CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

garyfritz · Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 12088 Location: Fort Collins, CO

Dragan's not saying the codecs make the BR disks worse. He's saying there have been more slipshod crap transfers on BR than on HD-DVD. Which may be true or not, I don't know, but there are several examples I can think of: Fifth Element (which thankfully was re-issued) and House of Flying Daggers (which has NOT been re-issued). I'd love to have Flying Daggers on BR but not if it looks like crap, and most people say it does. Others that show up in a quick search: Clockwork Orange, Hitch, Assassination of Jesse James, and lots of others ...

paw · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 1176 Location: Arvada, CO

draganm · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 8990 Location: Colorado

**kal** · Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 12:11 am Post subject:

**kal** · Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 12:32 am Post subject:

ecrabb · Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 12:56 am Post subject:

Kal's exactly right. Most of these HT guys never see stuff in the theater, so they have no frame of reference. Combine that with the fact they're technophiles and know way some about HT equipment and hardly anything about film-making. 300 is a perfect example of a film that looks exactly like Zack Snyder and Frank Miller wanted it to look - and it looks F'ing incredible on my system - both on BD and HD DVD.

Another example is Miami Vice. I remember when that HD DVD came out, it was almost comical watching the comments on that release. People either loved it, or hated it. The people who hated it said the film grain was 'just terrible', completely destroyed the experience, and that there was just simply no reason for it. Eventually, everyone agreed that that transfer was a faithful reproduction of the film, and the discussion then turned into heated debate about whether film grain should even be used by directors if it would ruin certain people's enjoyment of the film on their home equipment. Seriously. These people simply have no clue about the creative process, or why directors and production designers make the choices they do. I and a few other guys basically said as much, too.

Some guys don't get it. If it isn't in full widescreen 1080p with sharp, clean crisp color, they're not interested in watching it. Oh, the wonderful storytelling they miss out on.

SC

garyfritz · Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 12088 Location: Fort Collins, CO

Nah, I'm not saying those guys are gospel. I just did a quick 3-minute google search and picked out some examples. I suppose maybe if HDDVD was still alive, I might find as many examples for that.

But House of Flying Daggers still ticks me off. Smile

**kal** · Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 1:01 am Post subject:

Moral of the story: Read reviews from people that know something about (a) the technology involved, and (b) filmmaking in general.

Good review sites that I frequent:

http://www.dvdfile.com
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com

Kal

**kal** · Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 1:04 am Post subject:

Sonynut · Joined: 08 Aug 2006 Posts: 367 Location: Bradford,PA

So it seems much of BR's bad rep came from bad transfers/encoding on the disks themselves(fault of the studio, not the player itself?)

Even I, with no hands on experience with either format, know better than to judge based on that Shocked

The player itself is, so also it seems, capable of decoding a very high-quality transfer that uses all the available space on the disk.

I always rooted for Blu-Ray and can say I am glad it "won the war". From a very basic standpoint, more storage space=much better potential for a superb-quality transfer.. if only they start pushing the BD's to their abilities, I think we will all be in for some major eye-candy.

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 4:56 am Post subject:

Like Bluray Superbit?

Put the extra's on a second disk or forget them altogether.

Sonynut · Joined: 08 Aug 2006 Posts: 367 Location: Bradford,PA

Actually I was thinking of the Main feature taking up the whole disk.......

Brian Hampton · Joined: 22 Apr 2006 Posts: 1173

Hey,

In fall of 06 Blu Ray deserved the bad reputation it had.

The only player was $1000+ and had "noise reduction" that could not (at that time) be bypassed. (I think this was helped eventually via FW updates.)

Add to that all the right from the gate Blu Ray releases were sub-par PQ-wise. This was a crime for The Fifth Element so Sony went back and re-did that one.

And,... at that time HD DVD was half the price and had 5 star PQ releases.

Thing is, a lot changed since then. Excellent Blu Ray players are much cheaper and lots of releases have been great for PQ as well.

Anyway,.. I love Blu Ray but I consider Dragon a bit of a friend by proxy from years of sharing the forums, I don't want the format war to take away any of my CRT FP buddies. I was going to buy a HD DVD player in fall of 06... they looked very good and I sort of liked the way the first players were more HTPC-like (hardware wise.)

-Brian

Phil Smith · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 7717

I have no bias and it seems to me there are more bad BR transfers than HD-DVD. But I haven't watched that many discs of either format, so maybe I'm wrong.

I also agree the PS3 is a pretty neat machine, but I wouldn't buy another one. For my needs, a regular BR player would be best. Actually, setting up my HTPC to play BR would be best. Thumbs Up

**kal** · Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 3:04 pm Post subject:

BR has a bad rap simply because everyone loves to hate Sony. So when a few discs first came out that had bad transfers, people all said "Blu-ray looks like crap".

Unfortunately, 100's of titles later people still have their heads in the sand and only remember the first thing they saw and still say "Blu-ray looks like crap" because they heard 2 years ago that the first few discs didn't look good.

Initial impressions are important. The first few discs really screwed that one up.

Kal

Bruce 09 · Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 3:11 pm Post subject:

I agree with Kal 100% people making those CRAZY comments are just trying last ditch attempts to defend their weak positions .

I Actually think there is more plastic on Marquees than ps3's.

Bruce

draganm · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 8990 Location: Colorado

Brian Hampton · Joined: 22 Apr 2006 Posts: 1173

Dragan,

So,.. Am I reading this right? You are not going to buy into Blu Ray but stick with upconverted DVD?

That would be sad for anyone with a CRT FP. Even entry level CRT FP's can usually do 1080i which looks much better natively then unconverted from a DVD. (Though 490p native from DVD can look awesome on entry level CRT FPs.)

Hopefully,.. Blu Ray players will just get better and cheaper and Blu Ray will just get bigger and then you will reconsider.

I think there's like 400 something total discs of HD DVD. And there's 10 more to be released before it's over in a few weeks.

Someday I hope you will realize that the format war ended the way it really should have. More capacity and more bandwidth are directly related to the potential performace of the product and the anti-scratch coating really works for rentals. It may not seem like it but Blu Ray has a much better chance of replacing DVD or at least becomming mainstream.

Finally we have a very accessable source for content that pushes the limitations of our projectors performance and there's something to be happy about in that.

-Brian

p.s. Here's the 10 remaining HD DVDs I mentioned for reference.

April 15, 2008
Bonnie & Clyde (Warner)
April 22, 2008
Freedom: 5 (Bandai Visual)
May 13, 2008
One Missed Call (Warner)
Sublime (Warner)
May 20, 2008
Ocean's Eleven (Warner)
Ocean's Twelve (Warner)
May 27, 2008
P.S. I Love You (Warner)
Twister (Warner)
June 24, 2008
Disco Pigs (Vanguard Cinema)
Freedom: 6 (Bandai Visual)

**kal** · Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 4:18 pm Post subject:

ecrabb · Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 4:45 pm Post subject: