4k/8k - HDR - Surround - Content

[oVeRdOsE.]

I'm quite new in home theater and Im I was surprised how the sellers pushing all the ;''' 4k, hdr10 atmos''' thing and there's not much available.

- yes; netflix, disney , google, amazon, hbo; got 4k, but the sound track are rarely (see almost never) in surround .

Plus , you need to get all those provider (100$+cad/month) to get your favorite show (this will increase piracy for sure, just like the mid90' with all specialize channels...)

- popcorn time, no thanks, low quality stuff and always in 2ch, some times 5.1

- not into torrent much, Id like to pay to get quality, but even that, there's almost nothing ! at least nothing to enjoy the 3 big things : uhd, hrd, and over 5.1 ch , atmos or dtsX.

- A friend of I shared his PLex server, he rip his own bluray, and even that he only have few 8ch movies and 0x hdr, 2x 4k.

So from my understanding, the only option left is Blurays ?
Why all this hype, if most people can't enjoy the full potential of their home theater? uhd hrd and surround is quite 'old', tech speaking.

[jg05]

Think 3D. It’s what the manufacturers try to make people THINK they need. A lot of hype to sell more TVs, audio equipment, etc. turns out no one really wanted 3D and it flopped. All just to sell more equipment without listening to their customers. Now things are more ‘disposable’ and just replaced more often or held onto forever if possible to keep it working that long.

I used to chase the latest and greatest but when the 3D debacle ran into the ground, I decided to wait on being an early adopter.

I just upgraded everything in the house to 4K though and that has been pretty awesome. Would hardly say that’s early adoption though

Up until recently, most viewing that wasn’t 4K looked bad on 4K TV (like sports for example). Now the processing is much better but there are still handshake issues, poor signals being sent by the content provides (like AMC on DirecTV - TERRIBLE transmission quality to save space and allow more poorly transmitted crap to be sent to our TVs).

8k - still way too early for me. Atmos - tough to set up correctly without the ‘right’ room setup so 2 story family rooms aren’t great candidates without ugly workarounds.

My sweet spot has been 4K and 5.1 surround. I don’t even mind the compressed streaming content as the convenience is worth a bit of a barely noticeable quality reduction. I wish they would offer a streaming purchase with the option to ship the HD Blu-ray so you get the best of both without having to find the physical medium.

If I had a dedicated theater room (which I don’t even think I would do any longer, would probably set up a cool ‘viewing area’ as part of a larger congregating area for when COVID is over) I would probably look to put higher end equipment in there but we went with mid level TVs everywhere except our 2 main watched TVs where we went higher quality. You can see the difference.

Cheers!

[oVeRdOsE.]

I can agree more.

Ive upgraded my setup having in mind to keep it for a while, so I went with a atmos 9.2 Onkyo 4k receiver (used on FB @ 300$), so even those stuff are starting to be on used market annndddd not much content yet.

Got a 4k projector, BenQ HT3550. Right now I have a 7,1 setup. Acoustic pannel on my walls.

HTPC is a surface pro, minidisplay port, 2016p setting. So I'm sure it can play 4k and decode all type of audio format.

REady to have full experience, and no content hahahaha But microsoft market got a software for dtx and atmos demo, impressive , but this was my 1st and only experience.


Also, most TV provider wont give 4k, its 1080p or even 720p upscaling.

Sad to say, but my 2007 setup on my 1st floor still up-to-date ! A old Sony 55'' bravia II 1080p (3'' thick, old LCD tv, one of the 1st affordable 55'' on the market back then, 1800$), and a simple Logitech Z680 5.1 surround. PrologicII do a sweet job converting 2ch to 5.1.

[zx10guy]

Simple answer is blame the general mass market. No one cares about quality. It's all about streaming and willingly walking into the sheep mentality of accepting the computer licensing software model for getting your media content. Those of us that do care about quality are a small minority of the market and will continue to dwindle as time goes on.

I still buy everything I deem worth keeping on physical media. I get to control how I consume that content. I can play the physical disk running through my high dollar system. Or I can stream the content from my Plex server from a file I've ripped myself.

[oVeRdOsE.]

Originally Posted by zx10guy

Simple answer is blame the general mass market. No one cares about quality. It's all about streaming and willingly walking into the sheep mentality of accepting the computer licensing software model for getting your media content. Those of us that do care about quality are a small minority of the market and will continue to dwindle as time goes on.

I still buy everything I deem worth keeping on physical media. I get to control how I consume that content. I can play the physical disk running through my high dollar system. Or I can stream the content from my Plex server from a file I've ripped myself.

true. Same for about everything actually. Cars and houses cost a lot, and crazy how many people are cutting corners .

I also buying my media, my music is in FLAC format, from 7digital. Im using audio driver on my cellphone, viper, and ATHM50s headphones, yes wired !

[oVeRdOsE.]

An other reason that I just think of, is from a youtuber, he said :

'' the wow effect coming from a cathode ray tube tv to a HD720p or full HD1080p, and coming from the tv speaker to a cheap 5.1 system, is NOT strong as getting from those HD tv and 5.1 to UHD and Atmos format''.

And I believe this. Yes I enjoy more my big up-to-date home theater, but the difference with my 2007 setup is not night and day.

[zx10guy]

Then the Youtuber had crappy equipment. I agree on the Atmos change. I wasn't impressed with the Atmos systems I've heard compared to my system. There was a significant change from the lossy audio codecs used in DVD compared to Blu Ray as the audio in Blu Ray is uncompressed high resolution. Any decent system will be able to bring the differences out.

But with video, there is a dramatic difference between 1080P and 4k with HDR. Just the minimum spec for the NITS a panel needs to output to qualify as an HDR monitor alone will be apparent not to mention the deeper color palette. This is the reason why I've started investing in getting 4k TVs over what was the gold standard for HD TVs with my Pioneer 9G Kuro.