UHD in general, Samsung UBD-K8500 in particular
Discussion
My Samsung K8500 arrived today, thought I'd share some brief thoughts.
First impressions are good, it looks OK, better than the Samsung BD-F6500 it replaces. The remote is a bit small but actually quite easy to use, the finish on the player is good, the curve is not as pronounced as it looks in pictures and the controls are nicely placed (unlike the F6500).
In use the player responds quickly, whether navigating smart features or simply following an instruction to eject the disc tray. Save for some noise when searching discs (e.g. when you’ve just put one in) the player is silent.
My TV is a LGEF950V. This is the flat, 2015, 55 inch, 4k OLED. The set up was “plug ‘n’ play”, I just swapped the player, switched HDMI deep colour on on both devices, followed the 3-minute set up wizard on the Samsung and…well. Nothing. That’s all I did.
I have been able to back-to-back the Revenant on UHD and BluRay. UHD is a step forward, there’s no doubt the film does look better. After seeing the UHD the BluRay looks washed out, thin, flat. A good example is a scene where the camera follows a horse rider out of a forest into morning sun. On the BluRay the scene does start dark and then go bright but….somehow stays dim. It’s as if the bright sun light is washing everything else out, and there’s no quality to the light, it’s just brighter, as if someone has turned up the brightness control on the TV….on UHD the dark parts of the image are still there, and the bright sun light is extra, and has a depth to it. Dark parts of the image retain their detail and objects retain their colour. Fire is another good example, on BluRay the fires are flat and thin, they merge into the background….on UHD they are bold and bright, standing apart from their surroundings, casting light and reflections.
How much of this is down to the 4k resolution I’m not sure. I have seen a couple of scenes from ‘The Martian’ and there is detail there, the clean parts of the image (say inside the space ship) are very crisp and clear…but I’ve seen BluRay’s look pretty good in that aspect too…to be honest I haven’t really noticed the extra resolution, maybe my screen isn't big enough. I have noticed the increased contrast, brightness, detail and depth of colours. Some of that might be helped by the 4k, but I think most of it is the HDR and colour space.
Is it worth it? Well, it’s easy to say no. BluRay can still look amazing, and it’s not like UHD makes the story better or improves the acting but….films are my passion. I love watching a good film, partly for the feeling of being taken to another place and being shown things I could never see for myself…HDR gets me another few inches closer to that picture so for me, yes. I'm thrilled and can't wait to see more HDR, I can't wait to watch 'The Martian' tonight!
First impressions are good, it looks OK, better than the Samsung BD-F6500 it replaces. The remote is a bit small but actually quite easy to use, the finish on the player is good, the curve is not as pronounced as it looks in pictures and the controls are nicely placed (unlike the F6500).
In use the player responds quickly, whether navigating smart features or simply following an instruction to eject the disc tray. Save for some noise when searching discs (e.g. when you’ve just put one in) the player is silent.
My TV is a LGEF950V. This is the flat, 2015, 55 inch, 4k OLED. The set up was “plug ‘n’ play”, I just swapped the player, switched HDMI deep colour on on both devices, followed the 3-minute set up wizard on the Samsung and…well. Nothing. That’s all I did.
I have been able to back-to-back the Revenant on UHD and BluRay. UHD is a step forward, there’s no doubt the film does look better. After seeing the UHD the BluRay looks washed out, thin, flat. A good example is a scene where the camera follows a horse rider out of a forest into morning sun. On the BluRay the scene does start dark and then go bright but….somehow stays dim. It’s as if the bright sun light is washing everything else out, and there’s no quality to the light, it’s just brighter, as if someone has turned up the brightness control on the TV….on UHD the dark parts of the image are still there, and the bright sun light is extra, and has a depth to it. Dark parts of the image retain their detail and objects retain their colour. Fire is another good example, on BluRay the fires are flat and thin, they merge into the background….on UHD they are bold and bright, standing apart from their surroundings, casting light and reflections.
