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Hi-Def Media Lovefest: The war is over and we can all go home.
- Thread starter HyperionX
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DarkJediKnight
Member
Purple Rain on both Blu-ray and HD DVD with Dolby True HD.
DarkJediKnight
Member
Back of 300. True HD and PCM on the Blu-ray version. Double U, T, F David Blaine!
Gonna be fun trying to hear a difference on my Paradigm setup.
StoOgE said:
The new Sony player passes True HD and DTS HD (not sure about MA) over HDMI. I'm seriously considering that player and leave my PS3 for gaming duties only.
Ignatz Mouse
Banned
I guess I'm just saying that interpreting the new SOny player as bad news (hurts PS3) gets a ton of traffic, which inthis thread, where it could only be counted as good news for BluRay (the start of the inevitable fall of player prices) it goes without much notice.
I'll hold off speculating, but the street price will be interesting to see.
I'll hold off speculating, but the street price will be interesting to see.
Ignatz Mouse
Banned
jjasper said:
OK, I'll speculate. I think they'll keep the lower price.
The really expensive parts of making a piece of electronics like this is the R&D, not the manufacture. Toshiba's already given up on recouping much from the early adopters, so I imagine they will keep the low price. And (this is the speculation part) I think by Black Friday Blu-Ray players will be within $100 of HD-DVD players, for the same reason.
DarkJediKnight said:
The new Sony player passes True HD and DTS HD (not sure about MA) over HDMI. I'm seriously considering that player and leave my PS3 for gaming duties only.
doesnt the PS3 encode these as PCM anyway? Whats the point in sending it to the reciever to do the exact same thing?
Days like these...
Have a Blessed Day
I'm in houston i've been thinking about picking p a standalone player for the bedroom. I just picked up the complete matrix trilogy @ Fry's for $69.99 after amazon lost my order. What tier would you guys rate that movie? All I know is it looks great!
Now a little anectdotal evidence ftl there was guy at fry's while i was perusing the hd dvd section speaking to one of the employees really LOUDLY I might add about how blu-ray ws so much better and hd dvd is dead blah blah blah. the employee walked away and he lingered around the hddvd section I'm pretty sure he was going to start prosletizing to me but then my gf came around and he left. LOL That was probably the guy that bought the 7 copies of Casino Royale
Now a little anectdotal evidence ftl there was guy at fry's while i was perusing the hd dvd section speaking to one of the employees really LOUDLY I might add about how blu-ray ws so much better and hd dvd is dead blah blah blah. the employee walked away and he lingered around the hddvd section I'm pretty sure he was going to start prosletizing to me but then my gf came around and he left. LOL That was probably the guy that bought the 7 copies of Casino Royale
Cosmic Bus
pristine morning snow
StoOgE said:
That was a pricing error and has, to the best of my knowledge, been corrected to $299.
ChrisJames
Member
DarkJedi, you have a good point when it comes to software selling movie players, but HD DVD does have a legitimate comedy blockbuster in Knocked Up (made it's budget back this weekend - $29 million). Obviously Knocked Up isn't going to be an HD movie that will blow your socks off PQ-wise, but still it's going to be a hit for Universal. If I were Universal, I would say **** it and only release the movie on the HD DVD / DVD combo disc format as a trojan horse strategy...
ChrisJames
Member
XMonkey said:
I was totally serious, but what I forgot to add is that they should make the price $20 max (maybe even $16-18) and have an ad for HD DVD (describing the advantages of the format vs. DVD and highlighting the cheap players that are available and their upconverting capabilities) that plays when you start up the DVD side. I know Universal would never do that, I'm just saying what I would do if I were making the decisions at Universal.
Knocked up was ****ing hilarious. Its seriously one of the funniest movies i have seen in a long time.ChrisJames said:
But sadly one movie makes not a successfull format, especially if they go with a relatively "normal" Theater -> to home video timeline, its going to be coming out against the likes of Pirates 3, Spidy 3, DieHard4, The Simpsons etc.
ChrisJames
Member
captive said:
Bourne Ultimatum is a pretty big one too, but yeah Blu-Ray is definitely the king of big blockbuster releases...
This is why Warner and their TotalHD idea SUCKS:
Review of Blood Diamond:
"VIDEO:
I had very high expectations going into this move for a number of reasons. First, I had waited to watch it for so long in HD, I expected an A list title to receive the A list treatment. Second, with a newer release I expected an upgrade over the mostly catalog titles that I have been reviewing lately. Unfortunately, I was let down in a big way.
