Reposting this from here from 2023, after I stumbled across it tonight and it hits hard.
The text in the image:
I love my smart TV. I love the way it takes a long time to boot up because it’s trying to refresh the advertisements on the home screen. I delight in the way it randomly restarts because it’s downloaded an update without asking me, each of which makes the TV slower and slower with every subsequent install. I adore the way it buries the apps that I want to use, and that I use without fail every single time, below the apps that it’s being paid to promote and which I have never touched in my life and would never use without the cold metal of a glock pressed hard against my sweating temple. I am infinitely thrilled by the way the interface lags constantly, due to the need to have one thousand unnecessary animations rendered on hardware ripped wholesale from a ten year old phone. I feel myself borne aloft on wings of pure joy when I am notified that my data will be collected and analysed to determine my usage patterns. Even now I am writing this from a field of beautiful flowers and soft luscious grass as I lie and look up happily at the bright blue sky, smiling happily to know that this is the future of technology
I understand all this… But when I watch a movie, the “black” that I’m seeing in a particular scene isn’t the absence of light, because it’s not actually “black.” It’s a very very dark shade of grey or brown or whatever. And that requires light. Even if there is some actual “black” (spots where no light is coming out of the projector), there will still be a gradient, and immediately after “no light,” you will have a light attempting to project a very dark shade. And that will need light from the projector to display.
Maybe there is a way to encode a video for projector that accounts for this, I don’t know.