Poll: Does video quality affect your opinion of a movie?

Twinrehz

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I've found the rapid transition of formats, from VHS to DVD to Blu-ray and now 4K, with promises of 8k in the future, to be somewhat annoying. I'm a big contender for better quality, but at what point does this start to become redundant? I'm quite satisfied with blu-ray (which basically is 2K), the richness of detail is stunning, and visuals are a delight to behold.

However, not all movies needs stunning visuals to tell a story. A while ago I saw Young Einstein again, on DVD. I watched it on a 1080p screen, and I didn't have a problem with the lower resolution, as I felt it didn't need any more.

On the other hand, I've recently acquired Lord of the Rings Extended Edition on blu-ray, and looking forward to be blown away by magnificent visuals in spectacular high definition (as it says on the box).

What do you think? Does it come down to the story-telling, or is hi-def the spectacular future that the movie industry wants it to be, since 3D is kinda flopping? And yet modern technology can barely handle 4K resolution, yet they're pushing it like it's the next coming of Christ.
 

StriderShinryu

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For me, it doesn't really impact my opinion at all. Of course, I like high quality HD as much as the next person, but likely because I spent most of my life with VHS being the standard it's not really a major issue to me. On some level I still see VHS on a standard CRT screen as "the norm" in my head.
 

kasperbbs

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1080p is enough for me, perhaps i would change my opinion if i saw what 2k or above looks like, but i couldn't afford a new TV right now anyway, so i'll probably switch when 4k becomes the norm and prices wont be as ridiculous as they are now, or when my TV dies and i'll have no choice in the matter.
 

Fijiman

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For me, so long as it doesn't look like complete shit I generally don't care. I don't even see the point of 1080p and 4k just sounds like a complete waste of time and money.
 

Something Amyss

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Twinrehz said:
I've found the rapid transition of formats, from VHS to DVD to Blu-ray and now 4K, with promises of 8k in the future, to be somewhat annoying.
VHS lasted 25 years (more, if you consider how well it sold even after it was officially "killed"). I don't think it's part of the chain of rapid changes. Meeanwhile, DVD's nearing 20.

To answer the question, DVD was a godsend (though much of that was technology and not the visuals itself). Blu-Ray is kind of neat. Beyond that, I don't care. I'm probably not going to own a TV large enough to make a huge difference. I watch stuff on DVD all the time, and would probably watch VHS quality if I needed to. It doesn't hurt my opinion of a movie.

It is, however, cool to see things look shinier. I've just always viewed that as a novelty.
 

Ed130 The Vanguard

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If possible I would watch everything at DVD level quality as a minimum.

However I wouldn't dismiss media of poor recorded quality out of hand, that's just silly.
 

McElroy

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Nowadays I'm reluctant to go below 480p. Usually it's only some shit sports streams (cos' I'm not paying for quality :D) that make me settle for less. Watching poor quality streams kinda ruined or at least half-ruined Dredd and Looper for me.
 

Cowabungaa

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Opinion? No. It's unrelated to the movie itself.

Enjoyment? Oh yes, that it will.

Though not majorly. If it's too low I get a little miffed, but I'm usually okay. Given, that does depend a little on the kind of movie I'm watching. There's some awesome spectacle flicks that I'd rather watch on high quality, because it makes the pretty pictures and explosions look better- But when a movie is a little more cerebral, I don't really care all that much as long as it's above DVD quality.
 

Mikeyfell

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nope. I typically watch Youtube at 360p (Tops. sometimes it's 240)
On a big screen like my TV 480 is just fine.

30 fPS is just fine
The only thing I'll complain about is when it falls below 20 FPS because that looks choppy
But sometimes I've had to watch videos at like 11 or 15 FPS because my internet is about as fast as a fat man with no legs chained to a cake.


I make videos now, and I never render them lower than 720p but all that means is that they take 4 or 5 hours to upload

60 FPS looks stupid to me though my friend has a huge 4K 240 HZ tv and I can't look at that thing
 

Vendor-Lazarus

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I read books. Without graphics. Any graphics, at all. So...

Ok, serious answer.
It doesn't matter if it is games or movies, so long as there are meat on the bones, I'm fine with it.
Without substance, graphics are just so much sparkly confetti in the wind.
That said, it's a great bonus, but it's just a bonus.
 

