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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Blu Ray and HD tvs make films look bad

miha said:
Some is on recent transfers, some on older ones. Current newly done releases give us examples for both, the best you can do these days and really awful overprocessed stuff that looks nothing like the original film it came from (such as 'Patton' or 'Longest Day'). And then there are the old transfers that were not redone and simply look their age. They are outdated 'HD light' with various amounts of problems.
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So true. I recently picked up "House of Flying Daggers" on Bluray, salivating at the possibility of enjoying that film's magnificent tapestry of colors and I was simply amazed: the transfer is just the same scan as used for the DVD, which was bad already, enlarged to 1920 x 1080. Even the DVD looked better side by side. I experienced the same problem with Terminator 2 and The Road Warrior, both of which looked just a tad sharper than the DVD, but nothing else. As for displays, I am quite happy with rear projection DLP with "True Cinema", which is just a 48hz rate, as I like their color rendition much more than LCD's or Plasma's. I'm moving to a 1080p projector this year, so we'll see how that goes...
 
Baraka not only showed edge enhancement, but severe aliasing issues visible as moire on some scenes. Ouch.

Graeme
 
Graeme Nattress said:
Baraka not only showed edge enhancement, but severe aliasing issues visible as moire on some scenes. Ouch.
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I finally watched it the other night. I kept thinking to myself, "what was the purpose of the 8K scan?".
 
Well, a high resolution scan makes some sense if you have very high detail and want to avoid aliasing issues and use a very nice downsample filter.

if, however, you scan at 8k and use an in-adequate downsample filter, you know what you're going to get.... I'm really surprised that scene passed QC actually...

Graeme
 
Mail your frames to NOLAN

Mail your frames to NOLAN

Chris Nolan should see how is movie is being over processed in Blue Ray.

1080P is a bill of false goods if you plan on watching mostly standard definition stuff or material uprezed to so-called HD. It's fine for Blueray and games, but it makes everything else look lousy.

In my humble opinion Blueray has only enough resolution to support monitors up to 42" if you have a critical eye. I don't know whether really expensive systems compensate for its lack of resolution, but I never thought I'd be saying that Blueray isn't good enough.

Looking forward to Redray.
 
Monitor resolution or screen resolution is irelavent without stating a viewing distance. If 1080p is not good enough for a 42" screen, how come sub HD resolution (measured on a film print) is fine at 42' in a cinema? Well, digital 2k projection does tend to look better in the cinema and 4k looks better still - but sit far enough back and SD is fine. It's all about viewing distance, or angle or view.
 
My only experience with Bluray was in a store. It was their repeating commercial for Bluray. It used Pirates of the Caribbean 3 footage, as well as Cars and other animated clips.

The animated stuff looked flawless (how hard is that?).

The Pirates footage looked like complete crap. I couldn't believe they expected me to want to buy it based on this presentation. I got to thinking that BluRay compresses the image so much that it's a terrible system, and not worth another look.
 
Blu-Ray can be great. There are some transfers that are very well done. Resolution is not the problem, most theatrical releases these days are printed to film from a 2K DI and typically get viewed by the general public in a final form that has resolution similar to 720p HD. ...I guess Graeme already said that anyway. The problem with Blu-Ray is the compression and the lack of attention to creating the best image possible when encoding for the format.

And it's not just the image that is suffering. The audio is as well. I was so excited over all the new possibilities for the new HD audio formats. Yet no one is using them to their fullest. On TDK you have to navigate the menu to turn on Dolby TrueHD, it doesn't come on by default even if your player supports it. Hello? Nice BD authoring job, WTF? Then it doesn't add really anything that the standard DD 5.1 track doesn't already give us. In fact, I'm thinking that aside from losing a bit less definition in the bass, it's the same track. But I didn't specifically test and only compared the first 5 min or so...

I found the surround mix for TDK to be a bit lacking, but it shouldn't surprise me, the surround mix on the Batman Begins BluRay wasn't anything to write home about either. Sound mixes on DVD releases have been lackluster for years, even with the availability of DD and DTS. Every now and then a real jewell appears (Attack of the Clones, for example), but they are few and far between.

