The main crux of that quote I wanted to highlight is "480p content looks like ass on a 4K set." Evolvist is not the first person I've seen (on online forums) who says that - not by a country mile! So I'm wondering if it is actually worth doing something stupid like getting a a second set, one only capable of playing 1080p HDTV? I'm not yet 4K capable, to be honest, but I am very interested and I do have my first disc ("Jaws", came with a standard BluRay, so, yay!) but.... We have a very large collection of TV shows on DVD, a combination of pretty much equal parts region 1 (NTSC, or 480i/p), region 2 and region 4 (PAL, or 576i/p). Yes, we do have some shows on BluRay, but the collection is at least 95% DVD. I can already tell you from experience that some NTSC stuff (primarily films with the pulldown) looks like crap on our current 1080p HDTV (50" LG, unsure of model, purchased 2011) and, in a few rare cases, I have even had a PAL version of the same show to compare it to. In closing, at the moment, I/we are not considering buying a new TV (probably a 4K one) until our current one dies. However, if DVD's do look awful on a 4K screen no matter if NTSC (film or video) or PAL (sped up or not) then I may well look into having a seperate TV for 4K and one for old stuff - and, if so, look at buying a 4K TV sometime before the end of next year. How do standard BluRays look on a 4K TV? By "standard" I mean regular "not remastered for Dolby Atmos" type BluRays? Mainly because I'm certain none of the ones we have, have it.
I have a 4K TV and I occasionally watch DVDs on it, and they don't necessarily look bad. It depends on the DVD. I watched Crimson Tide on DVD this weekend on DVD and although you can tell it's not Blu-ray quality (and the DVD transfer has a lot of imperfections from the film copy they used as a source), it still is perfectly watchable. The DVD's that I've found most likely to be substandard are those that are taken from old Brit shows from the 1970's, such as The Six Wives Of Henry VIII. They look terrible on any hi-def TV. The problem isn't that it's DVD-quality, the problem is the source and/or the transfer. They don't look any better on 1080p or 720p.
I don't think that all dvds look horrible on my 4K OLED set. The lower resolution is definitely apparent, but the same could be said for a lot of the content I watch via cable.
To respond to the question about how non-4K blu ray discs look on a 4K set, they look great. I have very few 4K discs, in large part because not a lot gets released that I want to buy.
I second that emotion. Most of the DVDs I have are perfectly watchable on my 4K set. You can't compare them to even blu-rays; but if you look at them without comparing, they are fine. But I'd say you need a DVD player with good up-scaling; many displays upgrade great from 1080p to 4K, but not so well from 480i. I use my Oppo 103D for DVD watching and they look good; I use the HDMI input to scale from my TV box, from 720p or 1080i (whatever the channel puts out natively) and it's significantly better than feeding the box straight to my display. I also find blu-rays to look amazing on my 4K display. Significantly better than my previous 1080p display. 4K displays in general cover a wider color gamut than HD displays. They have to in order to display the wider color gamut of HDR. It's all a moot point anyway, unless you're thinking about buying used. There's very few new 1080p sets available now- the ones that are being sold are only low-quality cheap displays on which nothing will look anywhere near it's best.
I have had a 4K TV since last summer and DVDs still look fine to me, not a lot different from what they did on my previous TV in regular HD. Yes of course you can see it's not HD or 4K, but if you've enjoyed DVDs on a regular HD tv you will also enjoy them on a 4K TV.
I think it would help if folks who have posted about image quality actually viewing DVD's on 4K screens would mention screen diagonal size and how far they sit back from the screen. From what I've seen on my non-4K screen this has more influence over sharpness appearance over bleeding edge resolution. Sitting my comfortable 7 feet distance the DVD of "After Hours" looks tack sharp as my Blu-ray movies on my 32in. Samsung 720p eyeball calibrated screen. I have sharpness setting at a level that doesn't show grain/noise and edge halos. And it does need some sharpness adjustments. Not all DVD's look this good depending on whether the studio had a pristine negative to scan from and improved in mastering. I have not seen any of my DVD's look as soft looking as the "Cannon" detective show reruns on MeTV which also shows just before it very tack sharp and color correct "Mannix". The bigger the screen the farther back one has to sit which will hide a lot of any kind of resolution induced image artifacts.
