Our “Home Theatre” as of October 27, 2021.  Still to be added, honed black veined marble around the screen to absorb light around the screen. We will add “floating” glass shelf’s on each side of the screen and place replica Emmy and Oscar trophy’s on each shelf. A few more movie prints and perhaps a vintage movie projector on one of the plant shelves. Wainscoting, a coffered ceiling with a fiber optic star field are planned. Recap for now. 

UPDATE, JUNE 26, 2020

Today we took screenshots of the newly restored “Wizard Of Oz” in UHD Dolby Vision HDR from our LG E8 OLED which supports both formats. We purchased the BluRay disc reviewed in our June 23, 2020 post, which came with a digital copy. We used the Amazon Prime app to view the digital copy. Upon playback, the LG E8 switched to Dolby Vision and set HDR. As expected we saw much brighter, deeper color on this television. The film grain noted on the Sony 385ES projector is more apparent on the LG E8. This classic film is even more impressive with Dolby Vision HDR. We are seeing details and colors never seen before in this movie. You can judge for yourself in the below screenshots.

We set our Sony A6300 on a tripod, positioned about 30 inches from the 55 inch screen in a totally dark guest bedroom. Settings: FL 17, SS1/125, Aperture 5.0, ISO 2000, CWB. Pausing the streamed movie creates a pop up menu, so no pause and we set the shutter to 1/125 second. This is not a problem with an OLED television.

The LG E8 OLED television was set to ISF Expert Dark Room color calabration, gamma 2.2, OLED white 40, all picture enhancements turned off. The television has NOT been professionally calibrated by ISF as was the Sony 385ES projector.

Tap or click on images for 6000X4000 resolution. It is recommended that these images be viewed on a WCG monitor. sRGB is good, DCI P3 is better.

Retakes

Update August 24, 2020.

The Apple TV app was finally made available on my 2018 LG E8 OLED which now as over 8,600 hours on it. (No trace of burn in after 18 months.) I wanted to retest to see if the grid pattern discussed in the below posts would still be there. That’s an affirmative, see below 7 screen shots. Then to check if the pattern was unique to The Wizard Of Oz, we took several SS’s of Mama Mia! Here We Go Again, a delightful musical based on ABBA music. Production values and color are excellent. The pattern is there as well. The pattern is only visible on well focused photos.

Both movies are in native 4K with Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos object based sound. Both movie were streamed from Apple TV which has an average bit rate of 41 mbps. The shots were taken by a Sony A6300, this time in full auto, with tripod. FL 16 mm, SS 1/160, CWB. Freeze frame not used. The LG E8 was tested having 98% DCI P3 color gamut.

July 12, 2020. Used new camera settings as above except with apertures from 5.0 to 8.0. The first 13 screenshots used a different application which defaulted to “Dolby Vision Home Cinema.”  I think this movie looks better with this calibration on the LG E8.

UPDATE, JUNE 23, 2020

Just learned that the iconic movie Wizard Of Oz was totally restored and upgraded to UHD, HDR, Dolby Vision and Dolby DTS 5.1 Master sound. The BluRay disc has been available since October, 2019.

Today we purchased the BluRay disc. The disc came with a digital copy code which we redeemed and first viewed the entire movie on our LG E8 OLED. More about this later.

Next, we loaded the disc into our Sony laser disk player. Our Sony 385ES projector processed the movie in UHD with HDR10 in DCI P3 color space. Watched the movie tonight and it was breathtaking. Simply the best version I’ve seen and much better than the 75th anniversary version. Let the following screenshots speak for themselves. The color temperature of the projector is set at D65 and the projector lamp had 2317 hours at the time of this photography. The lamp is rated for 6000 hours. The projector was ISF calibrated to REC. 709 for the Reference mode and DCI P3 for the Cinema Film 1 mode. We watched this new restored film in DCI P3 color space. The movie in 4:3 format was projected onto a 120 inch Severson no gain, 16:9 screen. Our camera is a Sony A6300, set on tripod. Camera setting: sRGB, FL 24mm, Aperture 5.0, SS 1/25, ISO 800, AWB. The room was dark at night with only one night light. A small amount of ambient light filtered in from adjacent rooms.

The first thing noticed was the increased film grain not noticed in the HBO Max streamed version, (I have deleted all HBO Max screenshots previously shown in this review, two days ago) not objectionable (and more apparent on the OLED screen.) Defiantly more detail and deeper color. We saw the burlap bag on the scarecrows face with more detail and Dorthy’s freckles were more defined. No sign of banding throughout the movie. The soundtrack was okay by today’s standards. Two minutes into the movie, we saw a bit rate of 90 mgbps. We forgot to check if it went higher.  Just wish we had more light output from this projector for the HDR profile. The Sony 385ES is rated at 1500 lumen. To approach better HDR, we are looking at $24K plus in the Sony lineup and beyond my budget.

We suggest viewers review these screenshots on a monitor with DCI P3 color space. iPad Pro 2 10.5 and iPad 11 has this color space. They are good on sRGB, better on DCI P3. Tap or click on the photos to download in full 6000X4000 resolution.

Link about the restoration. https://postperspective.com/the-wizard-of-oz-gets-a-4k-uhd-hdr-remaster/

Video link about the restoration. https://youtu.be/x-6MYP0RxTI
About the Sony 385ES: https://www.projectorreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/sony-vw285es.pdf

Mama Mia Here We Go Again

Have you noticed that a good measure of today’s latest “blockbuster” movies are dark, moody and colorless? The color is muted with dark shades of gray. I understand the Director intended it that way, but I want to see COLOR!  Mama Mia is one movie that breaks the trend, with wonderful detailed 4K color, HDR and Dolby Atmos soundtrack.  Wanting to see how good Apple’s 4K streaming service is, we purchased our first movie, “Mama Mia Here We Go Again”. The movie is not native 4K, but rather upscaled 4K. The movie looks and sounds great. Nice package including a 45 minute round table interview with the actors, an extended cut, deleated scenes and a Karaoke sing along version. This is a great family film and for fans of ABBA, sharp eyed viewers will see cameos by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus. A few screenshots below.

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Occasionally, the film would switch from IMAX to Panavision.

Portfolio of 4K Ultra High Defintion screenshots with HDR. Source, YouTube 4K stream through an Apple 4K TV media player. Sony 385ES native 4K projector and Severson 120 inch screen. 1725 hours on the lamp. Camera, Sony A6300 DSLR, shutter priority, 1/40 second. Download 6000 X 4000 images. All images were moving video and not static images. Photographed October 23, 2018.

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