Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings • Hacker News Board

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

#431

Post by drysart » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 1:37 PM UTC

pvdebbe wrote: post #269

drysart wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That choice was made long before Scorsese made The Godfather; and so has virtually every other movie made over the past century. Real artists understand the limits of the medium they're working in and shape their creations to exist within it. So even if there was no artistic or technical merit in the choice to standardize on 24 FPS, the choice to standardize on 24 FPS shaped the media that came after it. Which means…

>just like Scorsese intended. >before Scorsese made The Godfather Can you let me in on the joke?

I dunno, the grandparent comment gave credit for The Godfather to Scorsese so I ran with it.

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

#432

Post by mjklin » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 1:37 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #383

omnicognate wrote: post #258

It would help if TV manufacturers would clearly document what these features do, and use consistent names that reflect that. It seems they want to make these settings usable without specialist knowledge, but the end result of their opaque naming and vague descriptions is that anybody who actually cares about what they see and thinks they might benefit from some of the features has to either systematically try every p…

> It would help if TV manufacturers would clearly document what these features do, and use consistent names that reflect that. It would also help if there was a common, universal, perfect "reference TV" to aim for (or multiple such references for different use cases), with the job of the TV being to approximate this reference as closely as possible. Alas, much like documenting the features, this would turn TVs into c…

My local hummus factory puts the product destined for Costco into a different sized tub than the one destined for Walmart. Companies want to make it hard for the consumer to compare.

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

#433

Post by Arubis » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 1:39 PM UTC

I can spot Samsung panels from a distance because they've always got a nausea-inducing motion "enhancement". No idea if this is a setting or always on because it's such a turnoff that I'll never purchase one.

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

#434

Post by UltraSane » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 1:40 PM UTC

KingMob wrote: post #341

UltraSane wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the rejection of higher frame rates for movies and TV shows to be baffling when people accepted color and sound being introduced which are much bigger changes.

Maybe the quality of a change matters more than its size? Just a thought.

Higher frame rates are a good change for action scenes. Hell 24fps is notorious for causing flickering during horizontal pan shots.

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

#435

Post by wil421 » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 1:40 PM UTC

joquarky wrote: post #119

pupppet wrote: 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 problem is that the people mixing the audio already know what is being said: Top-down processing (or more specifically, top-down auditory perception) This refers to perception being driven by prior knowledge, expectations, and context rather than purely by sensory input. When you already know the dialog, your brain projects that knowledge onto the sound and experiences it as “clear.”

It was garbage before streaming services took off. Dark Knight Rises is one example. I can remember renting DVDs in the mid to late 2000s from Netflix and they had a similar issues.

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

#436

Post by codelikeawolf » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 1:44 PM UTC

sevensor wrote: post #427

What is the “soap opera effect?” Mentioned in the article, but I haven’t heard of it. Also, this is probably just because I’m old, but a lot of recent TV seems inadequately lit, where you can just barely see part of one character’s face in some scenes. It’s like they watched Apocalypse Now and decided everything should be the scene with Marlon Brando in the cave.

It's called motion interpolation, but a lot of TVs call it "motion smoothing". It artificially increases the frame rate. I don't really know how to describe it, but I find it a little disconcerting and I immediately turn that feature off when I buy a new TV. It almost makes the motion look more "real life" in a bad way.

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

#437

Post by hodanli » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 1:45 PM UTC

omnicognate wrote: post #258

It would help if TV manufacturers would clearly document what these features do, and use consistent names that reflect that. It seems they want to make these settings usable without specialist knowledge, but the end result of their opaque naming and vague descriptions is that anybody who actually cares about what they see and thinks they might benefit from some of the features has to either systematically try every p…

worst is graphic settings for games. needs PhD to understand.

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

#438

Post by tartuffe78 » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 1:45 PM UTC

etempleton wrote: post #86

jerlam wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised they didn't mention turning off closed captioning, because understanding the dialog is less important than experiencing the creator's intent.

I haven’t experienced issues understanding dialogue in Stranger Things, for what it’s worth.

It helps that they're mostly shouting explanations at each other.

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

#439

Post by Steuard » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 1:45 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #386

miki123211 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the principle many years ago, you had to leave the world exactly in the state you found it in. If John dumped Jane at the beginning of the episode, they had to get back together at the end, otherwise the viewer who had to go to her son's wedding that week wouldn't know what was going on. There was no streaming, recaps were few and far between, and not everybody had access to timeshifting, so you couldn't jus…

> That was the principle many years ago, you had to leave the world exactly in the state you found it in. This doesn't make sense; no show I know from that time followed that principle - and for good reason, because they'd get boring the moment the viewer realizes that nothing ever happens on them, because everything gets immediately undone or rendered meaningless. Major structural changes get restored at the end (wi…

How old are you? Because I promise you, that description was pretty much spot-on for most shows through most of the history of TV prior to the late 1990s. My memory is that the main exception was daytime soap operas, which did expect viewers to watch pretty much daily. (I recall a conversation explaining Babylon 5's ongoing plot arc to my parents, and one of them said, "You mean, sort of like a soap opera?") Those "Previously on ___" intro segments were quite rare (and usually a sign that you were in the middle of some Very Special 2-part story, as described in the previous comment).

Go back and watch any two episodes (maybe not the season finale) from the same season of Star Trek TOS or TNG, or Cheers, or MASH, or Friends, or any other prime time show at all prior to 1990. You won't be able to tell which came first, certainly not in any obvious way. (Networks didn't really even have the concept of specific episode orders in that era. Again looking back to Babylon 5 which was a pioneer in the "ongoing plot arc" space, the network deliberately shuffled around the order of a number of first-season episodes because they wanted to put stronger stories earlier to hook viewers, even though doing so left some character development a bit nonsensical. You can find websites today where fans debate whether it's best to watch the show in release order or production order or something else.)

By and large, we all just understood that "nothing ever happens" with long-term impact on a show, except maybe from season to season. (I think I even remember the standard "end of episode reset" being referenced in a comedy show as a breaking-the-fourth-wall joke.) Yes, you'd get character development in a particular episode, but it was more about the audience understanding the character better than about immediate, noticeable changes to their life and behavior. At best, the character beats from one season would add up to a meaningful change in the next season. At least that's my memory of how it tended to go. Maybe there were exceptions! But this really was the norm.

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

#440

Post by EbNar » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 1:50 PM UTC

machomaster wrote: post #356

EbNar wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incidentally, that's the reason why I love photography in Nolan's movies: he seems to love scenes with bright light in which you can actually see what's going on. Most other movies/series instead are so dark that make my mid-range TV look like crap. And no, it's not an HW fault, as 500 nits should be enough to watch a movie.

Very ironic that it is Nolan who is widely known for consiously making movies with incomprehensible dialogue.

Yeah... At home we have partially solved this problem by using a BT speaker on the table, as we mostly watch movie while we have dinner. Simple and effective.