A friend recently picked-up an LED "3D" tv. Now, I always thought the 3D is a BS gimmick, and I still do, though I will conceed that it does work far better than I ever thought it would. Which is, not at all.
But the TV -- a samsung -- had a feature that reminds me a bit of up-converting, however it's used on every input, even 1080P from the blu ray. I googled it at the time but the gist is that it, on 2D mode, it computes deltas between frames and inserts new ones to make the image seem more fluid.
IT LOOKED LIKE TRASH!
It made everything look soap-opera or like a documentary. It messed up the depth of field. Sure, things were hyper-crisp but alarmingly so. It made it look cheap. Now, there's a setting buried in the control panel to tweak or disable that, but this is how it came from the factory, and i thought it was un-watchable.
So it's not merely lighting.
One last thought which is I actually think the perception of higher quality shots in films has a lot to do with stedicam which of course will be the same at 60fps. But that's just a guess.
It may look like trash, but--then again--so do upscaled images.
Your dissection of what is wrong with Samsung's interpolation had nothing whatsoever to do with seanalltogether's comment.
Now come back at me with some word-by-word, point-by-point dissection, but i'm done, this isn't worth it.
Absolutely preposterous. Depth of field is a function of lens focal length, aperture, and sensor size. There is no way that Samsung's TV could in any way effect the depth of field of the original recording. If it could, then it would be a magical motherfucking TV.
Because as much as you clearly know about film tech more than I do, you seem to be lacking a slight amount of common sense: What's happening there is processing of a digital signal. Specifically, the TV is creating frames for you to create the illusion of smoother video. And what this effect does, is it appears to flatten the shot.
What your slashdot-worthy post overlooks is that you're speaking from your limited knowledge of film. However, in this TV, there's a feature that lets you apply this setting to just half the screen, so you can see them both, side by side, and tweak as you wish.
Just like in life, there's no amount of theoretical education than can make-up for actually being there, for actually having hands-on.
So really, save the hyperbole.
This actually makes it more like a video game in which discreet images are generated from the world, instead of natural film/digital sensor in which millions of photons are captured for a short duration.
Honestly, download an original British or Canadian drama show that doesn't get carried in the US and you'll see low budget. You'll see horrific, unwatchable direction.
I'm sorry, but give Sam Raimi a video camera with any frame rate and there's a significant chance he'll produce a blockbuster with it. I mean Oliver Stone released big budget movies using Super8!
The Hollywood "look" is genericness, because like everything else about Hollywood the studios are whole-heartedly fearful of anything that might stop someone watching a film, and in doing so turn people off watching films by lacking originality from plot to cast to cameras.
Practically nothing that doesn't feature US accents and locations is picked up by the networks - sometimes period co-productions sneak in, as long as there's pretty frocks and no swearing.
You're missing Misfits, for instance, which is the best show on TV...
Disclaimer: I'm a layman, but that's my opinion as a South American that has watched both North American and European TV (with long stays in Canada and Austria).
I'm talking, look at the first episode of Primeval. It was atrocious across the board from acting to directing and 3D graphics; especially for reaching an audience of ~6.8 million. Compare that to the outstanding production qualities of Stargate Universe that only got ~2.3 million in a 5x bigger market.
My example are shows like the Canadian Flashpoint, which despite a decent budget and getting 1 million viewers can just be awful. The stories often have little reasoning behind them (shit literally just happens), the direction can often be gaudy by trying to make grand shots and just utterly failing. It often feels cold, like they're not using close-ups right. I often find this in many British shows too, comedies and traditional dramas not so much, but especially a lot of the police shows can be awful.
And Primeval could never approach, say, the brain-rotting stench of The Cape. SGU's poor ratings are not a badge of honour, it is a cancelled show!
As for police shows - that's pretty much a US speciality, but the really good ones are under constant threat of cancellation.
I do concede though, while I've frequently thought of British TV lately "damn, there's a lot that's good right now!", this thought has never consciously crossed my mind while watching anything Canadian. Due South, anyone?
Sadly we were using first generation G4s with Final Cut 1.0, so to do this for any any film over about 5 minutes meant that the render time would be measured in days, not hours.