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Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

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Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal theory of the case is that mid-band hearing loss is more common than people want to admit and tends to go undiagnosed until old age.

Mid band hearing is the last to go, unless there's lot of loud noise damage.

There's a things called 'hidden hearing loss' in which the ability to pause midband sounds specifically in complex/noisy situations degrades. This is missed by standard tests, which only look for ability to hear a given frequency in otherwise silent conditions.

https://www.audiology.org/consumers-and-patients/hearing-and...

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#162
post #66

The fact that I have to turn on closed captioning to understand anything tells me these producers have no idea what we want and shouldn’t be telling us what settings to use.

One big cause of this is the multi-channel audio track when all you have is stereo speakers. All of the dialog that should be going into the center speaker just fades away, when do you actually have a center the dialog usually isn't anywhere near as quiet.

Depending on what you're using there could be settings like stereo downmix or voice boost that can help. Or see if the media you're watching lets you pick a stereo track instead of 5.1

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#163
post #148

Are there any creators that evolved and shoot at high frame rates that eliminate the need for motion interpolation and its artifacts or is the grip of the bad old film culture still too strong? (there are at least some 48fps films)

Most of the issues (like "judder") that people have with 24fps are due to viewing it on 60 fps screens, which will sometimes double a frame, sometimes triple it, creating uneven motion. Viewing a well shot film with perfect, expressive motion blur on a proper film screen is surprisingly smooth.

The "soap opera" feel is NOT from bad interpolation that can somehow be done right. It's inherent from the high frame rate. It has nothing to do with "video cameras", and a lot to do with being simply too real, like watching a scene through a window. There's no magic in it.

Films are more like dreams than like real life. That frame rate is essential to them, and its choice, driven by technical constraints of the time when films added sound, was one of happiest accidents in the history of Arts.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#164
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same sound issues with a lot of stuff, my current theory at this point is that TVs have gotten bigger and we're further away from them but speakers have stayed kinda shitty... but things are being mixed by people using headphones or otherwise good sound equipment it's very funny how when watching a movie on my macbook pro it's better for me to just use HDMI for the video to my TV but keep on using my MBP s…

If anything I'd say speakers have only gotten shittier as screens have thinned out. And it used to be fairly common for people to have dedicated speakers, but not anymore. Just anecdotally, I can tell speaker tech has progressed slowly. Stepping in a car from 20 years ago sound... pretty good, actually.

I agree that speaker tech has progressed slowly, but cars from 20 years ago? Most car audio systems from every era have sounded kinda mediocre at best.

IMO, half the issue with audio is that stereo systems used to be a kind of status symbol, and you used to see more tower speakers or big cabinets at friends' houses. We had good speakers 20 years ago and good speakers today, but sound bars aren't good.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#165
post #66

The fact that I have to turn on closed captioning to understand anything tells me these producers have no idea what we want and shouldn’t be telling us what settings to use.

Never had an issue with Stranger Things. Maybe you're using the internal speakers?

I agree. There are absolutely tons of movies and TV series with indecipherable dialogue, but Stranger Things isn't among them.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#166
"Duffer’s advice highlights a conflict between technological advances and creators' goals. Features like the ones he mentioned are designed to appeal to casual viewers by making images appear sharper or more colorful, but they alter the original look of the content."

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Settings that make the image look less like how the material is supposed to look are not "advances".

Q: So why do manufacturers create them?

A: They sell TV's.

Assume that every manufacturer out there is equally capable of creating a screen that faithfully reproduces the content to the best ability of current technology. If every manufacturer does just that, then their screens will all look extremely similar.

If your TV looks like everybody else's, how do you get people strolling through an electronics store to say, "Wow! I want that one!"? You add gimmicky settings that make the image look super saturated, bizarrely smooth, free of grain etc.. Settings that make the image look less like the source, but which grab eyes in a store. You make those settings the default too, so that people don't feel ripped off when they take the TV out of the store.

If you take a typical TV set home and don't change the settings from default, you're typically not going to see a very faithful reproduction of the director's vision. You're seeing what somebody thought would make that screen sell well in a store. If you go to the trouble of setting your screen up properly, your initial reaction may be that it looks worse. However, once you get used to it, you'll probably find the resulting image to be more natural, more enjoyable, and easier on the eyes.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#167
post #66

The fact that I have to turn on closed captioning to understand anything tells me these producers have no idea what we want and shouldn’t be telling us what settings to use.

For an interesting example that goes in the opposite direction, I've noticed that big YouTube creators like MrBeast optimize their audio to sound as clear as possible on smartphone speakers, but if you listen to their content with headphones it's rather atrocious.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#168

It’s funny to read about respecting content on that site, which has no respect for their own content. Yes, I usually run add blockers, Pihole etc, I’m away from home and temporarily without my filters.

Especially when the "content" is a blatant AI summary:

> Duffer’s advice highlights a conflict between technological advances and creators' goals. Features like the ones he mentioned are designed to appeal to casual viewers by making images appear sharper or more colorful, but they alter the original look of the content. By asking fans to turn these features off, he is stressing the importance of preserving the director’s vision.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#169
post #142

And how about the content garbage? Not spoilering anything but man...

I don't know what are you talking about, there at zillions of 10 star ratings on IMDB! /s

It was 10 stars before it was even released... Are humans still needed at all? Just have LLMs generate crappy content and bots upvote it.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#170
post #66

The fact that I have to turn on closed captioning to understand anything tells me these producers have no idea what we want and shouldn’t be telling us what settings to use.

Conspriacy theory ... TVs have bad sound so you're compelled to by a soundbar for $$$ I've certainly had the experience of hard to hear dialog but I think (could be wrong) that that's only really happened with listening through the TV speakers. Since I live in an apartment, 99% of the time I'm listening with headphones and haven't noticed that issue in a long time.

Soundbars are usually a marginal improvement and the main selling point is the compact size, IMO. I would only get a soundbar if I was really constrained on space.

Engineering tradeoffs--when you make speakers smaller, you have to sacrifice something else. This applies to both soundbars and the built-in speakers.

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