Films for testing screen quality

The other night I watched The Witch - a 2015 horror film set in ye olde time New England and there's a lot of dark scenes and stuff by candlelight. Anyway, I was watching it on my BV7 mk1 which I have as a monitor for my Mac Pro and while it's a great big screeen for work, youtube, etc you really notice how bad the blacks are on it compared to a new tv. Worse I'd say than the old CRTs, maybe it's the age, the tech, maybe it's just that the end of life CRT range was the best of the best whereas the BV7 was still in the sort of early days of LCD.

Anyway, I digress. My point was that it was a great film to test a screen with and I wondered what movies other people use to test screen quality? We all have pieces of music we like to test speakers with (I like big organ+choral works myself) but what about films? Something with huge sound+visual range, dark black scenes, fast moving white/black to test the contrast etc. Gravity is probably a good one now I think about it.

LCD (or even "LED" sets which are LED lit LCDs) take a lot of hair pulling in the design to get remotely decent black levels and contrast. Full array backlighting with local dimming, and they still can't equal the last generation plasmas or the newer OLEDs.

I have one film that I've always used, that's Blade Runner, the original. The original Alien is a good one, as is the first Klll Bill, especially the scene with Lucy Liu in the very black dinner with yakusa bosses, and the scene in the garden where she fights Uma Thurman. All in all the movie is good for contrast and bright colors, but to me Blade Runner is my must pass test.

For colours, Avatar is a must have. It does’nt get much better.

For overall PQ, i’ve used the Dark Knight trilogi. The dark scenes, especialy in the first movie, are second to none.

As mentioned by Jeff, the original Blade Runner is also a top, top movie on the picture side.

In the more modern section, after i’ve got 4k HDR/Dolby Vision, i’ve added Deadpool to the list. Even the original 1080p version is an absolute stunner, in all aspects of picture quality, perhaps the best i’ve ever seen. And to top it off, the movie is freakin’ hillarious!

Good point about the Dark Knight series. I'd also suggest something like The Fifth Element, it has a wide range of dark/light/colorful scenes plus lots of motion in some scenes to look for artifacting. Haven't seen Deadpool yet.

Also, watch a good B&W movie, such as an old Kurosawa flick, or even Dr. Strangelove. That shows up contrast issues, but perhaps more importantly it allows you to evaluate color temp (is it black and white or black and bluish?) and gray scale linearity.

I have filled my mac with some dolby demos, you know the ones that use to loop in the tv sellers showrooms.  Big impressive sound with lot of spacial effects, bright images with dark backgrounds and lot of contrats, try quick move to slow motion, details, etc, etc…

Maybe it's a mistake as i understand those clip are made to magnify (average) tv's, but, hey, it makes me happy!

Do you think we could here at Beoworld choose one of those short clips so everyone can play it and share thoughts vs equipments on a factual base?

matador43:

Do you think we could here at Beoworld choose one of those short clips so everyone can play it and share thoughts vs equipments on a factual base?

Trailer for “Gravity” lets you test the speakers too

My two cents:

Avatar for colors as mentioned before.

Gravity for blacks.

And the newcomer: Tintin,- it has a spectacular mix of CGI and actual movie qualities. - Even available in 3D

Also try the bbc “planet earth” series, it looks spectacular

I had an Oppo 203 demonstrated to me today, and the store used “War for the Planet of the Apes” ... what do you all think of it’s first minutes for a reasonable dark black on black on desk gray test !

For contrast testing I use the movie "Under the Skin" on Blu-Ray. There is both a scene with extreme white background and scenes with pitch black backgrounds. Even the BV11 has a hard time reproducing these scenes as it constanltly adjusts to what is moving in relation to the background . My last gen Pioneer LX5090H in the basement knocks the socks off the BV11 in this regard. I cannot wait to try it out on the Eclipse!

For white on black try Kubrick's 2001 on BR. The first scene of the white space craft moving against a pitch black sky provides a good test of ghosting. Unfortunately the BV11 did not do so well there. 

Thanks to the Bang & Olufsen Magazine 2017 - 2018 I was reminded of the Predator Classic.

The video quality is far from stellar, but the DTS-HD soundtrack is loud and a perfect test for an "immersive" sound experience.

Enjoy!