Multi Media Discussion

Big Fish was a good movie, I recommend it.

Saw Run, fat boy Run the other day. I quite liked it too. If you like Hot Fuzz, you'll like it too.

Still trolling through the old boards and I came across a post by Tony where he links to an article about The Incredibles. There's a quote from Brad Bird that is almost prophetic now, "Hollywood rushes in whenever they see something they perceive as a trend, so you're going to see 10 billion CG movies in the next few years, and most of them are going to stink."

Quote
Mokers
I have never seen the arrival. It looks like an awesomely bad movie though. time to add it to the queue...

It may surprise you. The trailer is rather bad.

oh crap. GET IT NOW. Rent The Arrival. It's GOOD

What a journey.

Easy rental -- its in iTunes baby!

* 64% at RottenTomatoes
* 3 stars at iTunes (but only 7 reviews)
* 4 stars at Amazon w/ 40 reviews



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/14/2008 04:38PM by rino.

No school like the old school.

Ollie Johnston, the last of Disney's "Nine Old Men" has passed away.

Very cool article.

"He animated Thumper."

The water's stiff!!

interesting -- anyone have one of these calibration DVDs? They work?

ddt

Back in the day that I had I LaserVision player on my XBR I did open on the case, got out the mirror and blue filter and calibrate the RGB with little pots inside. Looked better and buzzed less. Think I'd try and find a shop that was run by geeks and borrow something like this: http://www.ultimateavmag.com/testtools/704avia/

I always thought the HDTV calibration was sort of like snake oil used by Home Theater shops to charge you extra money. Picture preferences vary greatly for each consumer. Take a look at Color Sync. Calibrate your monitor and then have somebody else do it; the profiles will be totally different. I think the NY Times article is bad because it relies on the answers from a Best Buy Technician and an A/V consultant. Of course they are going to say calibrating is good, because that is how they make money. It's not even clear from the article whether the writer tested it on any HDTVs himself.

I also think it leads to a lot of confirmation bias; people want to believe the calibration makes their picture better after tweaking by a professional (and justifying the expense). It also depends on what you use your TV for. Calibrating for movies is going to make lots of broadcast events look different, and it definitely changes things if you are playing video games.

If I had plunked $10-20K into my home theater (if I were to buy today, my TV + receiver + speakers would be about $2K), I might care more about calibrating. As it is, I used Sony's built-in audio calibration to adjust the surround settings, and simply use my TV's built-in AV Modes (Game, Movie, Sports, etc) to adjust the picture settings.

I guess the DVD would be OK though. I might try it on the next Pixar disc I get from NetFlix. I also hear you can find settings for a lot of TVs on AVSForums. It would be interesting to do a study though.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2008 07:58AM by Mokers.

I tend to agree that MOST people are easily duped. The freaks that live in high end A/V Stores are different. They have a few thousand various colorbar/burst/grids that they can go to and they put on the filters and try and stretch the parameters of the set to get as close to SMPTE polar coord plots as the set's adjustability will allow...

Output is typically a lot lower than the presets for any "scene" and the colors come much closer to a well photographed film that the cartoonishness of most TV shows.

The funny thing is that if you do compare a calibrated set to an in-person nighttime sporting event it tends to look less "shimmery" -- the color temp of newer lights at football & baseball is WAY biased toward the almost indigo portion of the spectrum "more real than real" ...

Quote
Tony Leggett
Big Fish was a good movie, I recommend it.

Saw Run, fat boy Run the other day. I quite liked it too. If you like Hot Fuzz, you'll like it too.

Haven't seen Hot Fuzz, but loved Shawn Of the Dead.

Quote
stan adams
I tend to agree that MOST people are easily duped. The freaks that live in high end A/V Stores are different. They have a few thousand various colorbar/burst/grids that they can go to and they put on the filters and try and stretch the parameters of the set to get as close to SMPTE polar coord plots as the set's adjustability will allow...

