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Comment by forgetfreeman | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't look better than the original to folks who grew up with media shot on actual film. Historically the crunchy-lighting-and-every-last-wrinkle levels of detail that are omnipresent in modern media were reserved for the lowest budget daytime soaps, and were a hallmark of cheap equipment, limited post budget, or both.

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So? 35mm movies were shot at 24fps while TV shows used higher frame rates. And because TV shows used to be cheap soap operas or comedies, for a long time high-FPS video gave you a feeling of cheapness. But that doesn't mean that 24fps was actually better! It was a technological limitation that got enshrined by its use in high art.

"Better" is one of those obnoxious concepts that can be pivoted to whatever one wants it to mean to win an argument. Crispy ultra-high-def video is esthetically inferior to smoother presentations given by older equipment and methods. Yet another classic example of new isn't necessarily improved.

The first talkies were artistically inferior to the best silent movies of the time, too. And shooting in black and white retained its charm for a long time after Technicolor.

Proclaiming that a strictly bigger toolset is "[a]esthetically inferior" because directors are still learning how to use it is pure reflexive conservatism. There's no reason you have to show wrinkles just because you're shooting in 8k, it just becomes possible to do so while it was impossible before.

Piss on "reflexive conservatism", the inferiority is pervasive and trivial to discern. Given HDTV made it's debut in 1998, unless making ultra-high-def media has a steeper learning curve than the Manhattan project I'd say your argument that this is down to directors and not the technology itself seems flawed.

>Given HDTV made it's debut in 1998

TV engineers started working on HDTV in the 70s. Sony demoed a HDTV video camera in 1981. HDTV made it's broadcast debut in the late 80s in Japan, under the name "Hi-Vision". First version of Rec. 709 was published in 1993.

All true, and high def broadcasts didn't begin in the continental US until 1998.

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