Dylan Jones came up with a hugely inventive skate trick where he’s able to get his board to 360 degrees horizontally around a rail. Enthusiasts online are likening the new trick to the bizarre stunts pulled off by skateboarding greats like Rodney Mullen and Gou Miyagi.
4K displays are becoming more and more ubiquitous these days, with prices dropping dramatically in the last couple of years, it’s now possible to get your hands on a UHD display for as little as $400 these days, depending on the size and other features, of course. One feature that’s started to show up on the mid- and higher-tier displays is something called HDR – also known as high dynamic range video. HDR can make a huge difference in the quality of images, and the premier version of the technology is called Dolby Vision.
I recently spent some time with one of Vizio’s latest 4K UHD displays which supports Dolby Vision, the 50″ Smartcast M-Series display. Packing the latest in display technology, along with a whiz-bang new interface powered by Google ChromeCast, it packs quite an impressive punch, especially given the fact that it’s currently available for just $749.99. The 65″ M-Series isn’t that much more, at just $1299.99, and displays are available all the way up to 80.”
You might think that a 4K display is all you need to enjoy the highest quality image, but you’d be wrong. Videos encoded with Dolby Vision tech produce the most astounding range of color, contrast and depth ever seen on a home theater display. What this means in real world terms is that movies come to life in ways that frankly look even better than they do on in the theater.
What Dolby Vision does is provide a much wider range between the darkest darks and the whitest whites, producing an impressive level of depth and immersion. In fact, watching HDR 4K titles in Dolby Vision is more satisfying than watching a movie in 3D, since there are no pesky glasses, or the artifacts and headaches that come along with them. Colors are insanely vibrant, and light sources literally pop off the screen. In purely technical terms, Dolby Vision is capable of reproducing a range 0f 0.0001 to 10,000 nits of brightness – though the HDR displays on the market today peak out at 4,000 nits – but that’s still up to 40 times brighter than conventional display tech.
Regular displays start to wash out and lose color saturation in as they approach peak brightness. But with Dolby Vision, those areas can retain their color. This is best observed in movie scenes with colorful light sources, like the bright illumination on the Jaegers in Pacific Rim.
The high dynamic range also makes things like beams of light punch through and pop straight off the screen, and scenes where there are bright flashes like lightning are especially effective and intense. The explosive storm scene in Mad Max: Fury Road is particularly awe-inspiring when viewed in Dolby Vision.
Part of what makes Dolby Vision work so well is that it’s encoded during the movie production process, capturing color and contrast inherent in the source material, but heretofore unseen by viewers. Color grading and tuning is done by moviemakers on Dolby Vision displays, so what you see at home is closer to what they saw in the studio than ever before.
As amazing as the picture quality is, there’s still not a massive amount of Dolby Vision encoded content available. I found the best source to be VUDU, who currently has about 50 4K UHD titles, many encoded with Dolby Vision, as well as Dolby Atmos sound – which adds great dimensionality to the audio. In addition to the aforementioned Pacific Rim and Fury Road, some of the other titles worth checking out are The LEGO Movie, Batman v. Superman, the Sherlock Holmes movies, and Oblivion, among others. You can also find a handful of Dolby Vision content on Netflix, but they have plans to release much more, including its Marvel originals, like Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage.
For content not encoded in Dolby Vision, the Vizio M-Series still offers an impressively sharp and vivid image, minus the color and contrast pop you get with HDR content. Thanks to a recent firmware update, the displays also support HDR10, a less robust HDR tech, most frequently used on UHD Blu-Ray discs. HDR10 only offers 10-bit color, while Dolby Vision requires 12-bit color, providing a much broader color gamut than HDR10. In addition Dolby Vision offers greater overall precision, since its content can be dynamically adapted to the specific capabilities of the display it’s being viewed on.
I’ve done my best to capture what I saw in my Dolby Vision testing, using photos that I captured directly from the screen of the Vizio M-Series display. However, no photograph can fully capture the true image quality of Dolby Vision tech, so I recommend heading down to your local electronics store and asking for a demo in person. Personally, I’m ready to upgrade my display so I can take advantage of this incredible visual technology.
Never mind brand loyalty, how about name loyalty? The 2016 Toyota Corolla is the eleventh generation of the car, larger than ever before and – in this “Special Edition” Corolla S form, at least – faintly striking on the road, courtesy of Absolutely Red paint and 17-inch gloss black alloys. It’s a car that promises not only the predictability that … Continue reading
Satellites such as the Kepler have been working overtime to uncover hundreds of new planets in our galaxy. But how did we first discover the planets in our local volume of space? Here are the stories of how astronomers living hundreds of years ago discovered each planet in our solar system.
As Volkswagen works towards repairing its reputation following the “dieselgate” emissions scandal, the German car manufacturer seems to be going all-in on fully electric cars. Along with a goal stated earlier this year of offering 30 electric models by 2025, VW chairman Herbert Diess says that their first EV will make its debut at this year’s Paris motor show, with … Continue reading
In June, Motorola unveiled its VerveLife line of “lifestyle” products, with the VerveOnes+ wireless earbuds being the first to go on sale. These are truly wireless, existing as two independent pods that you wedge into your ear holes, with no wires or…
If May’s enigmatic teaser trailer for Disney’s upcoming live-action “Beauty and the Beast” left you frustrated and dying to know more, you’re in luck.
Producer Jack Morrissey posted several images on social media Friday that give us some more insight on what the film will look like, including “concept art” for Lumiere and Cogsworth — who will be played by Ewan McGregor and Ian McKellan, respectively.
Actor Josh Gad, who plays Gaston’s sidekick LeFou, shared one image on Instagram of Gaston (Luke Evans) and a crowd at the village lodge.
And Twitter user @maconodom put together a side-by-side illustrating that the beast in human form, played by Dan Stevens, is pretty spot-on in terms of resemblance to the animated movie.
We have to admit, the pics look pretty good, and the gnarled features and mournful expressions of Lumiere and Cogsworth really convey the sadness of two dudes trapped in home furnishings.
Can’t wait for another magical musical tribute to Stockholm Syndrome!
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Hillary Clinton has yet to offer a definitive policy stance on strong end-to-end encryption, the mathematical algorithms that protect our data, instant messages, and web browsing. Instead of calling for a ban on government mandated encryption backdoors, something computer security experts have universally urged, she’s taken a backseat, supporting a hand waving “encryption commission
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One of the rarest examples of an early Apple-1 computer prototype was sold at a charity auction earlier this week. When first announced earlier this summer, the item was expected to reach $1 million or more, but it ended up selling for $815,000, with 10% of the proceeds being donated to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. The reason this Apple-1 … Continue reading
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