Question My love hate relationship with 4k :(

[yskasman]

I have a home HTPC for my QLED 4k TV. The HTPC has a GTX 1050 graphics card.

Some 4k blueray movies looks really amazing and some looks grainy. Some Youtube 4k clips are also really amazing.

It seems that the older movies usually have grains. I hate the grains - The 1080p version of the same 4k grainy movie has no grains on a 1080p TV. (Same size TVs / 55" 1080 and a 55" 4k) Looks like the world went backwards on this one when it comes to older movies and their quality on 4k... 🙁

I suppose there is no way around this grainy nonsense? I've been searching all over the web but people say they movies come out like this in 4k. It is the grain of the film... Changing the resolution of the 4k tv to 1080p does not remove the grains and the movie looks even worse but I suppose the 4k TV was not made to work like that. Perhaps it is just better to watch the 1080p versions of older movies to avoid the grainy quality degrading nonsense.

In the end I suppose it is only the newer generation movies that won't be a grainy mess in 4k ?

Perhaps there are people that disagree with me or perhaps I'm really doing something wrong?

I'm disappointed with 4k and older movies.

 

[jsmithepa]

So to play older movies on 4K TV, the TV will UPSCALE, and some TV will do this job better than other. Don't ask me which, am mostly insensitive to AV quality. May wanna find out who's doing the upscaling, video card or TV and try both.

BTW, people were saying the same thing playing SD on HDTVs, is nothing new.

 

[Solandri]

Old movies were usually shot on 35mm film stock, which has a practical resolution close to 4k (low-ISO still shots are around 8k, but the faster-ISO needed for motion pictures was typically around 4k). The grain you're seeing is probably the original film grain. The reason it doesn't exist in the 1080p version is that the movie was probably scanned at 4k, then re-encoded at 1080p. There are a variety of grain-reducing filters you can run when re-encoding video. The 1080p version was probably made using these filters to even out the grain. You also get some smoothing for free when you combine 4 pixels into 1 in the 4k to 1080p conversion.

If the grain really bothers you, you can try re-encoding them yourself using a grain/noise reduction filter. But this is a very CPU-intensive process which will take several hours to a day on a typical i7 or i5 for a single movie. And the filter will result in a softer picture. It'll take you a few months of experience before you learn how best to tweak the sharpness filters to make the image acceptable again. (Don't use the GPU encoders - they gain speed at the cost of image quality and file size.)

I hate to say it, but since you already own the Blu-Rays (paid for a license for the movie), you might be able to download a pirated copy that looks better. Some of the people making those pirated videos are incredibly talented at cleaning up the original rip (the studios should hire them to make their masters for them). But it'll be difficult to find 4k versions of older movies. And your ISP will still flag you for downloading pirated movies. And I don't think "I already own the Blu-ray" has been tested as a defense in courts yet. Morally, I don't see a problem with it. But it could still land you in legal trouble.

 

[hang-the-9]

I have a home HTPC for my QLED 4k TV. The HTPC has a GTX 1050 graphics card.

Some 4k blueray movies looks really amazing and some looks grainy. Some Youtube 4k clips are also really amazing.

It seems that the older movies usually have grains. I hate the grains - The 1080p version of the same 4k grainy movie has no grains on a 1080p TV. (Same size TVs / 55" 1080 and a 55" 4k) Looks like the world went backwards on this one when it comes to older movies and their quality on 4k... 🙁

I suppose there is no way around this grainy nonsense? I've been searching all over the web but people say they movies come out like this in 4k. It is the grain of the film... Changing the resolution of the 4k tv to 1080p does not remove the grains and the movie looks even worse but I suppose the 4k TV was not made to work like that. Perhaps it is just better to watch the 1080p versions of older movies to avoid the grainy quality degrading nonsense.

In the end I suppose it is only the newer generation movies that won't be a grainy mess in 4k ?

Perhaps there are people that disagree with me or perhaps I'm really doing something wrong?

I'm disappointed with 4k and older movies.

I don't really see any issues here, you can't take older movies filmed and mastered for DVDs or VHS and expect great quality for many of them when watching on 4k, especially movies before 2000 or so.

Nothing went backwards, it's just the new tech advanced to play back higher resolutions and make use of modern technology. You can always keep a 1080 set around if it really bugs you. It's like complaining that new cars can't play 8 track tapes and that those tapes don't sound as good as CDs or digital music.