Output is typically a lot lower than the presets for any "scene" and the colors come much closer to a well photographed film that the cartoonishness of most TV shows.

The funny thing is that if you do compare a calibrated set to an in-person nighttime sporting event it tends to look less "shimmery" -- the color temp of newer lights at football & baseball is WAY biased toward the almost indigo portion of the spectrum "more real than real" ...

No disagreement that an A/V professional can help your TV produce more accurate color. I just wonder at what point it makes sense. If I had a dedicated room to movie watching, I give Calibration a god. But do the settings that make the Matrix look awesome do me much good for America's Next Top Model? I'm not saying these people are in the same boat as the $200 HDMI cable folks.

I would like to do a test. Have people look at a TV picture, then look at a second picture. For some people, we tell them it was calibrated by a professional, but don't change it. For some, it was calibrated by an ordinary consumer, but don't change anything. The others would get calibrated sets by a professional and an ordinary consumer. I guess my skepticism is how much color accuracy affects your perceptions if you have no idea what is going on.

It's not just accuracy -- big part is the contrast range. Just about all sets fail to display the full light-to-dark space. You end up making a compromise that forces the set to work too hard. Literally more voltage is blasted onto the image making bits that is needed, whether you are talked CRT, plasma or LCD. By optimising the range you may very well find that the amount of daylight in your regular TV viewing room is too great... Did you ever walk into to a control room/studio that was brightly lit?

Makes you rethink things like window treatments and even table lamp placement.

Color accuracy is just a baseline. Think of those window treatments and table lamps in a different context. How does the light from those affect your perception of various decorations in a room... artwork... even wallpaper and paint.

I have my projector adjusted for my own tastes. I'm sure a home theater purist would disembowel me for crimes against their visual cortex but I built the theater for my own enjoyment. I don't care about the artistic intentions of film directors or the rants of calibration fanboys. I understand the necessity of standardized calibration in an editing studio but I don't acknowledge its importance in my own theater.

Quote
Cloudscout
have my projector adjusted for my own tastes. I'm sure a home theater purist would disembowel me for crimes against their visual cortex but I built the theater for my own enjoyment. I don't care about the artistic intentions of film directors or the rants of calibration fanboys. I understand the necessity of standardized calibration in an editing studio but I don't acknowledge its importance in my own theater.

Well said, Master Fred!

I have one for an LCD projector

Quote
stan adams
It's not just accuracy -- big part is the contrast range. Just about all sets fail to display the full light-to-dark space. You end up making a compromise that forces the set to work too hard. Literally more voltage is blasted onto the image making bits that is needed, whether you are talked CRT, plasma or LCD. By optimising the range you may very well find that the amount of daylight in your regular TV viewing room is too great... Did you ever walk into to a control room/studio that was brightly lit?

Makes you rethink things like window treatments and even table lamp placement.

I wholeheartedly agree. I watch movies and a lot of shows (BSG, Heroes) in the dark for this reason. The focus of my comments is that I think we are trained a little too much into thinking there is some standard of what should look good to our eye. A professional can come in and "fix" your settings to some predetermined level of correctness, but if you are the one watching the TV, it should look good to your eye. As CS puts it:

Quote
Cloudscout
I have my projector adjusted for my own tastes. I'm sure a home theater purist would disembowel me for crimes against their visual cortex but I built the theater for my own enjoyment. I don't care about the artistic intentions of film directors or the rants of calibration fanboys. I understand the necessity of standardized calibration in an editing studio but I don't acknowledge its importance in my own theater.

I also think new technology makes a difference. HDMI has a much smaller variance in quality in transmitting your signal than the $.99 Radio Shack composite cable.

Again, I wish I had some data to back up my thoughts.

hm, interesting. all i know is that no matter what setting (as mokers mentioned), the people look too orange.

ddt

Those are called Oompa Loompas. They're indentured slaves who run Willy Wonka's factory for him.