The encode is done in a VC-1 1080p presentation, that is extremely starved in the bitrate department, and boy does it show. From the opening scene, compression issues arise in the backgrounds as well as the foreground. At first, I thought it might possible be grain, until I got up from my seat to get about 2 feet away from the screen and I was greeted with what looked to be mini-macroblocks, which from my normal seating distance shows up as video noise. I then popped up the bitrate meter on the PS3 and was astounded to see a bitrate of 7.9 Mbps! That is damn low for HD content, and frankly, Im not surprised that it didnt look worse! From this point on, I was on the lookout for this type of phenomenon, and it appeared again quite frequently in the presentation in low light situations. In one such case, DiCaprio and Connelly are speaking on the porch of an orphanage, and the camera pans back and forth between the two of them, out of about 5 sequences of each character, the video noise only showed up in one of them! Why were the other 9 OK and the other one it was present? Hard to tell, but I wasnt that impressed.
Unfortunately, that isnt the only thing that is wrong in the video department. Banding is quite evident in a lot of scenes, specifically in the skyline and in the setting sun. Fine detail is lacking at times, especially in the backgrounds of the forest on the longer shots where instead of seeing individual leaves, you are left with a more DVD like picture of the leaves blending into a green blob.
The highlights of the presentation though are the exterior shots, which have a tendency to be very lifelike, especially when there are close-ups of our main characters. Overall, Im sure that many will enjoy this presentation on smaller displays, but on my 88-inch screen, there was more to dislike than like in this one. There was plenty of space made available on this disc for content since it is a BD50, but I have to wonder if having an uncompressed PCM track and a low bitrate VC-1 encode was the best choice on this one?"
"WRAP-UP:
Warner has been accused of treating Blu-ray as a second class citizen when it comes to their releases, and I cant but think that is the case in this release. Warner has been converting their HD DVD encodes for their BD discs and I suspect that the lower capacity of the HD DVD disc is contributing to some of the issues presented here, but I wont know for sure until I see the HD DVD next month.. At least they have added in the uncompressed PCM mix as a bonus, but the low bitrate VC-1 video encode is pathetic for such a new release. Microsoft has been touting on the forums about how transparent that they can get a VC-1 encode to look to the master at low bitrates, but this one doesnt cut the mustard. As a plea to Warner, if you are going to release movies on BD50 discs, please use as much disc space as possible to ensure an excellent video transfer. Given the poor video on this release, I am hard pressed to recommend this one."
http://www.hometheaterspot.com/fusionbb/showtopic.php?tid/137411/
Review of Blood Diamond:
"VIDEO:
I had very high expectations going into this move for a number of reasons. First, I had waited to watch it for so long in HD, I expected an A list title to receive the A list treatment. Second, with a newer release I expected an upgrade over the mostly catalog titles that I have been reviewing lately. Unfortunately, I was let down in a big way.
The encode is done in a VC-1 1080p presentation, that is extremely starved in the bitrate department, and boy does it show. From the opening scene, compression issues arise in the backgrounds as well as the foreground. At first, I thought it might possible be grain, until I got up from my seat to get about 2 feet away from the screen and I was greeted with what looked to be mini-macroblocks, which from my normal seating distance shows up as video noise. I then popped up the bitrate meter on the PS3 and was astounded to see a bitrate of 7.9 Mbps! That is damn low for HD content, and frankly, Im not surprised that it didnt look worse! From this point on, I was on the lookout for this type of phenomenon, and it appeared again quite frequently in the presentation in low light situations. In one such case, DiCaprio and Connelly are speaking on the porch of an orphanage, and the camera pans back and forth between the two of them, out of about 5 sequences of each character, the video noise only showed up in one of them! Why were the other 9 OK and the other one it was present? Hard to tell, but I wasnt that impressed.
Unfortunately, that isnt the only thing that is wrong in the video department. Banding is quite evident in a lot of scenes, specifically in the skyline and in the setting sun. Fine detail is lacking at times, especially in the backgrounds of the forest on the longer shots where instead of seeing individual leaves, you are left with a more DVD like picture of the leaves blending into a green blob.
The highlights of the presentation though are the exterior shots, which have a tendency to be very lifelike, especially when there are close-ups of our main characters. Overall, Im sure that many will enjoy this presentation on smaller displays, but on my 88-inch screen, there was more to dislike than like in this one. There was plenty of space made available on this disc for content since it is a BD50, but I have to wonder if having an uncompressed PCM track and a low bitrate VC-1 encode was the best choice on this one?"
