CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

Person99 · Joined: 09 Mar 2006 Posts: 4899 Location: Flower Mound, TX

So, what is the point of the BD rating scales?

Given that the ratings are from 1-5, yet nothing gets a 1 or 2 or really a 3 (pretty much the only values are 4, 4.5, and 5) it seems to suggest that the scale is absolute. If absolute a 5 should represent perfection which is unachievable, therefore nothing should be a "5". Further, even in an absolute scale your scale has been misdefined if every single rated object falls in the top 20% of the spectrum. So, as an absolute scale it is useless.

If the scale is relative, then there should be 1s and 2s (because not all discs are equal some disc has to be by definition the worst disc made which would give it a rating of 1). There are no 1 or 2s, so if a relative scale, the 3 ratings given (4, 4.5, and 5) provide too little information to be useful.

zaphod · Joined: 16 Jun 2006 Posts: 2002 Location: Cloverdale

okay Dave, this is the the third thing you've posted today that i agree with. i think that you and i can also agree on a fourth - it's not a comfortable fit.

but as to scoring, what also bugs me is reading a review where the video for example gets a 4.5 or a 5, but reading the review reveals artifacts, or a mediocre picture.

sure, i suppose that if the film stock is mediocre then achieving that on BR is "perfection", but i want a 5 to indicate jaw dropping visual presentation. something that will demo and push the limits of my system. so don't give a high visual rating and dish the video transfer.

i used to suspect that the reviews were so high because they only reviewed "the good ones" but i stopped believing that.

WanMan · Joined: 19 Mar 2006 Posts: 10270

Don't trust them. Unless your system is the same as the reviewer, or better, then what good is the review/scoring system? I find this almost as worthless as trusting movie critics.

zaphod · Joined: 16 Jun 2006 Posts: 2002 Location: Cloverdale

you're right Wan, i remember back when IMDB did reviews and they posted exactly what their systems were and that if you wanted to do reviews they demanded similar or similar calibre equipment. led to a kind of uniformity - but then what was each reviewer's room like? it's hard to get it all the same.

but i haven't heard a good reasoning for internal discrepancies in a review. if the sound is muffled or bland, don't give it a high score. if the original stock limits the quality of the video don't make an excuse and give it a 4 or 5.

maybe renting everything and buying what is worthwhile would be a good rule of thumb.

**kal** · Posted: Fri Dec 11, 2009 5:08 pm Post subject:

Are you guys talking about the scores in my BLU-RAY DISC RELEASE LIST & MUST-HAVE TITLES list found here?: https://www.curtpalme.com/forum_archived/viewtopic.php@t=9237.html

(They're also partially listed on the main www.curtpalme.com forum page and in newsletters).

The rating is most certainly relative. These are combinations of ratings I take from various reviewer sites and my own viewings. To make the list the disc must have a combined audio/video score that is extremely high (ex: at least 9/10 where both audio and video are rated from 0-5).

Less then 5% of discs score high enough to even be listed since this is a list of "Reference Quality (Must-Have) Blu-ray Discs" only. That's why there's only approximately 40 movies on this list from the the last year out of the 920 or so that were released in the same time period.

**kal** · Posted: Fri Dec 11, 2009 6:27 pm Post subject:

On another note... I completely stayed away from rating the contents of the movie since that's completely subjective. One person's favourite movie is a stinker to someone else.