Re: Like a suitcase.
"Humphrey Bogart in grainy black and white - we are still taking in the emotional content that the director intended. Watching him slap a bad guy around isn't improved by using high res and HDR. On the other hand, a David Attenborough nature documentary would benefit."
Supercompression (not to be confused with Supermarionation) only really helps if the supercompression processes's design assumptions are a good match for the image content *and* the way the viewer's visual processing works.
Anecdote is not evidence and all that, but...
I watched A Hard Day's Night (remastered, but still black and white) in HD on a 40" screen a few weeks back. I've previously (and recently) seen it on everything from original cinema release, through Apple Quicktime (?) on CD-ROM, on DVD, and now remastered on HD. The extra detail did significantly improve the viewing experience in a variety of ways. Two of those ways were: (1) no visible quantisation in ciruclar dark (but not black) areas on walls - "pools of light" no longer had distracting steps in them, which the digital non-HD versions all did (2) previously illegible text on certain wall signs was now legible, and often added to the content and context of the story.
That said, I really don't see how supercompression in general is going to help anyone except broadcasters (including cable), who want to squeeze more and more carp into the same (or less) bandwidth. What's increased compression done for terrestrial and cable and satellite in the UK so far? Made most channels less watchable, that's what.
I used to know what the basic compression theory is about (including 4D compression and other such delights, including whatever the visual equivalent of psychoacoustics theory is now called), all of which rely on the validity of certain assumptions about the picture and/or the elements within it.
If the assumptions in the theory don't adequately match the practicalities in the picture content and in the viewer, the picture *must* by definition lose detail, and lots of it. Which already matters in standard definition, and is going to matter even more in UHD, if UHDTV isn't going to go the same way as 3DTV has done.
A wise person once said:
“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.”
Biting the hand that feeds IT
