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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 :)

"The Fountain" Blu-Ray Quality...terrible :-(

I was at an ASC Tech Committee meeting and a post supervisor for a major studio was mentioning that they were having to go back and look at their HD masters all over again because they noticed that some grain and noise problems were showing up on consumer LCD screens that weren't visible on the large pro 50" HD CRT screens used in telecine bays, due to the nature of the CRT raster lines softening some high-frequency detail and hiding these flaws. So perhaps HD telecine suites are going to have to start installing large consumer LCD screens as well as a double-check for these artifacts.
 
Interesting.

Yeah, nowadays, you are playing to so many audiences in terms of resolution and display type, it's got to be difficult.
 
It is difficult. Some people will see your film on a huge screen, some on a CRT, some on a computer display, and yet others on plasmas and LCD's... what does one choose as a monitoring device for color correction? yikes.

Jerry
 
I just looked at a 720p sample of the Blu-Ray Fountain compressed down to 4.4 gigs on bit torrents, and I have to say, it looked beautiful on my 24" LCD!!! Gorgeous, in fact!

 
I think Brian Broz may have a crapper of an HDTV.

After seeing The Fountain on both a Sanyo Z5 projector and a Sony 34"XBR, I think it's a beautiful transfer.

I think people forget that you've got to have a nice display to see the true quality of Blu Ray.
 
oh man, i cannot wait to watch this in HD!
 
I neglected to mention I was viewing on my Panasonic Pro 42" HD Plasma (8th Gen) Viewing at 720p, not the newer 1080p model.
 
that screen sounds so crap, i think you just give it away.... TO ME. :)
 
Brian Broz said:
I neglected to mention I was viewing on my Panasonic Pro 42" HD Plasma (8th Gen) Viewing at 720p, not the newer 1080p model.
Click to expand...

That's a 720P set. Not too great of a picture IMHO.

I think plasma screens are over rated, that is unless you get into the $4,000 range. Plasmas and LCD TV's are very hit and miss.

I much prefer projectors or the last oldie but goodie 34" Sony XBR HDTV.
 
Interesting. First of all, are the plasmas you guys are looking at calibrated at all? There's a HUGE difference between the factory default (and 99.9% of store floor models) and how you should be viewing it. I have a 37" Panasonic plasma (from their last batches in Sep. 2006) and it looks gorgeous once it's calibrated. I assume most people are aware of this though.

I just watched about an hour or so of The Fountain on Blu-ray via the PS3 with component at 1080i and it wasn't bad at all. There was some banding in places, but nothing I don't see elsewhere. Picture still looks good in my opinion.

Try those settings and these ones for the plasma if you haven't already:
Picture Mode = Standard
Picture = +22
Brightness = +8
Color = -1
Tint = -4
Sharpness = -14
Color Temp = Warm
Enhanced Black Level = Off

I have these settings memorized, so whenever I go to a store that has the Panasonics, I change their settings and the picture looks SO much better. The default settings are on Vivid and extremely bright and colorful, but far from realistic.
 
So I just watched a 720p version of The Fountain from bit torrents (compressed down to 4.4 GBs), and it was glorious! I can't imagine how great this would look straight from an HD-DVD at 1080p. This is the first time I have ever watched a movie I love in 720p, so it was a great experience.

The Fountain now goes from being my favorite movie of 2006 to being one of my favorite movies of all time.
 
A problem I've seen from a lot of LCD and Plasma TVs is their gamma is off. When a DVD is compressed the last few bits are usually assumed to be clipped. Poorly calibrated LCDs I've seen tend to "salvage" that garbage data and lift it up into the visible range glorifying all of the compression artifacts. I was compositing a few weeks ago on a system with a really bad viewsonic for a timeline/web monitor and I found it was easier to just move a viewer window over onto it than apply a LUT to inspect how well the really dark shadows were blending. All of a sudden all of those +/- 2% luminance levels around black become painfully clear.
 
sorry for bumping this thread but i would like to say there is 2 different versions for bluray out there..First US release other German one.German bluray looks better and having DTS HDMA
Screens from German bluray



US Bluray





This movie one of my fav and deserves better PQ :cheers2:
 
I'm a fan of Aronovsky, but The Fountain is definitely not his best effort. I think the care and handling of the DVD tranfers are directly proportional to how much the film grossed. Why should the studio spend the same on an underperforming movie as they do on a hit?
 
Kemalettin Sert said:
sorry for bumping this thread but i would like to say there is 2 different versions for bluray out there..First US release other German one.German bluray looks better and having DTS HDMA
Click to expand...
UK version is same as German.
 
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