You watched it at one quarter of the resolution and on a tiny screen and conclude that "it just didn't seem to add to the experience"? That seems unconvincing...
There definitely are art styles that look great even at low resolution, e.g. games in cellshading look like zelda:windwaker aged really well. I am not really a fan of the art style used in sol levante, but for something like garden of words or other styles I think 4k HDR might be quite beneficial.
Seems a bit odd indeed. Here's some stuff that shows off 4k and hdr - and you test it on a screen without 4k and proper hdr? Well, no surprise you can't see any effect from 4k and hdr?
Granted the pixel reportedly has a good amoled screen - but I couldn't find any information on it handling hdr signals, beyond that it "boosts" the image (sounds much like the equivalent of audio compression/loudness for visuals).
At any rate, since people have a hard time telling the difference between full HD and 4k in blind tests, I doubt that this could be anything beyond a subtle effect anyway?
I have a 4k hdr TV here, so I'll have to try and see.
> I am not really a fan of the art style used in sol levante, but for something like garden of words or other styles I think 4k HDR might be quite beneficial.
I think the main point being made though is that style is far far more important that resolution. I would rather watch a good style at low resolution, than whatever this style was at 4K. Another way of looking at it is that 4K/HDR won't magically make your content look better if it has uninteresting style.
This is true in other mediums too. You can have a game with hyper realistic graphics like the newest CoD, but some indie game with gorgeous art direction will still look visually better.
Now, you could argue, why not both, great style and resolution! Well that could be, but from what I gathered from the blog, it seems like many of the artistic decisions were driven and constrained by their goal of having 4k/HDR content, so it seems like trying to achieve that has negatively impacted the art style. So yes, as it is, I'm happy sticking to non-4K anime.
This whole thing is also a big promotion for Netflix "technology", with behind-the-scene videos that are longer than the "movie" itself. So I'm not sure how much you can really derive from this whole thing.
There definitely are art styles that look great even at low resolution, e.g. games in cellshading look like zelda:windwaker aged really well. I am not really a fan of the art style used in sol levante, but for something like garden of words or other styles I think 4k HDR might be quite beneficial.