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James Cameron gives a response to the negative comments on the 4Ks of Aliens and True Lies
(feddit.uk)
You can find the full interview here. Not very long but some interesting titbits on various projects including a new Terminator (he reveals nothing).
He and his great team did a bad job. 4k is dumb anyway but I want a high Def version of a movie to look like the film being projected directly.
Why is 4K dumb?
They used AI upscaling. Not only it completely defeats the point of a release like this, it looks like a blurry mess that's paradoxically also oversharpened. People's faces jump from looking like a mannequin to one of those Ren & Stimpy closeups
Too many Ks. Unless you have a really really huge TV or you sit super close to it, and also have absolutely no vision problems, there's a pretty good chance you're not gonna tell the difference between 1080p and 4k.
Optimum viewing distance, optimum viewing angle—these are defined things. In my experience, most people are clueless about how to properly set up a TV. So yes, I expect if a TV isn't set up correctly, the difference between 1080p and 4K wouldn't be as noticeable. Transfer quality and TV quality also matter.
So your saying it doesn't matter for normal people
Not sure what point you're trying to make. 4K shouldn't be an option because you don't care about it? Most people aren't the target audience for 4K or even Blu-ray. You're always free to stick with streaming movies and driving a Camry, normal people do and it works for them.
I watch my DVD collection on my 50 inch 4k television, and you know what? they're okay. It's a 16:9 television, so I get to choose between letterboxes with widescreen releases or pillarboxes with pan n' scan releases, but we all do. I'm not worried about 4k content. Honestly I'd be fine with a 1080p panel there.
A computer monitor is a different story; you typically sit a lot closer to it, so pixel density is more significant. I can genuinely tell a difference between my 27" 1080p monitor and my 34" 1440p ultrawide monitor. The latter takes up more of my visual field while retaining about the same PPI. I still don't think I need 4k here though.
Doesn’t film have a definition roughly equivalent to 2K?
Not sure why they didn’t just do a digital transfer to 2K.
No. 8 mm is roughly equivalent to 2K. 16 mm 4K, 35 mm around 5-6K, and 70 mm around 6-12K. 35 mm is the most common.
I don't really think going higher than 1080p really does much for a movie, after that point the finishing returns start to set in unless you have an absolutely giant TV or you're sitting super close to a still pretty big TV. Maybe for vidya games or something it could make a difference or something filmed in native 4k could potentially look a bit better but especially for something being digitized from a film negative, it can be a choice between keeping analog grit or smoothing it all out digitally and I'd prefer a movie shot on film to continue to look like it was shot on film.