[Note: A “nit” is the amount of light coming off of a surface, like a TV or video projector screen.]
tastewar sent me a YouTube link. I replied, and realized I’d just written a blog post. Here’s the video with my reply.
I’m always amazed at how many people are making money, even earning a living, by being on YouTube. This guy has done a lot of research, and he does a good job of explaining everything. But he picks up the story after the actual start of the analog-to-digital history.
Speeding up the laborious film editing process was indeed the original goal, which has expanded out from there. But it began with the Lucasfilm Edit Droid. Avid bought Edit Droid from Lucas. When I lived in Tewksbury, where Avid was based, there was a satellite link connecting Avid with Skywalker Ranch. There’s a video about the Edit Droid that I used in a 2022 post.
The springboard for Slidebeam’s video is his annoyance at what, to me, appears to be more mosquito noise than color banding. Either way, it’s a lossy compression artifact.
Movie theater digital projectors are 4K 3-chip DLP systems. That gigantic image has no more resolution than the 65-inch (?) set the Slidebeam guy watches.
I agree with his emphasis on color depth. Blu-ray follows Rec 709. What a movie theater’s projector has over 2K Blu-Ray’s 8-bits per channel (RGB) color depth, is 10- or 12-bits of color per channel.
Something I’ve been trying to figure out when I play a 4K movie on my projector is, does the deep color find its way to the screen? The projector is “full HD” 2K, not 4K, but it supports 12-bit color.
I like his comment about no longer using HDR in his videos. A true “WOW” movie experience, in my opinion, requires a video projector. Giant TVs are still TVs. Watching a projector that’s intended for home theater use (rather than business presentation, or gaming, or whatever) requires a completely dark room.
The lamp that’s presently in my JVC projector is nearing its end-of-life, which means it’s much dimmer than when the bulb was new, 1800 use-hours ago. Yet, when a movie abruptly cuts from a very dark, extended scene to a bright scene, it will cause most anyone to feel their pupils straining to close.
With so many movies being dark, with few nits of light coming off the screen, I fail to see the need for brighter images at home, except when watching a TV that is competing with another light source. Which isn’t the same as watching a movie and hoping for a “WOW” moment.
