Never being afraid to humiliate myself in front of you guys, I have a question.
I have a 4K tv that is non-HDR and apparently too old to be upgraded. I recently bought a 4K Apple TV.
So if I buy movies from iTunes that are described as 4K HDR, will they play in HD as I don’t have HDR, or in 4K ( without the HDR) - does the HDR part get “ignored”?
The HDR will get ignored, or rather will display in SDR. There’s nothing inherently linking HDR and 4K, though in practice a lot of 4K content is also HDR, because it’s aimed at the same audience (or just because Netflix puts out all its original content in 4K HDR). But, say, Star Trek Disco is HDR in 1080p.
oh ok thanks.
I watched a bit of Alien and if that was 4k, I am a bit disappointed.
A lot of 4K transfers aren’t “true” 4K. Often the masters are 2K and it’s just upscaled from there to 4K. Apparently Alien is not one of those, though, assuming you have the 4K HDR Blu-Ray. As this review notes, Alien is a pretty grainy film, so it may not be the best showcase for 4K sharpness. Sounds like you’re missing out by not having HDR though:
Yes it does sound like that…unfortunately a new tv is not in the budget right now, nor do I really have room for it.
no I have the iTunes copy; I did wonder whether it is streaming the HD version instead. I’m not sure how you tell.
With iTunes specifically I’m not sure, but your TV may have an info button or similar on the remote which will tell you the resolution it’s using.
yes I will try that.
Certainly when the Apple TV starts up it states it is in 4k. But who knows about the individual movies.
Thanks a lot.
When I upgraded to 4K, I was unaware that you need a 4K HDMI cable for the Apple TV. I bought a cheap one at first and it kept dropping out and was terrible. I finally got the full quality gamut when I replaced the HDMI cables with some that cost a bit more ($10 range, IIRC) and advertised the proper throughput.
Oh, yeah… I also remember that I had to go into the AppleTV settings and manually put it into the proper 4K mode. It didn’t use Dolby Vision (or something) automatically. Now, everything is beautiful.
Thanks I already got that from Apple at the same time.
I think Alien is HD, and Aliens is 4K on iTunes. That’s what I saw last night, anyway.
No it shows as 4K whereas Aliens is just HD.
Lots of older movies don’t look a whole lot better in 4K IMO. Newer stuff like Fury Road and the new Blade Runner really look amazing, though.
Most catalog movies don’t really take advantage of the increased resolution, but I believe Alien and 2001 are supposed to be noteworthy remasters.
Though generally for me, HDR makes a bigger impression over resolution.
So I have the Alien 4k blu ray disc and I thought it looked quite good. Some of these older movies really benefit from 4k because they were shot with film and for the discs they rescan the film at 4k rez, you can def see improvements in textures and detail. With that said, it can be somewhat subtle and will probably be completely lost on a stream (as the video is compressed when streamed even if it is 4k rez) or on a TV that isn’t great to begin with.
For a completely revelatory 4k experience you need something shot with cutting edge cameras, e.g. The Revenant or Planet Earth 2 or a few others on a blu ray disk and shown on a good and fairly large TV. Actually, the 2001 4k blu ray has some scenes that look so incredible (in terms of video quality) they compete with the best of the modern cameras (probably because it was shot on 70mm film). HDR is good too but in my opinion isn’t as important as the resolution increase (I seem to be in the minority on that though).
If you’re streaming 4k it will never be as good as the super high bit rate 4k blu ray discs, I have seen threads in enthusiast forums arguing whether a 4k stream is superior/inferior to a 1080p blu ray. Both beat a 1080p stream, but I don’t think streaming is ‘true 4k cinema’. Geez what an elitist I have become.
Thanks that’s really interesting. Sounds like I should keep buying the discs then rather than just going to streaming.