"WRAP-UP:
Warner has been accused of treating Blu-ray as a second class citizen when it comes to their releases, and I cant but think that is the case in this release. Warner has been converting their HD DVD encodes for their BD discs and I suspect that the lower capacity of the HD DVD disc is contributing to some of the issues presented here, but I wont know for sure until I see the HD DVD next month.. At least they have added in the uncompressed PCM mix as a bonus, but the low bitrate VC-1 video encode is pathetic for such a new release. Microsoft has been touting on the forums about how transparent that they can get a VC-1 encode to look to the master at low bitrates, but this one doesnt cut the mustard. As a plea to Warner, if you are going to release movies on BD50 discs, please use as much disc space as possible to ensure an excellent video transfer. Given the poor video on this release, I am hard pressed to recommend this one."
http://www.hometheaterspot.com/fusionbb/showtopic.php?tid/137411/
ChrisJames
Member
Captive, Bourne Ultimatum comes out around the 27th of July (that's when the Bourne Identity hits HD DVD also).
Shitty news that Blood Diamond doesn't look as good as it could have. Hopefully the HD DVD transfer is better, but I doubt it. I loved the movie, I all ready have it pre-ordered, so I was really hoping for big things out of this one.
Shitty news that Blood Diamond doesn't look as good as it could have. Hopefully the HD DVD transfer is better, but I doubt it. I loved the movie, I all ready have it pre-ordered, so I was really hoping for big things out of this one.
Got Paprika Blu-ray and gave it a run. Picture looks pretty good. I've noticed that a lot of animation films have the character cells look softer than the sharp detailed backdrops, so it looks a little soft but I think that's how it looked in the theater.
Sound quality is AWESOME with the PCM 5.1 track. The music and sound effects make very good use of the track. DD5.1 track is ok I guess.
Surprisingly it has some extras too (though not as many as the dvd LE). It has a audio commentary with Kon + Hirasawa Susumu (SO AWESOME), and 3 select scenes that you can view the storyboards, the character only boards, and the main film playing at the same time, individual, and frame by frame.
Here's some pics I took. Only the first one came out any good I think.
The French region-free Blu-ray should be the exact same w/English subtitles for those who don't want to wait until the US Blu-ray.
Though if they sub the audio commentary on the US Blu-ray it'd be pretty cool.
Sound quality is AWESOME with the PCM 5.1 track. The music and sound effects make very good use of the track. DD5.1 track is ok I guess.
Surprisingly it has some extras too (though not as many as the dvd LE). It has a audio commentary with Kon + Hirasawa Susumu (SO AWESOME), and 3 select scenes that you can view the storyboards, the character only boards, and the main film playing at the same time, individual, and frame by frame.
Here's some pics I took. Only the first one came out any good I think.
The French region-free Blu-ray should be the exact same w/English subtitles for those who don't want to wait until the US Blu-ray.
Though if they sub the audio commentary on the US Blu-ray it'd be pretty cool.
distantmantra
Member
Bebpo said:
Thanks for the brief review! Unless the French release has an English subbed commentary track, I'll hold off and support the US release in the (I'm just guessing) Fall.
Onix said:It's Warner ... there is no way they are doing a different encode ... this is the same transfer you'll see on HD-DVD.
It's ridiculous though. It's a BD50 disk. There was plenty of room for higher bitrates.
Lowest common denominator indeed
even copying the HD30 version should have been fine. 8Mb/s is DVD bitrate for 8GB, not 30GB.
Onix said:Lowest common denominator indeed
Do you really think this is a case of BRD getting "lowest common denominator" HDDVD quality stuff? Obviously its just a bad encode... as there are plenty of VC1 encodes from Warner that have looked great. This one is about half (or less) of what HDDVD normally gets for bitrate. Who knows what they were thinking.
Im betting the reason this didnt go day and date was the poor quality... maybe they thought of redoing it?
DarkJediKnight
Member
ChrisJames said:
I haven't seen Knocked up yet but the clips and gag reel are some the funniest things out there. I mean that Asian doctor who flips. LOL. Anyways, as far as Universal is concerned, I'll bet my bottom dollar this is something they've considered, but passed on because it is just not smart marketing. If they release it on HD DVD only, it may pass 50k, maybe even 100k, but on DVD, it'll sell a million. Warner and Toshiba pulled everything under the blue sun to promote the Matrix Box set co-inciding with the player price drops, and we saw how that turned out.
No studio is going to risk DVD sales to help their HD format of choice.
Combos cost too much to produce to be competitve with DVD prices. Plus, it would cause mass confusion.. some consumers would think they couldnt buy them because they have HDDVD cases.. some consumers would think they could buy all HDDVDs since these worked, etc.
Plus, I dont think you are going to convince J6P to buy a 300 dollar player just because his copy of Nutty Professor 2 also plays in HD.
Combos cost too much to produce to be competitve with DVD prices. Plus, it would cause mass confusion.. some consumers would think they couldnt buy them because they have HDDVD cases.. some consumers would think they could buy all HDDVDs since these worked, etc.
Plus, I dont think you are going to convince J6P to buy a 300 dollar player just because his copy of Nutty Professor 2 also plays in HD.
Argyle said:
and so do King Kong, the Matrix, Children of Men, Batman Begins and a whole ton of other movies that look on par with the best that BRD has to offer. Are these movies examples of "lowest common denominator" as well, or are you just making stuff up as you go along?
From that review, this movie has a bitstream that is much lower than typical HDDVD releases and a PQ that is significantly worse than HDDVD releases.
This movie is lower than HDDVD standards.. for HDDVD to be the limitng factor here, this movie would have to push HDDVD to the limits, and the encode doesnt even come close to that.
The bitsream is 8.9 on this film.. a THIRD of HDDVDs available bitrate. But go ahead and blame HDDVD for this, it seems to make the BRD crew happy, even though its evident this is just a terrible encode.
distantmantra
Member
jjasper said:
Boourns! The only two Sony titles I'd consider buying (already have Casino Royale and Volver) right now are Curse of the Golden Flower and Cruel Intentions, and neither are part of the sale. Oh well.
DarkJediKnight
Member
StoOgE said:
Perhaps the movie IS pushing HD DVD to the limits. There is no way to know how much bandwidth is consumed by the True HD track, IME, and the web enabled features for the HD DVD version. It's probable that Warner encoded the video to a set bandwidth and space and it clearly is affecting PQ. Had the full specs of Blu-ray been used, it would greatly minimize encoder errors as they would have a lot more space and bandwidth to play with.
In a next gen format, video encoding at 8mbps is inexcusable, regardless of codec. We saw the same thing with Warner's Lady in the Water which dips to 8mbps as well.
StoOgE said:
That's my point. Some of the video bitrate is devoted to the IME which counts against the total bitrate. There is also a lossless track which counts against the total disc size. On the other hand this is on a BD50 with 66% more space and 33% more available video bitrate (and no IME at all to use up and of the video bandwidth).
It's also quite puzzling that people have praised the 720p VC-1 encoding on Xbox Live, yet this version apparently looks awful. You'd think with a recent movie they would be working with the same master?
This disc is most likely being held back on HD DVD because it is the first (afaik) with network connectivity. I have no idea how much space that takes on disc (I doubt it is significant) - with all the complaints now it's possible HD DVD will see a new encode but somehow I doubt it, given Warner's track record.
We're definitely seeing HD DVD bump up against its ceiling. Take a look at the Frighteners, which has a 4 hour SD-res documentary on it that looks worse than a normal DVD because it had to be crammed on the disc. I'm glad they took it out on the extras in this case, but even if it took 2x the bitrate to make that documentary watchable, you'd still have more than the entire space of a dual layer HD DVD left to encode the main feature on a BD50 (I am told the documentary is about 8GB).
Personally, I'm happy to wait for secondary video decoding until the extras can be properly implemented in a way that doesn't compromise the quality of the main feature...
AgentOtaku
Member
jjasper said:
thanks for the link!
...shame to read about Blood Diamond
http://www.hidefdigest.com just put up their review as well.....
same opinion =(
DarkJediKnight
Member
StoOgE said:
mrklaw said:
If you look at the posts the reference the BD review, you'll notice that several people are complaining about TotalHD. I thought maybe that meant that a 15GB HD version might exist ... and maybe that explains it?
That, or maybe the combination of IME, net-enabled features, and TrueHD really is sucking too much bandwidth? We really don't know what the bitrates are for those features.
If this is not the situation, then there is simply no excuse either way. It is simply a crap transfer, and Warner should be ashamed.
My point however, was that it doesn't make sense that the HD DVD version would have a better transfer. Why would Warner make two separate VC-1 transfers, and for no reason have the BD version gimped? Unless of course they really are an HD DVD double agent :lol
Cold-Steel
Member
I know I'm probably LTTP but I picked up Planet Earth yesterday on Blu-ray and it's really a treat.
If there's anyone on the fence on this one, totally drop your dollars on it right now - it's a spectacular series.
If there's anyone on the fence on this one, totally drop your dollars on it right now - it's a spectacular series.
AgentOtaku
Member
Matrix said:
really!
I was under the impression that it wasn't....if so, then insta-buy!
EDIT: found review at DVD Town and HomeTheaterSpot
looks like its the Director's Cut indeed with a fantastic master
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