CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

MYoung · Joined: 24 Feb 2007 Posts: 369 Location: Madison, WI

We've seen the list of must have titles for Blu-ray. Where's the list of ones to avoid because they're not much better than the DVD versions?

Is there a master list out there somewhere of Blu-ray titles that are MPEG2?

There's the obvious, the original Fifth Element release on Blu-ray. How about the not so obvious titles? They don't seem to say on the box what codec is used for a particular title, unless I'm missing something.

I bought Kung Fu Hustle on Blu-ray and I'm not impressed with the video quality. It seems pretty soft. I'll have to A/B it with the DVD version I also own. It seems that it was a very poor choice to double-dip on Kung Fu Hustle. I want to know what else to avoid on Blu-ray!

You gotta love Sony saying the MPEG2 is good enough. They have changed their tune on this, right?

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

Talladega nights looked pretty sh*tty too

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

"House of Flying Daggers" was one of the initial Blu-Ray releases, and reports say the video quality is pretty bad. See e.g. http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/houseofflyingdaggers.html. Oh, and apparently it doesn't have any of the normal extras.

Too bad. It's a visually stunning film. I'd love a good BR transfer but apparently there hasn't been enough backlash to justify re-issuing it like they did with 5E.

MYoung · Joined: 24 Feb 2007 Posts: 369 Location: Madison, WI

What I find bizarre is there there are several reviews of the Kung Fu Hustle Blu-ray and many give it 4 to 4.5 out of 5 in video quality! Are they watching it on a 720p set? There's a single review on Amazon.com where someone said it had average HD performance and was only worth buying if you didn't already have it on DVD. I don't see Sony going to the trouble of re-releasing it anytime soon with a MPEG4 encode. That's pretty disappointing as it's a great film and deserves to be reference quality. Unfortunately there isn't a HD DVD import. Razz

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 1:44 am Post subject:

Ice Age II is MPEG2 and you can see the banding in it.

overclkr · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 4227

Tom.W · Joined: 09 Mar 2006 Posts: 6635

MYoung · Joined: 24 Feb 2007 Posts: 369 Location: Madison, WI

Yeah, any Lithium in the blue pill?

Welwynnick · Joined: 04 May 2006 Posts: 229 Location: Welwyn, Herts, UK

I sadly recall the first Blu-ray disc I watched at home was Vertical Limit, and that was a great disappointment.

Nick

WanMan · Joined: 19 Mar 2006 Posts: 10270

MYoung · Joined: 24 Feb 2007 Posts: 369 Location: Madison, WI

Well, that's not the case with my setup. I can see a difference between a title like "Shoot 'Em Up" encoded with VC-1 and "Kung Fu Hustle" encoded with MPEG2. That said, I am curious to find out how much of an improvement this video chain would be with the PS3...

PS3 ---[HDMI to DVI-D cable]---> Lumagen VisionHDP ---[DVI-D]---> HDfury ---[VGA to RGBHV BNC breakout cable]---> 1292Q

verses what I'm doing now...

PS3 ---[component video]---> Lumagen VisionHDP ---[RGBHV BNC cable]---> 1292Q

If that setup works better I sure won't miss having the garden hose size RGBHV cable snaking back to my projector!

**kal** · Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 5:10 pm Post subject:

The component output on the PS3 sucks. Been there, done that. Looked fine to me for the 1-2 months that I originally used it. Until I tried HDMI and bypassed the sub-par opamps/DACs.

Kal

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

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

MYoung · Joined: 24 Feb 2007 Posts: 369 Location: Madison, WI

An interesting read...

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051208-5713.html

Sure, MPEG2 can look good, but why use it when MPEG4 is more efficient? Could it be that, as the article states, Sony has more of a financial incentive to use MPEG2 because it owns patents for it? One could encode MPEG4 with a really high bitrate as opposed to MPEG2 with a moderate bitrate, filling the same space. I want to see a Superbit Blu-ray using MPEG4!

wedge · Joined: 09 Mar 2006 Posts: 66 Location: B.C.,Canada

I have A Knights Tale & only a small percentage of the picture looks better then my Superbit version.Also The Dirty Dozen,half of the pic looks awesome the other half like VHS & it can look like that within the same scene but different camera angles.Goodfellas=total waste of a double dip.
Rambo First Blood looks great except some of the night scenes have what I thought was excessive grain in them,NOT putting this in the crap pile,just commenting on the dark scenes.
The first half hour of Kingdom To Heaven I forgot I was watching blu-ray until they got to the middle east & there was a scene that popped right out & I remembered"Hey this is blu-ray".The first 30 minutes certainly didn't look like it.

MYoung · Joined: 24 Feb 2007 Posts: 369 Location: Madison, WI

What about titles that were released on both HD DVD and Blu-ray? Does anyone know if there are differences in quality among the same titles released on both formats or were the same encodes used on both formats? I know Goodfellas is out on both. I think since I have a HD DVD player I'm going to get an HD DVD version when possible, though I'd be curious to know if there are differences among the same title released on both formats.