since... about forever ? Plus ordinary people don't give a sh*t. Most people can't see the difference between HD and 4K (remember that in developed countries, most people are over 40, and 25% overall suffer from myopia). In the 00s, people all had 16:9 TVs and watched 4:3 programs horribly stretched without batting an eye. Most Full HD large screens suffered from horrible decoding stutter late into the 2010s.
- KevinMS 10mo agoOn Amazons FireTV (the whole TV, not the Stick) its called, "natural cinema". Turn it ON. It comes turned off, and it freaked me out when I first got this new modern TV.
- tylerchilds 10mo agoI can’t imagine releasing an app and then shaming my users into tweaking about:config
- Anamon 10mo agoRoss Duffer doesn't build TV sets.
- intellix 10mo agoWhen you go from Cinema/game mode to vivid it looks ridiculous. When you've spent some time in vivid and go to cinema/game it looks dull and washed out
- lfliosdjf 10mo agoAs thought its the only think stopping it to make a great tv show :sigh: