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[PhoncipleBone]

Mr. Killick, an extra ration of rum for this man.

Damn right!

good film, great score

Great everything. Well, except box office gross.

 

[Dubbedinenglish]

Gold standard for testing out my audio setup. Great movie.

 

[Loxley]

Just watched this because of the thread and it's magnificent.

The scenes on the Galapagos were a favourite!

Welcome aboard! And yes, the Galapagos scenes were great. It was an excellent way to show Steven in his natural environment, juxtaposed with Aubrey's (that of the Surprise). The exchange the two have about naming a tortoise after Jack is one of my favorites in the whole movie.

"Name a shrub after me; something prickly and hard to kill."

 

[kharma45]

Had this thread bookmarked for ages and finally got round to watching the film last night, wish now I hadn't left it so long. Top stuff.

 

[Mengy]

Master and Commander is one of my favorite films of all time. I saw it in the theater and I own both the DVD and blu-ray. I know I've seen it dozens of times literally, no idea how many actual times I've seen it, but I sit down and watch it several times per year. I like naval movies in general but M&C is one of the best IMHO.

The sound mix on this is truly amazing. I only have the collector's edition DVD, and the DTS mix on it is still one of my go to show off discs.

I heard that the blu ray is not as good for sound, even if it is lossless. That I guess they toned it down some or something. I am not sure. But the DTS mix on the DVD is nuts.

I own both, and personally the blu ray both looks and sounds better to me on my 61" HDTV and 5.1 surround. The DVD is excellent, but the blu ray seems better to me. But then I've not put my DVD in the player in years, maybe I'll have to compare them back to back and try to notice which is actually better.

 

[darkwing]

still sad that we will never get a sequel

 

[Mengy]

Allright, so because of this thread, I decided to directly compare my Master and Commander blu ray and dvd.

The blu ray definitely has better picture quality, but it's not anywhere near as drastic as other br/dvd discs I've compared. The dvd is anamorphic so that probably helps. The dvd looks fine, but the blu ray does have better definition at times.

But the sound, well I'm actually a bit surprised here. Simply put my dvd sounds better than my blu ray, and not by a small amount. It has better low end, much better bass, it seems clearer and more defined to me, and hell it even feels like it uses the surround channels better. What the hell is wrong with the blu ray? I mean the blu ray sounds fine to me too and I've watched it many times over without complaint, but the dvd quite obviously sounds much better.

I wish I could put the two together, LOL!


I may actually watch my dvd from now on instead of the blu ray, even with the slight picture downgrade the sound upgrade is just so much more immersive....

 

[Any Questions]

Allright, so because of this thread, I decided to directly compare my Master and Commander blu ray and dvd.

The blu ray definitely has better picture quality, but it's not anywhere near as drastic as other br/dvd discs I've compared. The dvd is anamorphic so that probably helps. The dvd looks fine, but the blu ray does have better definition at times.

But the sound, well I'm actually a bit surprised here. Simply put my dvd sounds better than my blu ray, and not by a small amount. It has better low end, much better bass, it seems clearer and more defined to me, and hell it even feels like it uses the surround channels better. What the hell is wrong with the blu ray? I mean the blu ray sounds fine to me too and I've watched it many times over without complaint, but the dvd quite obviously sounds much better.

I wish I could put the two together, LOL!


I may actually watch my dvd from now on instead of the blu ray, even with the slight picture downgrade the sound upgrade is just so much more immersive....

Thanks for the top tip. Sound to me makes the real difference here

 

[Mengy]

Thanks for the top tip. Sound to me makes the real difference here

So, I did some research on this last night in some attempt to understand why my blu ray sound feels gimped, and if I can fix it somehow. Apparently it's a known issue with the blu ray version of M&C, the studio used a 25 hertz filter on the LFE channel (Low Frequency Effects) when building the surround mix. The end result is that the low end and bass feels subdued compared to the original sound mix. The blu ray sound is technically lossless and "better" quality than the dvd sound, however the muffled LFE is so contrasting that any minimal sound improvements done to the overall mix are barely noticeable.

In short, the dvd sounds much better than the blu ray.

Why did the studio put the 25 hertz filter on the LFE channnel of the blu ray? God only knows.




Stupid studios and their horrible idiotic decisions.

 

[EGM1966]

Love the film. Such a pity box office didn't match the quality of the product.