For many years we had a Samsung 42" 720p plasma, and older DVD content looked pretty nice on it. Stuff that was originally shot on SD video, like the Live Aid box and "Kids In the Hall," etc., was to still easy to enjoy. A couple of years back we upgraded to a 4K 65" LG OLED and I gotta say, it's harder to ignore the artifacts baked into the old formats. I'm assuming it's mostly a picture size issue with everything getting blown up and simply falling apart, but I wonder if the older plasma was more forgiving as well. dan c
They probably look a little sharper playing through a Bluray or 4kUHD player, versus a DVD player, but are regardless limited by the 480 lines of resolution.
From my experience it depends entirely on the quality of the DVD transfer. We have some Pixar and Criterion DVDs that look great. We have some older, budget-transfer movies (Short Circuit, Elf) that look awful. This is a 55" LG OLED from about 10 feet away, being fed from a Panasonic HD-Ultra Blu-ray player.
Little side note: A toy shop opened in my local shopping mall in 1997 and up the back of the shop was a multi-TV display. 3x3 26" CRT TV's. On the display, they were playing a VHS copy of "The Lion King", spread across the nine screens. Man, the picture was blown up so badly, Blind Freddy would've been able to see the line structure that made up the picture, as clearly as I could!
Dang, I didn't even know this thread was open. Okay, so first... a.) I'm not even close to an expert as my friend @JimW b.) my previous experience with a 4K set was the LG 65" CX, which went back to Best Buy, so that I could purchase a fully QC'ed and calibrated LG 77" C1 from Value Electronics. (but before anyone comes in and calls the TV I have on order "used" because I didn't open the box myself, remember when buying from a company like this, you can go into the TV and see how many hours have been put on it. For QC and calibration it should have no more than 200hrs.) c.) Directly to your question @KatCassidy, I'm taking a $320 experiment by purchasing a used Oppo BDP-83 player. Jim had a nice DVD player. Very nice. But my $320 experiment comes with the promise of what has been almost universally praised as the best DVD player ever made, because it's the only one that does de-interlacing to the degree that it does, which is paramount to DVD success. Look up the player and the Anchor Bay chip that does this. Without the time, effort and QC that Oppo put into it, 480i content is a roll of the dice at best. I guess you could say that it's also $320 worth of study. Note the TV I'm buying. It's a big OLED. Without experience, since I don't have the TV nor the Oppo 83 yet, I can only go by study, yet what I've read is that not only does the 83 do proper de-interlacing, which is a must have, but it also converts 480i to 1080p by what has been described as "seamlessly." I've been talking to one of the beta testers for the 83, who has had his player since 2009. The claim is, indeed, like it sounds, that once the player upscale to 1080p, the TV then sees only the 1080p signal and then upscales it to 4K. What kind of 4K engine should the TV have? Most 4K upscale 1080p wonderfully, like Jim mentioned. I'm expecting a little bit extra from the new chipset in LG's new C1/G1 series. In other words, in theory, we're going 480i to 1080p, de-interlaced and upscaled in the player, and then the 4K TV only has to shake hands with the 1080p signal to take it the rest of the way there. The result? I'll have to report back. If I fall flat on my face, I can flip the Oppo 83 with no problem, as they are highly desired players. That's to say, instead of considering two TVs, you might want to research the Oppo 83. Of course Oppo isn't around anymore. If it breaks there are people who can fix it, but it's a chore. Moreover, I got the player for a song, as many of them are pricier. I also purchased the disc that you put into the player, one time, and it makes all of the regions playable for DVD (but not for BDs). I have my Panasonic 820-K that is region-unlocked for BDs. Then, of course, it sounds like you play a lot discs, so will a player break down on you faster? I don't know. I only get the chance to get deep into movies on the weekends. I rarely get to watch during the week, so that's some wear and tear off of my players right there. If you want, I'll make sure to let you know my findings, even if it's a colossal fail. Especially if it's a huge fail!