How much of this is down to the 4k resolution I’m not sure. I have seen a couple of scenes from ‘The Martian’ and there is detail there, the clean parts of the image (say inside the space ship) are very crisp and clear…but I’ve seen BluRay’s look pretty good in that aspect too…to be honest I haven’t really noticed the extra resolution, maybe my screen isn't big enough. I have noticed the increased contrast, brightness, detail and depth of colours. Some of that might be helped by the 4k, but I think most of it is the HDR and colour space.
Is it worth it? Well, it’s easy to say no. BluRay can still look amazing, and it’s not like UHD makes the story better or improves the acting but….films are my passion. I love watching a good film, partly for the feeling of being taken to another place and being shown things I could never see for myself…HDR gets me another few inches closer to that picture so for me, yes. I'm thrilled and can't wait to see more HDR, I can't wait to watch 'The Martian' tonight!
Your comments on UHD and HDR is interesting and valid as commented on this YouTube video
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RtTIaa-ZgL0
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RtTIaa-ZgL0
And yet I think that video formats will continue to evolve apace because it helps manufacturers shift hardware.
If it were to settle for 5 years or so, I might be tempted to invest in a new TV or BD player.
So having established 4k as the new de facto standard, they hit us with HDR on top.
Then there will be something else, then another upgrade, and so on.
As it stands, I won't bother, especially since no one else in the house would appreciate the difference anyway!
If it were to settle for 5 years or so, I might be tempted to invest in a new TV or BD player.
So having established 4k as the new de facto standard, they hit us with HDR on top.
Then there will be something else, then another upgrade, and so on.
As it stands, I won't bother, especially since no one else in the house would appreciate the difference anyway!
I am looking forward to getting involved with 4K/HDR myself and the limited amount that I have seen so far definitely reflects your experience.
I am going to hang back for a while though. This is partially because I hate waiting for new material to become available. There are a very small number of UHD Blu Rays at the moment, but I am hoping this will change as more new players get released.
The other reason is that the majority of my 1080P viewing is with a projector. 4K projectors are still silly money at the moment, so I'd have to trade the big screen experience for a 55" TV, albeit with a much sharper image and HDR.
At the moment, it looks as though I will ease myself in by swapping my current 55" TV and Blu Ray player for 4K/HDR at the end of the year and do the projector upgrade another year later by which time there will hopefully be one available a little bit cheaper.
I am going to hang back for a while though. This is partially because I hate waiting for new material to become available. There are a very small number of UHD Blu Rays at the moment, but I am hoping this will change as more new players get released.
The other reason is that the majority of my 1080P viewing is with a projector. 4K projectors are still silly money at the moment, so I'd have to trade the big screen experience for a 55" TV, albeit with a much sharper image and HDR.
At the moment, it looks as though I will ease myself in by swapping my current 55" TV and Blu Ray player for 4K/HDR at the end of the year and do the projector upgrade another year later by which time there will hopefully be one available a little bit cheaper.
kingston12 said:
I am looking forward to getting involved with 4K/HDR myself and the limited amount that I have seen so far definitely reflects your experience.
I am going to hang back for a while though. This is partially because I hate waiting for new material to become available. There are a very small number of UHD Blu Rays at the moment, but I am hoping this will change as more new players get released.
The other reason is that the majority of my 1080P viewing is with a projector. 4K projectors are still silly money at the moment, so I'd have to trade the big screen experience for a 55" TV, albeit with a much sharper image and HDR.
At the moment, it looks as though I will ease myself in by swapping my current 55" TV and Blu Ray player for 4K/HDR at the end of the year and do the projector upgrade another year later by which time there will hopefully be one available a little bit cheaper.
I'm in a fairly similar situation, although I have already bought my 55 inch TV. I'm hoping to resurrect my PJ setup in about 18 months, hopefully with an HDR PJ (JVC X5000 for example) and perhaps with a real 4K one if prices come down.I am going to hang back for a while though. This is partially because I hate waiting for new material to become available. There are a very small number of UHD Blu Rays at the moment, but I am hoping this will change as more new players get released.
The other reason is that the majority of my 1080P viewing is with a projector. 4K projectors are still silly money at the moment, so I'd have to trade the big screen experience for a 55" TV, albeit with a much sharper image and HDR.
