Why do the movies seen on streaming platforms look worse in comparison to a movie theater where the image is much larger?
In: 3
Simply because the quality is less.
You’re streaming is over the internet. Your internet connection cannot handle the amount of data that would be required to have the same picture quality that a movie theatre can do. They’re not streaming it. They have the copy right there. They just have to run it.
Then throw in that you’re downloading something else, or someone else in the house is also watching a movie in their room, etc, etc, etc, etc.
streaming services usually reduce the bitrate of the movies for faster stream speed and less resources consumed. theatres on the other have have raw unedited video which might be the same resolution, but with a bitrate that is not decreased.
Combination of things. Internet may be to slow to streaming higher quality versions even, if you pay for 4k. Lighting in the room you’re watching in. The quality of the display being used. Theatre projector cost up to $400k, they better display better. lol
It depends what you’re watching it on.
I have a couple of 4K OLED screens here, and I see detail in them that I didn’t see even in a good-quality theater.
Contrast is the biggest difference usually. If you’re watching on almost any screen in a brightly lit room, you’ll never get anything like the dynamic range you’d get even in a second-rate theater. Try minimizing your lighting to “just enough to see where you’re walking”, and go into the settings on your display. A few hints:
* If you have a color temperature setting, warm is usually preferable.
* Most screens work best at 50% brightness
* Same with contrast
* If there are any “picture enhancement” features, try changing them. Many of them are designed to make a set look good in a brightly lit electronics store, with a carefully selected video loop.
Recent-model diplays have the ability to pick up the encoding in HDR and dolby vision (similar technologies) which really, really, really make a difference. Again, these features aren’t going to impress as much in a room with lots of windows in the middle of the day. Control your lighting is always the starting point, and work from there to get the picture you expect.
Also, almost every display loses brightness and contrast with age. Commercial projectors have bulbs that cost big bucks, and have lifespans of a few hundred to a couple thousand hours before they MUST be replaced (once they start to heat up, damage happens quickly). A home TV that’s 5 years old doesn’t look as good as it did when it was new, and it almost certainly didn’t look as good new as a similarly-priced display of current technology does.
But seriously, turn the lights down 🙂
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