Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Maybe I should start a v4.0 build thread somewhere

LOL

Too funny.

Nick, have you gone HDR yet? We took the plunge. Kraft dinner for a few years now.... lol.

You had a nice JVC so would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the new PJs vs yours.

I would love to jump to 4K or even faux-k just for the improved picture quality more-so that the higher resolution. Just can't seem to get to that point financially and it is one of those "I still really like my old JVC" type of situations. I do know that if I upgraded to something newer it would NEED to have those deep yet detailed blacks of the JVC, but I would certainly know that I would be happy with the upgrade if the finances allowed. While I like the RS46, the tech has come a long way and it would be enjoyed greatly. Maybe 2021 if the world has recovered from COVID-19 by then and our taxes are through the roof to pay for all of the "stimulus" help...


I've seen many really nice setups at CEDIA and even a local integrator/installer shop, but it is tough to justify to my accountant (wife) some of these expenses. Heck, she loves watching movies in the theater room, but more and more just wants to sit on the couch in the living room and watch on a cheap 65" TV with just the built in speakers. Sad times...

(The following is just more of my ramblings, you can ignore the rest of this. LOL)

Just did a massive remodel of most of our upstairs last summer (still have a small but somewhat time consuming punch list left for that, but those things are all paid for) throw in that my one daughter got married a couple of years ago and went "all out" on the wedding. His family paid about half, but we also got socked with about $35,000 in student loans (the part we agreed to pay of her $160K education bill) at the same time all leaving me still paying for those still. Now my other daughter thinks that she needs to get married this August. It will be less expensive overall, but his family isn't helping pay for much. Her student loans are less because she went to a state school, but we will still have a chunk there in about 9 months to start paying off.

If I just could have talked them both into small weddings I could have paid off the student loans by now and be set for more fun stuff like a new projector.

Not sure if you use disc media, but we noticed 4K discs looked better than burays on a 1080p projector with a new player.

We picked up a panasonic 820 and it was a noticable difference with 4k discs over blurays with an oppo. The 820 even made normal blurays look better than the oppo with the HDR scaler.

Might be an upgrade option ahead of a PJ for you.

This hobby is nasty on bank accounts. Hear you there!

Interesting. I wonder if it is just the increase in data rates or less compression maybe?

I have everything ripped in 100% 1:1 copies of the movie and audio (strip out menus, extras, etc, but the movies are 100%) on my media server.

I just start switching some things to 4K discs. The movie file sizes are a bit larger, but I am planning for the future. I started doing this recently just with "movies that matter" (subjective movie choices for sure) when I discovered that the blu-ray drive in my former HTPC that I now use as a desktop computer happened to have a compatible drive for use ripping purchased 4K blu-rays.

Another benefit was more Atmos titles too, and my media server is plenty beefy enough to transcode 4K on-the-fly down to something smaller for transmitting over the internet to my daughters who don't live at home and don't care if it is max bit rates.

Honestly though, I have no real comparison to non-4K vs 4K for the same movie to see how things compare and doing non-identical movies is more of an apples to oranges comparison "scientifically" so I don't know if I would have a good test to use.

I should also note though that I do have a Darbee box that helps to improve the image quality a lot for 1080p content. They are kind of going belly-up as 4K hit the market a few years ago making their products less critical for image quality. With the Darbee in-line it really helps to crisp things up too. I was a very vocal skeptic of the original Darbee product several years ago until I tried one out. Now it just stays ON all of the time and I never think about it. I do notice when we have a (rare) power outage and it isn't turned on. I wonder if that is similar to the impact of 4K source on a 1080p display?

I might have to turn off the Darbee and try some video clips from the internet in 1080p and 4k of the same scene and see if I notice a difference, and then turn the Darbee on and see what is different...

You've inspired me.

I’m pretty sure to notice the difference the title has to be mastered in 4K HDR start to finish or have a playback chain that supports dynamic tone mapping.

A good test would be a legacy movie like Alien or Predator in 4K vs the 1080 bluray original release.

They now master to wider brightness and color limits and this translates to a punchier picture regardless of resolution. The benefit the 820 adds may be similar to the darbee. The 820 expands the brightness and color of SDR to simulated HDR if you enable it. (Similar to dynamic tone mapping in highend displays.) The cheaper 450 also does this. We have a decent collection of blurays and they found new and impressive life with tone mapping to HDR and 1000nit output applied.

All the vids on youtube I have found for comparison don’t seem to understand this and poo poo 4K HDR. The vid either shoots in 4K HDR and scales down to 1080 (which looks great and close to the same on non HDR playback displays) or shoots in 1080 SDR and scales up to 4K without dynamic tone mapping and looks identical....

Hope this makes sense to others.

I'll have to do some digging into a library. I have so many "demo" discs and can grab full quality clips that I could probably find some items that are in 4K and 1080p if I can't find sources for them elsewhere online via MKV downloads or my own library...

Thanks again for the idea.

Shoot me a PM and I will mail you my spears and munsil 4K disc. They have 4K and standard def test material. Stunning and very informative.

You’ve helped me tons so I’d gladly share the disc till you are finished if you want.

Cool offer. PM sent Sir.

Nick,

I'm about to mount my M3OW's. Maybe tomorrow. I'm finishing up my "ceiling boxes" for the M3 ceiling speakers today. What height would you suggest I mount the M3's? The surrounds will be slightly forward (12") of the seating. The rears are about 4' behind the seats.