Hacker News Reader

I wonder if this person has the incorrect settings on their TV for HDR content or color space.

This was my first thought as well -- HBO Max has a new Dolby Vision version, while Hulu continues to be bottom-of-the-barrel in terms of its image quality (they appear to routinely use the lowest bit-rate for video, and have historically been late to move from older interlaced or SD transfers to progressive & HD transfers). Hulu is likely serving up a feed based on the DVD, theatrical, or original HD TV release.

I have the Matrix 4K disc that ostensibly HBO MAX is using for it's 4K version and it's one of the most pristine discs I own. It was the first disc I loaded up on my home system post-upgrade and featured a level of quality of image so high that at one point I stopped to see how many of Keanu's pores I could count.

It looks so blown out in that post that I thought that it was an iphone shot of the writer's screen... I'm still not convinced that it isn't frankly; all those screengrabs look weird to me.

But definitely not impossible that these just looks like crap; streamers seem keenly aware that for the most part their audiences are happy to consume their media as low-contrast Tasty Wheat slop that they half-watch while scrolling insta/tiktok.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com