150"+ screen and 4k movies streaming vs disc

I have a 150" wide screen and a native 4k projector (jvc rs2000) and I stream from Amazon and Netflix (not Hulu or Vudu) regularly using a Shield. The quality is noticeably different, but not what I would call bad. I believe Netflix maxes out 4k at 15mbps, which is decent, but still about 2-3x compressed over h.265 blu ray. Compression codecs are pretty good these days, but at some point you will run into banding, tiling, and other compression artifacts.

Overall, what I have experienced with streaming 4k is similar overall quality to 1080p on blu ray. And that is pretty good, even on a larger screen.

4k UHD blu ray on a native 4k projector with good tone mapping cannot be beat by anything, and for some highly cinematic movies, I will always wait. For "normal" movies and shows, I would choose UHD blu ray over any kind of stream if there was a choice, but I am usually content with the stream. And given a choice, I would even choose 1080p blu ray over 4k streamed, even though the overall video quality between the two is a bit of a wash. Sometimes the 4k stream with HDR can provide a better experience than 1080p even though there is the occasional artifact or a noticeable band in a gradient.

Audio is a bit of a different story though, and between compression and a general lack of Atmos content in streamed services, there is never a situation where the blu ray disc is not noticeably superior to a stream. This is particularly important for heavy action movies with lots of bass. Streams are never as well defined and can get downright sloppy on the lower frequencies. Again, that being said, it isn't terrible on a stream, just not as good*.


A good example of video quality differences was "The Meg". I first tried to watch it on a regular 1080 stream. The very dark underwater scenes at the beginning were horribly banded and tiled because it was all very subtle gradients, which don't do good under compression, even with upwards of 10mbps bitrates. Then I tried a 4k stream, and even then it was still just terrible. It was unwatchable on anything larger than a tablet. Unfortunately, when the blu ray finally came out, the movie itself was so bad I didn't make it past the 10 minute mark, even though the video was significantly improved, lol.

* - I just updated my Shield last night and one of the notes is that Netflix is now providing up to 640kbps audio. It is still 5.1+ max, but I hope to get better streaming experiences in the future.

dkersten said:

I have a 150" wide screen and a native 4k projector (jvc rs2000) and I stream from Amazon and Netflix (not Hulu or Vudu) regularly using a Shield. The quality is noticeably different, but not what I would call bad. I believe Netflix maxes out 4k at 15mbps, which is decent, but still about 2-3x compressed over h.265 blu ray. Compression codecs are pretty good these days, but at some point you will run into banding, tiling, and other compression artifacts.

Overall, what I have experienced with streaming 4k is similar overall quality to 1080p on blu ray. And that is pretty good, even on a larger screen.

4k UHD blu ray on a native 4k projector with good tone mapping cannot be beat by anything

Click to expand...

99% of movies are fake 4k, most of it is upscaled except a few titles even when you buy it from the disk because the special effects cannot be remastered cost effectively. I've seen some sites (like https://digiraw.com/4K-UHD-ripping-service/the-real-or-fake-4K-list/) claim a bunch of titles are 4k, but then if you do your research fully, you'll see even most of those were just remastered to 4k from a 2k DI, which is better than real-time upscaling that we can do, but not worlds better. If it says Fake 4k in that list, it's likely completely fake 4k, as in not even upscaled in the remaster, just converted to a different format, but it probably varies. If it says "Real 4k", like 95% of it is upscaled 2k DI, but there are exceptions of course.

The highest true 4k resolution titles I've seen were mostly documentaries or stuff with no effects, but I believe Black Panther was true 3k, at least better than 2k upscaled. Although 35mm can technically be 6k, that is only on reference level movies. The exception is obviously some of the reference level 35mm stuff that had very little special effects added, but the problem is most of those DI's were still stored in 2k and the original 35mm transfer were stored improperly, so it's the same problem as in the old days. It's just a giant mess of fakery at this point. That was issue #1 with 4k back then, issue # 2 was that it was incredibly expensive to render stuff in high resolution back then for CG stuff, and especially to store it as a separate DI at an incredibly high res. So most effects were downscaled before storage even if they rendered them at a higher res.

Also, the studios were incredibly lazy in how they stored most films and they let them degrade. Cheapo storage methods means the original 35mm transfer degraded to the point where many movies are not even worth going back to the original, so they are forced to use the 2k DI. Storage costs used to be expensive enough that it was not feasible to use DI's greater than 2k. Actually the fault is mostly the movie studios for not preserving and storing stuff correctly because they were trying to save a buck. Once the studios realized most people could not tell the difference on their 65" TV's between upscaled 4k and true 4k, so then even if the remastering studio has access to a pure and properly stored 35mm transfer, they are not even bothering to remaster it, they still use the 2k DI to save money (which is sad).

There are entire documentaries that were made about how poorly they stored the 35mm movies and how they even lost many of them.

It's getting better slowly, as CG stuff is starting to be mixed in at 3k and even 4k at times, so newer movies will eventually be true 4k, but it will take a few more years of this mess probably. It wouldn't surprise me if in their infinite wisdom they release a new UHD format called Authentica 4k or something stupid where they give you a certificate of remaster with the movie, which seems to be the only hope as they are all cheating the system right now.