Darryl89

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I was watching Chaos Walking on prime video last night in 4K UHD HDR and afterwards I watched some select scenes on both versions, 4K UHD and HD and to my surprise, the picture was exactly the same (in certain shots the HD was actually clearer). The colours were darker in 4K (tv picture settings the same for both, e.g colour, temperature,backlight contrast, etc) but in terms of detail they were identical.

I have read that the film was shot in 4K, so I thought the 4K would be amazing compared to the HD. Or is it because it was shot in 4K, an upscaled HD version would look the same anyway?

Other films do show a much clearer difference so I don’t believe it’s my tv settings and my internet speed was running at 150mbps so it wasn’t that either.

Any thoughts?
 
What TV do you have?

The reason I ask is that all LCD 4K TVs bought recently are HDR compatible, but only the higher-end, more expensive TVs are HDR capable.
Most TVs don't have the brightness in the backlight or have a Full Array Local Dimming (FALD) system and without them, HDR content can look dark, murky, grey rather than black, colour tones can be off etc.
If you have a cheaper TV, you're probably better off sticking with HD over UHD for that reason. 4K isn't that great a jump in picture quality over 1080p, purely from a resolution standpoint, unless you have a monster screen or sit very, very close to the TV. The big difference is HDR, but if your TV isn't capable then it's best avoided.

Of course if you have a high end LCD or an OLED then it's possible you're needing to do some work on your settings.
 
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So I have a Philips 58PUS7505/12 which was £500. It has HDR10+ and Dolby Vision/Atmos but I know it is towards the budget end and is a VA panel.

However, Dolby Vision shows such as One Planet and that Meridian demo on Netflix both look great.
 
Unfortunately, your TV doesn't really meet the specs required to get good HDR, it neither has the backlight brightness nor does it have a FALD system.
So my advice would be as above really. Avoid HDR when you can.
 
I’ve also been told that it’s also possible that my TV is upscaling the HD stream to be as good as the 4K stream (although not as good as a 4K Blu Ray). Is that also possible? I don’t have a 4K blu ray player so I’m only going on streaming quality.
Also how come Dolby Vision looks great but not HDR since Dolby Vision requires even higher specs?
 
A 4K TV upscales everything that isn't 4K. If it didn't then you'd have black bars on all sides of the picture.

Dolby Vision, you're still not seeing it properly due to your TV but I have heard a few people say what you are, that standard HDR is poor but DV looks fine. DV is a higher spec of HDR, just with dynamic metadata to refine the effect further on a per-frame basis.
 
A 4K TV upscales everything that isn't 4K. If it didn't then you'd have black bars on all sides of the picture.

Dolby Vision, you're still not seeing it properly due to your TV but I have heard a few people say what you are, that standard HDR is poor but DV looks fine. DV is a higher spec of HDR, just with dynamic metadata to refine the effect further on a per-frame basis.
Thanks for all your help. I think I’ll stick to Dolby Vision if available (usually Netflix and iTunes it seems).
 
Ive noticed for some time that the sky hd picture is better than Netflix and Amazon 4K /hdr
 
I've had similar issues with this range of Philips UHD tv running on Saphi OS. All default picture profiles produced poor quality picture. Luckily SAPHI provides lots of settings to tune. It's just that the default ones provide very poor image quality.

I was able to get HDR to look decent and sometimes fantastic by tuning following settings:
  • Colour enhancement (Set to LOW or OFF)
    • Manually adjust saturation to higher level
    • If auto-enhancement is on this setting will make colours bleed
  • Sharpness to high, if you like film grain
  • "Perfect motion" or motion setting DISABLE
    • Enabling it will make video very smooth but loses too much detail
    • Some people like this soap opera effect
  • Set Contrast enhancement (Dynamic contrast) to OFF
    • Manually adjust contrast settings to higher level
    • Automatic enhancements will make dark areas look too dark and lose too much detail
  • HDR Plus, set to minimum
    • Auto setting will not always provide best picture
    • High setting will make some areas of the picture too dark
  • Error correction, MPEG artifact filter, noise filters set all to minimum or off
Now UHD HDR content from Primevideo looks fantastic. All the content is already very optimized, no need for filters and auto enhancements. Also HDR content is best viewed in a dark room. Also LCD technology provides very limited viewing angle, so you need to look directly at the screen. Also it doesn't hurt to clean the screen with a damp cloth gently. Do not use any detergents, only water.
 
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