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HEROES Season 1 HD-DVD (OT rant)

Jeff Kilgroe

Jeff Kilgroe

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OK,

I kinda got into Heroes during its first season and I've been looking forward to season 2 later this month. I didn't get to see all the episodes last season, so I picked up the HD-DVD set...

All I have to say is that I'm seriously disappointed with the transfer. In fact, I'm totally appalled that they would release something that looks this bad. :angry03:

Terrible mosquito noise everywhere -- far worse than the HD broadcasts of the show. Add to that a hellacious amount of edge enhancement. WTF??? It looks like someone took the over-compressed HD broadcast versions of the show (1280x1080 no doubt) and re-compressed for HD-DVD with additional edge enhancement and a low bit-rate that fails to even preserve the original broadcast quality.

I'm only half-way through watching the first episode and I can't believe the amount of noise in the shadows, the white sparkles, the glaringly over-enhaced edges and contrast. It's a total travesty... I'm seriously tempted to return the HD-DVD set and just buy the DVD version. It probably will have its own share of issues, but at least I'd save the $20 difference.

So sad, I had high hopes for this DVD set. :waaa:
 
Great, you just ruined my day as mine's on it's way from Amazon.
Well, there is always ebay....
 
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I'll post a follow-up tomorrow. I'm going to go watch another episode or two. I also find it curious that this HD-DVD set has been available for about a week now and I have yet to see a review of it anywhere in the typical online channels. I think NBC and Universal know that the transfer is crap and they didn't release any reviewer's copies -- and definitely none before actual release day.
 
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I have to retract my statement about there not being any reviews out there... It seems there are now, but were none the other day when I looked for them.

I'm totally confused though. I have yet to see a review that actually analyzes the picture quality. So far, the available reviews give the release a lot of praise and talk about how good it looks. I seriously wonder if the reviewers even put the discs in their players and watched, or they must have did it from a player like the XBOX 360 with HD-DVD add-on to a 32" 720p LCD, where all HD-DVDs (good or bad) will have that same soft and muddy appearance. I'm watching on a 71" 1080p DLP fed by a Toshiba HD-A1.. The picture quality just plain sucks on this release.

I know I'm ranting and raving, but I'm actually mad over this. There is no reason a 1080p VC-1 encode should look this bad. I could have blindly encoded my own copies of the couple episodes stored on my DVR via its component output. And using default settings in compressor for an H.264 HD-DVD would have given me better results than this.
 
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A report after watching some more...

I'm still grumpy, but a bit confused. Much of the video, better than half of it actually looks very good (aside from some overzealous edge sharpening). The mosquito noise comes and goes, usually appearing in shadows. Some shots the noise is so bad that it has consistent pattern to it, sometimes the noise will have a strobing effect.

I still have two episodes of Heroes saved on my HD DVR, I will try to do a comparison between them and the same episodes on HD-DVD over the next few days.
 
"Ignorance is Bliss".

Imagine how many people can't see what you see and are enjoying it. =P

I was about to go and buy the HD-DVD Heroes as well, after seeing an ad in the theater... looks like it's DVD for me.
 
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Kholi said:
"Ignorance is Bliss".

Imagine how many people can't see what you see and are enjoying it. =P
Click to expand...


"Why is the picture so bad?" and... "What are all those speckles?"

-- My wife.
 
Soo...what you're saying (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that you are not really satisfied with the picture quality of your recent aquisition :whistling:
 
Actually, the DVD doesn't look that bad. No edge sharpening from what I can tell and I haven't noticed that much noise, probably due to the lower resolution. I'm watching it up-converted on a 65" SXRD Sony 1080P television. I'd love to have the HD quality of the broadcast versions but I'm not dissapointed with the DVD in the least.

Too bad to hear that the HD-DVD is blah. Just checking though, have you gone through and checked your TV's settings to see if the sharpness isn't cranked up all the way or anything like that?
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
"Why is the picture so bad?" and... "What are all those speckles?"

-- My wife.
Click to expand...

lol. That must suck. Most of the people I know can't see what I see, and they also have no idea what noise is to begin with or what a RED ONE is.

Thanks for the SD DVD report, Felis.
 
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Yeah, Jack, my TV is set fine... It's calibrated to ISF standards. It's a Samsung HLS7178W 71" DLP. Awesome TV. Most HD-DVD discs look stunning on it. I own about a dozen HD-DVD titles and plan to replace this Toshiba HD-A1 with the Samsung dual-format HD-DVD/BluRay player in the next month or so if the reviews are positive once its released.

FWIW, I've watched the first two discs and it's fairly easy to ignore most of the image problems when you're into the story. Sometimes there's things that jump out at me though and I just think "I have clients who would fire me if I delivered video that looked like that.".
 
Ouch, haven't recieved my box set from Amazon yet, but I just saw some framegrabs from the PowerDVD:
AnyC02551.jpg

AnyC02627.jpg

AnyC02610.jpg


Horrible post processing.....
 
I see some edge enhancement effects in those stills, although I've seen worse :-/. The first shot of Hiro looking up, looks like there was some skin-tone detail reduction?
 
I don't know:
1'st pic: excessive grain removal.
2'nd pic: massive edge enhancement, massive grain/Musquito noise.

Inconsistent allright :-(
 
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