Prompted by the blue ray thread: too real looking???

Yes, I've noticed it with a few evening dramas that are broadcast in HD, the movement seems almost clunky. Frankly, the only thing I watch in HD is sports. Everything else I pretty much watch on the regular definition channels.

 

HD is free with our provider, but we only get something like 30 channels. Either way, I get my hockey in HD, can read the names and actually tell where the puck is.

 

Golf and Basketball in HD is teh win. My Name Is Earl, not so much.

 

Give me hockey in HD, and I'm fine. As far as movies go, I don't see any real "improvement" in my movie watching experience. Movies are supposed to have a "look" to them... what's the point of watching something like Grindhouse in HD?

 

I noticed the same thing at Circuit City. They had the full-blown Blu-ray set up and Transformers the movie was playing. It did look more like watching a live television show being taped rather than something on film. Yeah, it was a bit weird to say the least.

 

All the critics can send me their Blue Ray players if it ruins your watching pleasure.

 

I can see where you're coming from, but I think the awkwardness/"overrealisticality" is more than justified by how much better it looks and sounds over SD.

 

I would suggest calibrating your display using something like this: http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Video-Essentials-Basics-Blu-ray/dp/B000V6LST0 .

 

Yes they are!

A 120hz refresh rate greatly exacerbates this wierdness.

 

I always thought people are pretty much in as high a definition as is possible.

 

I always preferred older recordings of pretty much everything.

music videos, for example: guns n roses - the garden

tv comedy shows: father ted, men behaving badly.

films, die hard, lethal weapon, trainspotting.

Sure, watching things in hi-def are alright but I like old grainy stuff.

 

This reminds me very much of back when drum machines and samplers went (over a fairly short period of like two years) from 8 bit samples to 12 bit and then to 16 bit. Each improvement had people raving about the increased detail and realism, but then there was a backlash of people saying the low bit resolution samples had a warmer, more organic sound to them compared to the supposedly more accurate 16 bit. So then people started buying up the older machines. Then Keyboard magazine had an April 1st issue where they reviewed a 4 bit drum machine with the richest, fattest, warmest, most organic drum machine sounds they'd ever heard. After that they got dozens of letters from people begging to find out where they could buy it.

 

I wouldn't recommend watching pron on Blue Ray then.

 

I replaced an older 720 HD TV with a same size 1080 HD TV and noticed a substantial difference in the picture quality. It made movies look more like the older TV shows, as the characters looked more real and lifelike, as if it was a live broadcast. My wife hated it, but I liked it OK. Now, after about five months, I don't notice it, everything just looks clearer.

While I love sports on HDTV, there is another type of show that I watch now more than ever, NATURE SHOWS. Man, they are absolutely amazing in HDTV. I really like the shows that are filmed from the space shuttle and show parts of the Earth in HD. Those are breathtaking.

 

i wach blu ray all day, every day at work, (currently i'm being treated to elton john's 60th birthday concert and mamma mia.) i'm pretty meh about it, but go get yourselves the bbc series "planet earth" on blu ray and be amazed...

 

Try watching Star Trek from the sixties on HD. You can see the plywood and duct tape that the sets are made from. And, I just remembered, the fake rocks and things when they go down to the planets.