At the moment, it looks as though I will ease myself in by swapping my current 55" TV and Blu Ray player for 4K/HDR at the end of the year and do the projector upgrade another year later by which time there will hopefully be one available a little bit cheaper.
To be honest the best experience I've had watching films was on my modest Epson 6100 (SDR, 1080p) projector on an 84 inch screen. I'd rather have a good 1080p, non-HDR but 84 inch picture, than a very good, HDR, 4k, but 55 inch screen.
Edited by varsas on Wednesday 11th May 13:25
You're not supposed to switch Deep Colour on, that was for BR and not UHD-BR.
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/columns/my-two-cents...
One thing I discovered early on was that it’s important to set the UDB-K8500’s HDMI Color Format to YCbCr(4:4:4) and to make sure that HDMI Deep Color is set to Off. That’s easy to overlook during set-up, because you think “Deep Color? Of course I want Deep Color!” and leave this setting on. But HDMI Deep Color is a legacy Blu-ray feature (not an Ultra HD feature) that was meant to allow regular Blu-ray Discs to display 12-bit color (it’s normally 8-bit). But nobody ever really took advantage of 12-bit color on the format. Ultra HD Blu-ray employs 10-bit color HDR, so if you accidentally set HDMI Deep Color to on, the player upconverts the 10-bit signal to 12-bit instead, which the display then has to convert back to 10-bit… resulting in terrible color banding.
I'll give the format a year to see how it goes
Players are better and cheaper than when BR started and hopefully the content is good.
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/columns/my-two-cents...
One thing I discovered early on was that it’s important to set the UDB-K8500’s HDMI Color Format to YCbCr(4:4:4) and to make sure that HDMI Deep Color is set to Off. That’s easy to overlook during set-up, because you think “Deep Color? Of course I want Deep Color!” and leave this setting on. But HDMI Deep Color is a legacy Blu-ray feature (not an Ultra HD feature) that was meant to allow regular Blu-ray Discs to display 12-bit color (it’s normally 8-bit). But nobody ever really took advantage of 12-bit color on the format. Ultra HD Blu-ray employs 10-bit color HDR, so if you accidentally set HDMI Deep Color to on, the player upconverts the 10-bit signal to 12-bit instead, which the display then has to convert back to 10-bit… resulting in terrible color banding.
I'll give the format a year to see how it goes
Players are better and cheaper than when BR started and hopefully the content is good.Edited by probedb on Wednesday 11th May 21:13
varsas said:
To be honest the best experience I've had watching films was on my modest Epson 6100 (SDR, 1080p) projector on an 84 inch screen. I'd rather have a good 1080p, non-HDR but 84 inch picture, than a very good, HDR, 4k, but 55 inch screen.
Yep. I have got a Benq W1070 and a 92" screen that cost me about £600 in total. The scale means that a good quality Blu Ray showing on that is always better than my 55" TV, and even upgrading to 4k HDR wouldn't bridge the gap enough for me either.Edited by varsas on Wednesday 11th May 13:25
I will always keep a TV because there is very little streamed content that is good enough to be shown on the projector, but I am fairly reluctant to upgrade the TV because the projector will always be my number one choice.
4K will make a massive difference to projectors when/if it becomes affordable. As I said, my projector does a great job with good quality 1080p material, but the same material is still sharper on my 55" TV as you'd expect. Four times the resolution should give me a sharper picture at 92" than my current TV can give at 55" and that would be something to behold.
probedb said:
You're not supposed to switch Deep Colour on, that was for BR and not UHD-BR.
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/columns/my-two-cents...
One thing I discovered early on was that it’s important to set the UDB-K8500’s HDMI Color Format to YCbCr(4:4:4) and to make sure that HDMI Deep Color is set to Off. That’s easy to overlook during set-up, because you think “Deep Color? Of course I want Deep Color!” and leave this setting on. But HDMI Deep Color is a legacy Blu-ray feature (not an Ultra HD feature) that was meant to allow regular Blu-ray Discs to display 12-bit color (it’s normally 8-bit). But nobody ever really took advantage of 12-bit color on the format. Ultra HD Blu-ray employs 10-bit color HDR, so if you accidentally set HDMI Deep Color to on, the player upconverts the 10-bit signal to 12-bit instead, which the display then has to convert back to 10-bit… resulting in terrible color banding.
