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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

#461

Post by lesuorac »

bargainbin wrote: post #367
dark-star wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who hasn't watched GoT, only heard of it from others, let me guess: In those two episodes everyone dies a very cruel and painful death, except for one or two main characters?

Everyone already died a painful and cruel death for the first four seasons, that was what made the show so compelling to watch. From that point on, everyone gets 10 inch thick plot armour, and then the last two episodes skip a whole season or two of character development to try and box the show off quickly.

Not just skips a whole season of development, they actively retcon things from one episode to the next!

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

#462

Post by mrob »

amlib wrote: post #182
karlshea wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We've been mixing vocals and voices in stereo since forever and that was never a problem for clarity. The whole point of the center channel is to avoid the phantom center channel collapse that happens on stereo content when listening off center. It is purely an imaging problem, not a clarity one. Also, in consumer setups with a center channel speaker it is rather common for it to have a botched speaker design and be…

It's a clarity problem too. Stereo speakers always have comb filtering because of the different path lengths from each ear to the two speakers. It's mitigated somewhat by room reflections (ideally diffuse reflections), but the only way to avoid it entirely is by using headphones.

Try listening to some mono pink noise on a stereo loudspeaker setup, first hard-panned to a single speaker, and then centered. The effect is especially obvious when you move your head.

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

#463

Post by sevensor »

codelikeawolf wrote: post #436
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.

Ah, thank you. I’ve seen that, and it’s horrible!

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

#464

Post by lesuorac »

kankerlijer wrote: post #421
prawn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rewatched it in recent weeks and enjoyed all the bits that I enjoyed years ago during the first watch. The stories I found a bit tedious first time (High Sparrow plotline, Arya and faceless men) weren't as miserable; I think I was expecting them to drag on even more. My biggest grievance on the rewatch was just how poorly it's all tied up. I again enjoyed The Long Night through the lens of 'spectacle over military…

I don't really view this as the show runners fault. GRRM was unable to complete his own work. The show worked best when it drew from the authors own material (GRRM was a screenwriter himself and knew how to write great dialog/scenes).

It's absolutely the producer's fault. They actively choose to release the product they did instead of making more episodes, taking long, bringing other people in to help, etc.

Martin has claimed he flew to HBO to convince them to do 10 seasons of 10 episodes instead of the 8 seasons with just 8 episodes in the final one [1]. It was straight up just D.B. Weiss and David Benioff call how the series ended.

[1]: https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/george-rr-martin-shut-out-g...

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

#465

Post by liveoneggs »

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…

The Simpsons are all pretty much self-contained

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

#466

Post by SoftTalker »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #441
mjklin wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Costco’s whole thing is selling larger quantities, most times at a lower per unit price than other retailers such as Walmart. Walmart’s wholesale competitor to Costco is Sam’s Club. Also, Costco’s price labels always show the per unit price of the product (as do Walmart’s, in my experience).

Often a false economy. My MIL shops at Sam's Club, and ends up throwing half her food away because she cannot eat it all before it expires. I've told her that those dates often don't mean the food is instantly "bad" the next day but she refuses to touch anything that is "expired."

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

#467

Post by vladvasiliu »

pmontra wrote: post #407
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…

They will setup their TVs with whatever setting makes them sell better than the other TVs in the shop.

I don't particularly like that, but even so, it doesn't preclude having a "standard" or "no enhancement" option, even if it's not the default.

On my TCL TV I can turn off "smart" image and a bunch of other crap, and there's a "standard" image mode. But I'm not convinced that's actually "as close to reference as the panel can get". One reason is that there is noticeable input lag when connected to a pc, whereas if I switch it to "pc", the lag is basically gone, but the image looks different. So I have no idea which is the "standard" one.

Ironically, when I first turned it on, all the "smart" things were off.

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

#468

Post by dotancohen »

chuckadams wrote: post #448
dotancohen wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used to call that a soap opera. Maybe today we should call it a couch opera.

Rod Serling derogatorily coined the term "Soap Opera" because those also pioneered the ad break, typically for products aimed at housewives, e.g. soap.

What advertisements or other social unwanteds do these new operas promote?

I propose Apathy Opera

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

#470

Post by StephenMelon »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #242
KeplerBoy wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TV shows changed completely in the streaming age it seems. These days they really are just super long movies with glacial pacing to keep users subscribed.

You know when something doesn't annoy you until someone points it out? It's so obvious in hindsight. Shows like the Big Bang theory, House and Scrubs I very rarely caught two episodes consecutively (and when I did they were on some release schedule so you'd forgotten half of the plot by next week). But they are all practically self contained with only the thread of a longer term narrative being woven between them. It…

Google currently has an advertising campaign for Gemini (in conjunction with Netflix!) which is all about how you can use AI to tell you what the key episodes are so that you don’t need to watch the whole thing. If that isn’t an admission that most of it is filler I don’t know what is…
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