Hoplon

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Mar 31, 2010
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Twinrehz said:
I've found the rapid transition of formats, from VHS to DVD to Blu-ray and now 4K, with promises of 8k in the future, to be somewhat annoying. I'm a big contender for better quality, but at what point does this start to become redundant? I'm quite satisfied with blu-ray (which basically is 2K), the richness of detail is stunning, and visuals are a delight to behold.

However, not all movies needs stunning visuals to tell a story. A while ago I saw Young Einstein again, on DVD. I watched it on a 1080p screen, and I didn't have a problem with the lower resolution, as I felt it didn't need any more.

On the other hand, I've recently acquired Lord of the Rings Extended Edition on blu-ray, and looking forward to be blown away by magnificent visuals in spectacular high definition (as it says on the box).

What do you think? Does it come down to the story-telling, or is hi-def the spectacular future that the movie industry wants it to be, since 3D is kinda flopping? And yet modern technology can barely handle 4K resolution, yet they're pushing it like it's the next coming of Christ.
It's completely a "buy new hardware push" they are doing the same thing with PC gaming and the advocates look silly once you get to see the specs needed to run it. And that's something that gains a benefit (you can devote more resources to the detail as you don't have to do do certain resource hungry techniques)

in something passive like a movie, film like Imax is already way beyond 8k and people at home on 40-60ich screens don't get any benefit anyway.
 

Scarim Coral

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The only time the movie quailty matters to me is if it's video recording in a cinema. What? I referring to the only scene I can watched on Youtube is some lame recording!

Other than that, quality doesn't bother me at all since I still get DVD for my DVD player which my pc can only run movie on.
 

Sigmund Av Volsung

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Dec 11, 2009
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Video quality<Cinematography

It's why Blade Runner still looks good. It's why the action scenes in Apocalypse Now are still unsettling and truly depict madness through purely visual terms alone.

So long as the video quality doesn't begin hurting the movie(sound quality, being able to see) I can be fine with a DVD.
 

Summerstorm

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Depends on the movie.

Sci-Fi Action-Fantasyscenes in slow-motion-wide-arc while orchestral music swells, loaded with visual effects, feel better on a huge screen with a sweet audio system.

But overall i just need to see what is going on. DVD-quality is ok for most films in my opinion. Weirdly i find television looking too crisp, bright and ... ugly when it's modern HD. Somehow old television series look better to my eye (But only TV, not films)
 

Twinrehz

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To pose a bit of a different question as well, when will "medium" quality be enough for a film? Let's see some examples. For example, the original Star Wars trilogy? Does its special effects hold up well enough to justify HD releases, or does it just look weird? I know there's been quite a few remasters of it, I suppose the original special effects don't hold well even on DVD, or am I wrong?

I agree that as long as there's no visible pixelation or screen tearing, I'm not usually very concerned about the source format. I like watching videos in high resolution, but once I get into it, my mind kind of ignores how high the resolution is, and just flows with it, as long as there's no glaring issues with the video quality, like the aforementioned excessive pixelation, which can occur in some low-quality rips.

Honestly, I'm amazed that people still rip movies into 700MB sizes, intended to be written to CDs, in this age of writeable DVDs and blu-rays, and gigantic hard drives. I tried watching one of the X-men movies in that quality years ago, and it was just so badly ripped and heavily pixelated that it was basically impossible to watch. And that was before blu-ray was a thing.

Zachary Amaranth said:
Twinrehz said:
I've found the rapid transition of formats, from VHS to DVD to Blu-ray and now 4K, with promises of 8k in the future, to be somewhat annoying.
VHS lasted 25 years (more, if you consider how well it sold even after it was officially "killed"). I don't think it's part of the chain of rapid changes. Meeanwhile, DVD's nearing 20.

To answer the question, DVD was a godsend (though much of that was technology and not the visuals itself). Blu-Ray is kind of neat. Beyond that, I don't care. I'm probably not going to own a TV large enough to make a huge difference. I watch stuff on DVD all the time, and would probably watch VHS quality if I needed to. It doesn't hurt my opinion of a movie.

It is, however, cool to see things look shinier. I've just always viewed that as a novelty.
I may be off my mark here, but the way I remember it, DVD took its sweet time to gain proper traction in the market, although I loved it. It allowed for watching of movies again and again, and the quality of the recording would not deteriorate because of wear and tear, as traditional magnetic tapes were known to do. My brother has worn out quite a few video tapes that way. Blu-ray, while it's certainly gaining now, also seemed to me that it took some time to gain proper traction in the market. Now all kinds of old series and their dogs seem to pop up with blu-ray remasters, something that would probably have been more poorly received a few years ago, before it had gotten properly into the market.