I'll give the format a year to see how it goes Players are better and cheaper than when BR started and hopefully the content is good.
Yes, having done some more reading you are correct about deep colour.http://www.thedigitalbits.com/columns/my-two-cents...
One thing I discovered early on was that it’s important to set the UDB-K8500’s HDMI Color Format to YCbCr(4:4:4) and to make sure that HDMI Deep Color is set to Off. That’s easy to overlook during set-up, because you think “Deep Color? Of course I want Deep Color!” and leave this setting on. But HDMI Deep Color is a legacy Blu-ray feature (not an Ultra HD feature) that was meant to allow regular Blu-ray Discs to display 12-bit color (it’s normally 8-bit). But nobody ever really took advantage of 12-bit color on the format. Ultra HD Blu-ray employs 10-bit color HDR, so if you accidentally set HDMI Deep Color to on, the player upconverts the 10-bit signal to 12-bit instead, which the display then has to convert back to 10-bit… resulting in terrible color banding.
I'll give the format a year to see how it goes
Players are better and cheaper than when BR started and hopefully the content is good.Edited by probedb on Wednesday 11th May 21:13
That digitalbits article is interesting (been reading that website from the start, pretty much). One thing Bill didn't touch on, and I have not seen mentioned, is copy protection. I think this could be a real killer feature for UHD. If studio's stopped making BluRays it would, overnight, make it much more difficult to obtain a good quality copy of a film for pirating. Obviously they can't stop DVD but it might help prevent all those very good, 1080p copies that appear hours after the film is released on BluRay. Surely something studios would appreciate?
I'm still playing with the settings to be honest, just haven't had time. I did have a quick look with with deep colour off the picture goes too dark, however the first 20 century fox logo defintly looks wrong with deep colour on, it's very bright and washed out. It then plays again and looks fine. With deep colour off they both look the same. I'm not forcing 4:4:4 yet, probably need to do that and then turn the brightness back up, I had turned what LG call the 'OLED light' setting down before with deep colour on.
Edited by varsas on Thursday 12th May 13:16
isn't HDR just one part of UHD? I mean, UHD does not necessarily equal HDR right?
This 60" TV advertised on TV at the moment for £799 boasts UHD but it's not 'UHD HDR' is that correct?
http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-and-home-entertain...
This 60" TV advertised on TV at the moment for £799 boasts UHD but it's not 'UHD HDR' is that correct?
http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-and-home-entertain...
lionelf said:
isn't HDR just one part of UHD? I mean, UHD does not necessarily equal HDR right?
This 60" TV advertised on TV at the moment for £799 boasts UHD but it's not 'UHD HDR' is that correct?
http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-and-home-entertain...
'UHD' means 'Ultra High Definition' and means a widescreen TV with a resolution of 4k (3840x2160), which is 4x that of a 'Full HD' set (1920x1080).This 60" TV advertised on TV at the moment for £799 boasts UHD but it's not 'UHD HDR' is that correct?
http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-and-home-entertain...
HDR is not part of UHD, as you've shown you can have a UHD TV which does not have HDR. I'm not sure if there is an 'official' label for HDR. UltraHD BluRays have a big 'HDR' sticker on them in addition to the UltraHD and 4k labels, and all TV's which have the Ultra HD Premium logo on them will have 4k resolution and HDR.
For what it's worth, certainly on a screen my size, I'd rather have a Full HD screen with HDR (these do exist, but only in projector form) than a 4k resolution but non-HDR screen.
Edited by varsas on Monday 16th May 13:20
Realistically you need to find a screen with UHD / 4K and HDR (high dynamic range) to get the best out of the performance.