As for in-store demo loops... Ignore them. Pirates, all three films actually, have some really good transfers. IMO, Dead Man's Chest is the best transfer of the three and it's one of the best BluRay transfers of any film to date, IMO. Most of the animated features have flawless transfers. Wall-e, Horton and Kung Fu Panda are as close to perfect as you're going to get with this technology. They look amazing. Once again, the sound mix strikes again though and I thought the sound mix on Wall-e could have been better. Horton was good, but the rear channel usage was a bit erratic. The KFPanda panda mix was a bit subdued, but well balanced and IMO well done, better than the other two.
 
The in-store demos are useless. They don't do the movies or the format justice. That's not to say it doesn't have problems, but the in-store demos are terrible beyond belief!

Seems to me that mastering things nicely is a big issue. It always has been with DVD, Laserdisc and VHS...

Graeme
 
Thanks for all the info guys! I don't own an hdtv/bluray player but when I buy one I'm sure as hell going to make sure I can turn off the motionflow and change the settings to optimize movie watching.

A friend who was with me noticed the video-y look as well, but the other people in the room didn't even notice. It shocked me, because I couldn't even watch the movie like that. Strange.

Thanks again for all the info. Good shooting to all.
-Miles
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Pirates, all three films actually, have some really good transfers. IMO, Dead Man's Chest is the best transfer of the three and it's one of the best BluRay transfers of any film to date, IMO.
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Yeah, the Pirates trilogy is definitely reference material in Picture Quality for the Blu-Ray format, and definitely the most impressive for recent movies; I already made a thread for this a few weeks ago, but for older movies, check out these caps off of the "How The West Was Won'' release....it's stunning to say the least.

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews40/how_the_west_was_won_blu-ray.htm
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Lots of people using the PS3 for Blu-Ray and the image quality on PS3 BD playback is dreadful.... .
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Using a PS3 via HDMI I can't really confirm that. Maybe it depends on the settings? Do you have any examples where the PS3 degrades pictures?
 
mail4joeg said:
"Or a 1080p JVC high contrast D-ILA projector..."
Only 700 lumens, over $3500. What are they smoking? Pass.
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Nothing. Why do you need a light cannon? If you really have a huge screen, yes, you need more lumens and another projector. But if you are in the 2-~4m wide range and in a strictly light controlled room (which is a must for optimal image quality anyway) there are no better projectors in the sub 10000$ price range than the RS20/HD750, RS2 and HD350. Very good price-performance ratio if you can use the superior native contrast.
 
Somebody needs to step in

Somebody needs to step in

We go through all the trouble of making a project look like film and consumers watch it like its video! I think motion flow and all others like it destroy films, commercials and everything else that shouldn't look like news and soaps!

While I'm at it, I think that all Television manufacturers should come up with a system that calibrates colors to what the director intended. No more of the false colors such as the overly used and over exposed "Vivid" setting. That setting over-saturates and overexposes all programs.

I really hope someone steps in and puts a standard to all this, as of right now I still prefer watching my programs on a SD tv, it looks the closest to what I was intended to broadcast.
 
miha said:
Using a PS3 via HDMI I can't really confirm that. Maybe it depends on the settings? Do you have any examples where the PS3 degrades pictures?
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Just comparisons, no specific examples I can provide. I have a PS3 and a Sony S350 player connected to the same 71" 1080p DLP via HDMI. The S350 output is noticeably superior. Far more aliasing and pixel artifacts from the PS3. Not to mention the lack of support for the newer audio codecs.
 
I have a PS3 and and a Panasonic 1080i, 720p HDTV and my picture is breathtaking...on SD and BluRay.
 
I'm not saying the PS3 is bad... I thought it was the most awesome thing until I compared with some other newer players. Theoretically, the PS3 player quality could be improved as it's mostly software-driven and there's enough power under the hood it should best most of the stand-alone players.

In terms of BD picture quality, the Panasonic DMP-BD5x and the Sony S350, S550 are noticeably better than the PS3. My biggest gripe about the PS3 is their audio support... Which is one more thing that can be addressed with improved software. But I think now that PS3 sales have slowed and it's over the hill in its lifespan, Sony has definitely slowed the updates and new development.
 
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