I guess that's the biggest thing. I can't tell a big difference so buying a new player when my VHS looks just as good is hard for me to swallow. I know my eyes are not great but still hard to figure out the big difference. Some day, when I win the lottery, maybe I'll have equipment that will make it different.
That’s the thing. Decent TVs a few years back made SD Pictures look good. They have to, because so much TV was still SD. The jump from DVD on decent telly to true HD really wasn’t that big. Especially when we had 720 HD in some cases, and especially when most of us don’t have anything bigger than 32 inch sets in the corner of the room. The jumps always seem tiny.
My mother in law has some silly ‘fuck-off’ big telly the size of a wall, literally looks like the Star Trek V bridge screen. It’s not sharp particularly, but it’s *huge* and this makes you notice lower quality pictures more. On the other hand, did I mention the thing is bloody massive?
But 4K isn’t a huge deal on a little telly, and most of us can only afford a little telly, and only when the old one literally dies. Which can take decades. Or we suddenly find ourselves cash rich on Amazon prime day and find space for a fifty inch plus 4K model. (Even then, I am on second hand Sony’s and would rather keep those than go to LG or what have you) Maybe then we will *really* notice.
It was amazing for me suddenly seeing TMP in proper widescreen when I got the DVD in 2002. Maybe 2006. Because for me, I had only really watched it (admittedly I had it in widescreen on VHS from 96 ish, but mainly watched that on a 15 inch daewoo from ten feet away) on pan and scan extended cut (on the same fifteen inch Korean tech) until then. Suddenly my favourite ‘arthouse’ Trek film was a new movie, because that film really *was* made for the big screen. But that was a change in more than quality.
I sometimes toy with the idea of a cheap projector, but really that’s back to the ‘if I rob a bank’ dream, because at the end I could possibly afford, it’s really gonna be shit, but *big*. Which would at least be ‘Home Cinema’.
Apart from TMP, the DE of Trek films usually aren’t up to much if I am honest. Theatrical cuts were usually better. TV cuts were best of all. *shrug*