There seems to a bit of a spec disparity between early / cheaper 4K screens with a lack of HDR. Now it seems that lt 4K should automatically include HDR. Some UHD players and disks have been seen to not play on m4K speced screens because the screen doesn't offer HDR.
V.
There seems to a bit of a spec disparity between early / cheaper 4K screens with a lack of HDR. Now it seems that lt 4K should automatically include HDR. Some UHD players and disks have been seen to not play on m4K speced screens because the screen doesn't offer HDR.
V.
Herbs said:
Interesting topic and something i know a little of but not much.
I'm deciding between upgrading the TV in the lounge to a 65" or get a projector and screen.
What would be the best TV to go for for sensible money that incorporates the required features/tech?
Assuming you can't demo stuff, which is by far the best way to choose stuff...I'm deciding between upgrading the TV in the lounge to a 65" or get a projector and screen.
What would be the best TV to go for for sensible money that incorporates the required features/tech?
I'd say go for the projector, if you have about £1k (or less) buy the Epson 6600 or equivelent Optoma (I like the Epson, most prefer the Optoma's DLP tech), for £2k get the Sony '45, for £4k get the JVC X5000, for £6kish you have the Sony '320 4k PJ or JVC X7000. In this list only the Sony VW320ES is both HDR and 'real' 4k.
For TV's, well, you can't go far wrong with Samsung. Pick a price, pick a screen size and get whichever one in their range meets those targets. As has been said a Samsung 'SUHD' (this is a Samsung term) TV will have 4k and HDR, an HDR premium set will deliver a very good HDR experience. Obviously I would/did get an OLED but you said sensible price.
varsas said:
Herbs said:
Interesting topic and something i know a little of but not much.
I'm deciding between upgrading the TV in the lounge to a 65" or get a projector and screen.
What would be the best TV to go for for sensible money that incorporates the required features/tech?
Assuming you can't demo stuff, which is by far the best way to choose stuff...I'm deciding between upgrading the TV in the lounge to a 65" or get a projector and screen.
What would be the best TV to go for for sensible money that incorporates the required features/tech?
I'd say go for the projector, if you have about £1k (or less) buy the Epson 6600 or equivelent Optoma (I like the Epson, most prefer the Optoma's DLP tech), for £2k get the Sony '45, for £4k get the JVC X5000, for £6kish you have the Sony '320 4k PJ or JVC X7000. In this list only the Sony VW320ES is both HDR and 'real' 4k.
For TV's, well, you can't go far wrong with Samsung. Pick a price, pick a screen size and get whichever one in their range meets those targets. As has been said a Samsung 'SUHD' (this is a Samsung term) TV will have 4k and HDR, an HDR premium set will deliver a very good HDR experience. Obviously I would/did get an OLED but you said sensible price.
Herbs said:
varsas said:
Herbs said:
Interesting topic and something i know a little of but not much.
I'm deciding between upgrading the TV in the lounge to a 65" or get a projector and screen.
What would be the best TV to go for for sensible money that incorporates the required features/tech?
Assuming you can't demo stuff, which is by far the best way to choose stuff...I'm deciding between upgrading the TV in the lounge to a 65" or get a projector and screen.
What would be the best TV to go for for sensible money that incorporates the required features/tech?
I'd say go for the projector, if you have about £1k (or less) buy the Epson 6600 or equivelent Optoma (I like the Epson, most prefer the Optoma's DLP tech), for £2k get the Sony '45, for £4k get the JVC X5000, for £6kish you have the Sony '320 4k PJ or JVC X7000. In this list only the Sony VW320ES is both HDR and 'real' 4k.
For TV's, well, you can't go far wrong with Samsung. Pick a price, pick a screen size and get whichever one in their range meets those targets. As has been said a Samsung 'SUHD' (this is a Samsung term) TV will have 4k and HDR, an HDR premium set will deliver a very good HDR experience. Obviously I would/did get an OLED but you said sensible price.
Man maths played a part and i'll be picking up the new tv today - decided for http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-and-home-entertain...
i also looked at the 75" Sony but after seeing the OLED, there was no comparison so thank you for the advice!!!
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