Say, your nephew is an inexperienced driver. He used to drive an old beater but has worked hard for a year and buys a new car with a lot of horsepower. He gives you a lift, and it's an uncomfortable constant stop and go. Technically, the new car is better, but the driver doesn't understand that he should treat it differently, resulting in a worse ride than the old car.
Say, your cousin has been cooking as a hobby for a while. They move to a bigger house with a new kitchen and can finally get a big spice rack and a deep frying machine. They proceed to deep fry everything and put all possible spices on it. It tastes bad and monotonic.
Your friend plays in a band. They've been gigging a while and got new PA equipment that they say sounds less muddy than their old cheap crap. You go to a concert. The treble is so harsh you can't stand it and have to leave.
Some examples where some new tool is, in theory, better. But it turns out a worse end result because lack of skill in using it.
I find many technically oriented people don't understand this. They point out to some number saying "well this makes it absolutely better". Sure, numbers might be easy to measure. But it's the end result that's important to most people.
None of those would be reasons to avoid a new car, bigger kitchen, newer PA equipment, etc. They just show that there can be a learning curve. Your cousin's cooking is probably going to be a lot better once he gets the hang of it, and your friend's music will too. Your nephew's driving may not improve, but only because what we see as "good driving" lines up poorly with what a nicer car provides.
Not every film has to be made with the latest technology. Sticking with analog or black-and-white or 24fps is a perfectly valid artistic choice. But it's an artistic choice made by the film creator, not some advantage to the older stuff. Cinemas should be using the most accurate reproduction they can. Filmmakers can then dial it back in the actual film if they think that's better.
The comment I was replying to wasn't saying 8k might produce worse results sometimes, it was arguing that 8k and higher fps would just be worse, period.
Ok, so we agree the things that were limitations could also be used for artistic effects. (I technically disagree about the avoidance: don't buy something if you're not going to bother learning how to use it.)
Then, let's look at the reproduction part only.
Technically, it might work. More choice in reproduction. But maybe in the real world, movie theaters (and certainly in the television world!) would crank up the brightness and edge sharpening and frame interpolation to make the director's artistic material look totally horrible.
If you think about the whole life cycle of any kind of art delivered to some audience, it's lined with these huge pitfalls at every point.
Theaters certainly could screw it up. Wouldn't be the first time. But maybe they wouldn't! I have no problem acknowledging and discussing potential downsides. But blanket statements that better reproduction will provide a worse experience don't seem to be supported by the facts, and it bugs me.
"Better reproduction" probably means very different things to different people.
Likely a lot would depend on good defaults and good training. If you were as skeptical about people and organizations as I am, you would assume it could on average worsen many movies. The original Murphy's Law and all that. :)
I'd accept "on average." The original comment up there didn't even say that. It just said, blanket statement, high resolution would be worse, and high framerates would be worse still.
Say, your cousin has been cooking as a hobby for a while. They move to a bigger house with a new kitchen and can finally get a big spice rack and a deep frying machine. They proceed to deep fry everything and put all possible spices on it. It tastes bad and monotonic.
Your friend plays in a band. They've been gigging a while and got new PA equipment that they say sounds less muddy than their old cheap crap. You go to a concert. The treble is so harsh you can't stand it and have to leave.
Some examples where some new tool is, in theory, better. But it turns out a worse end result because lack of skill in using it.
I find many technically oriented people don't understand this. They point out to some number saying "well this makes it absolutely better". Sure, numbers might be easy to measure. But it's the end result that's important to most people.