Early adopters are always going to push things forward, I suppose, but most people seem content with what they have. With 4K it's a serious problem that hardware doesn't even properly support it, the HDMI specification for it isn't even ready yet. There may be some devices that support it, but the actual standard has yet to be fully supported via HDMI, only display port supports it as of yet.

Having a bit of a hard time expressing my thoughts on the subject, I don't quite know what to say. I am interested in discussing it a bit, though, so bring on some brainstorms to work on.

EDIT: I'm also curious who voted for the betamax. :p
 

Stabinbac

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Pixel count at this point is far less important than dynamic range. That needs better cameras, better compression techniques, larger file sizes, and higher quality TVs. Sick of shitty, blocky, shadows.
 

Zhukov

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I personally never saw much point to anything higher quality than a DVD or Blu-Ray.

OMG, the image is a bit sharper. Whoop-de-doo.

I mean, yeah, it's nice, but I don't really notice if it isn't there and so long as I can see what's going on I've never been fussed.
 

Something Amyss

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Twinrehz said:
To pose a bit of a different question as well, when will "medium" quality be enough for a film? Let's see some examples. For example, the original Star Wars trilogy? Does its special effects hold up well enough to justify HD releases, or does it just look weird? I know there's been quite a few remasters of it, I suppose the original special effects don't hold well even on DVD, or am I wrong?
I think the effects look fine on DVD. I also think the special editions look fine on BD. I mean, the special editions do add CGI, but not everywhere. By the same token, one of my first HD purchases was The Last Starfighter, a movie released in 1984 with some of the earlier CGI, and it benefits from the HD treatment because it kind of looks bad on an HD monitor coming from an SD source. Not enough to turn me off of the movie (which I've owned on just about everything), but still enough to make some difference.

Though again, I understand this becomes an issue of diminishing returns. Hell, to some extent I feel that way about the formats anyway. VHS to DVD? AWESOME. DVD to Blu-Ray? Cool! Then I saw a supposedly 4K source on a supposedly 4K monitor and I thought "Oh. That's...okay. Hardly seems worth a new standard, especially since they've already announced 8K."

Thing is, I'm kind of in your camp. Once I got star Wars in DVD format, I stopped caring what Lucas did to them and whether we'd see an original edition release on BD. Hell, the version I watched was my mom's.

I may be off my mark here, but the way I remember it, DVD took its sweet time to gain proper traction in the market, although I loved it.
They all do. It took until like 2008 before BD was able to beat VHS, a format that had been dead for almost a decade at that point.

It allowed for watching of movies again and again, and the quality of the recording would not deteriorate because of wear and tear, as traditional magnetic tapes were known to do. My brother has worn out quite a few video tapes that way. Blu-ray, while it's certainly gaining now, also seemed to me that it took some time to gain proper traction in the market. Now all kinds of old series and their dogs seem to pop up with blu-ray remasters, something that would probably have been more poorly received a few years ago, before it had gotten properly into the market.
I hope they do. There are a bunch of animated shows I'd like to see get a BD release for the smoother look on an HD TV, though I'm not exactly out clawing for them either.

Early adopters are always going to push things forward, I suppose, but most people seem content with what they have. With 4K it's a serious problem that hardware doesn't even properly support it, the HDMI specification for it isn't even ready yet. There may be some devices that support it, but the actual standard has yet to be fully supported via HDMI, only display port supports it as of yet.
Keep in mind that there's usually limited options for early adopters. My dad was one of the first people to buy a CD player, and they barely had any CDs at the time.

Of course, early adopters don't necessarily push things forward. History is littered with failed formats and ideas. The various permutations of CD, for example, never took over because there just isn't a market. People liked CDs and they didn't see the point in spending extra for DVDA, HDCD, SACD, etc. It's worse now, with more people buying non-physical media.

And I suspect it'll be worse for 4K and 8K for that reason, too. Not only are consumers likely to think that BD (or maybe even DVD) is "good enough," I don't think consumer markets are going to want to invest that much in it. I know that the early adopter and cinemaphile will, but will enough of the market care? Will broadcast companies want to broadcast in 8K at a significant cost with few potential viewers? Will enough movies be moved?

I'm not saying "no" but I am kind of leaning that way. I'm sure others disagree, though.