… as far as cinematics go. This isn’t every case, for instance if I’m watching the news I’ll watch it in HD, if I’m watching wildlife documentaries I’ll watch those in HD as well, but when it comes to movies and sometimes games I honestly think I prefer DVD over BluRay. It’s a bit like how people still prefer Vinyl for their music, because it feels more real, or perhaps even old cinemas because a roll of film has more imperfections in it than digital video.
I think those imperfections make the content more immersive, for instance I watched the Hobbit on BluRay and the picture was so clear it basically looked like I was the camera man filming a group of actors, and it didn’t fool me, where as with a DVD there’s a slight soft haze to the image and it feels not so real life, which is what you want.
It’s like the opposite of reading a book, you read a book to get more detail and more immersion in the story, where as with BluRay you get more detail but you’re getting so much more information that it ruins the immersion. Sure it looks nice but you start to see wrinkles in people’s faces, mistakes with makeup, the cheap tatty false quality to studio props, all that kind of stuff I don’t want to see, especially the last one.
I think the perfect example is RE4 on the GC with its cinematic widescreen and fuzzy haze, I think that made the game so so immersive purely because of its intentional efforts to lower the quality of the image slightly to make it more immersive, that was intentional and I think it was perfect.
Does anyone else feel the same? Do you prefer SD over HD, or are you a 4K monster? What about. Vinyl?
I’ve been playing Dead Space series on the PC and the experience isn’t quite the same as it was on my CRT when I was a cheap skate and never had an HDTV for an entire generation of gaming. I enjoy the quality of the lack of quality, if that makes any kind of sense
HDR is what makes modern media look amazing. I love the high res/HDR for gaming and movies. I also own a turntable and collect vinyl. Not just for the sound, but for the material culture of having big records to look at and collect.
I only care about SD for things that were meant to be played in SD. The only way the SNES Classic looks good is with scanlines on. My Super Famicom will not be put through any display that isn’t a CRT, it just looks too good on there.
CRT are dying anyways and other than recap kits, there no spare parts being made.
Lose a Picture Tube and the whole display is gone. Also no one making more Tubes, keep that in mind.
At some time you will need to migrate to HD.
Also for you Retro Console fans, look into the OSSC.
I look at the displays on old iPhones now and they look cancerous compared to the AMOLED on my Samsung. I was using a crt up until a few months ago, but man, playing games on an hdtv with little to no input lag is pretty nice.
I do kind of agree about movies/shows tho. There’s a certain vibe that some films or shows have now and I don’t know if it’s how they were shot or if it’s just that they’re in HD that makes them odd to watch. Can’t explain it. But on the whole, I don’t think I could go back to SD. It’s like watching Netflix with a super shitty connection.
On a related note, i still prefer DVDs whenever possible. A good quality DVD looks damn good when upscaled in a Blu-ray player.
Netflix actually offers a ‘budget’ subscription where you can pay less and stuff is in SD only. Which isn’t bad at all. A high-quality, upscaled 480p image still looks pretty good.
Which is what i have. Watched a ton of anime recently and most of the time i forget it’s supposed to be SD quality.
DVD is still considered HD quality tho, right? I guess when I think of SD I think of jagged or fuzzy images nowadays. Even DVDs still look pretty sharp to my eye.
I didn’t know that about the budget Netflix subscription but I guess if you’re doing that, you may not have an hdyv an it wouldn’t matter if the stuff was in HD anyway.
Yup DVD is SD. Blu-Ray looks the best but a good quality DVD still looks great when upscaled, no pixelation or anything. It’s obviously not true HD quality but, kind of a “Faux” HD. It works.
I remember having to play HD games on a CRT. That shit was painful. Everything looked small. For some games text was impossible to read due to how small it was. I think the original Dead Rising had that problem.
The More I look into things, the harder it is to find good CRTs.
People rather just leave their old TVs and PC Monitors in the rain than to give them away.
I tried to call the local PBS station to see if they have any old equipment they want to get rid off, that I am willing to buy from them and they only laughed.
They can’t comprehend why a gamer wants a barely used Sony PVM and rather throw it in the dumpster.
I ended up getting a call back later with an apology from the station manager, because apparently their video engineers heard of what happen and raised hell.
Apparently I talked to a marketing/PR exec instead of the people who are qualified to answer my questions.