First HD-DVD Disc Reviews - Mixed Marks 262
An anonymous reader writes "As the first HD-DVD players and discs hit store shelves nationwide today, the new site High-Def DVD Digest has posted extraordinarily detailed reviews of the HD-DVD disc releases of 'Serenity' and 'The Last Samurai,' with more reviews to come later today. The site gives both discs mixed marks, with the Tom Cruise flick edging out the Whedon-fest for demonstrating more pure high-def eye-candy appeal. Also worth a look-see: a detailed account of their 'review reference system' (ie: their gear)."
plays in Peoria?, redux (Score:5, Interesting)
The more I read and hear about this stuff, the less interested I become. If it were just about the difference in quality and that difference were BIG, I'd be thinking about going for some equipment, and some new DVDs. But, toss in all the other BS, this one's going nowhere. I'll wait until there's one format, or both play compatibility everywhere, DRM goes away, and a player costs less than $150.
The differences in quality as described aren't blowing me away, and I love upgrades in technology. The improvements I'm reading sound much like some digital camera reviews where they describe the difference between 8 megapixel and 3 megapixel, which unless you're blowing up to side-of-a-building size, or doing mega-cropping isn't noticeable to the casual consumer.
I posted on this yesterday. I guess I haven't changed my mind, I'll go and look for a demo somewhere where they've got it set up correctly (heh, good luck with that!), but this is going to be a non-starter for a while.
In the meantime, to the industry, please:
- TrueHD
- HDTV
- HD-DVD
- 720i/720p/1080i/1080p
- Do
l by/Dolby
Digital 5.1/7.1 Surround - DD+
- VHS
- HD-A1/(and it's
snazzier cousin HD-XA1)
- D-VHS HD
- HDMI
- ICT
- Component
outs
For the record, I thought I was up to speed and I had to look up a couple of these. Sigh.all nice (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:plays in Peoria?, redux (Score:5, Interesting)
This is not a troll. I seriously don't understand how people can claim to not be able to tell the difference. Regular DVD's just look like trash on a large HD sceen, even with a good up-converting player. Ever since I read about the development of high-dev DVD's several years ago, I have ceased buying regular DVD movies in anticipation of buying their higher resolution versions in the near future.
My only concern is that high-def DVD's will go the way of high-def audio with the DVD-A/SACD format war, with neither gaining acceptance and both dying out.
Re:Something else to consider... (Score:5, Interesting)
You make a most excellent point. I find it more likely than not when I'm at someone's house, they have a first-generation HDTV (720p), and they have it all out of whack in how it's set up. Typically (and this is where it really gets weird) they have become SO adapted to the distortion that if and when I correct it for them, they are uncomfortable with the undistorted pictures, and want it switched back! OMG!
And this is all further compounded by the mostly inferior quality of anything claiming to be "high-def" for the sake of selling product, for example, Dish, Echo, Comcast, etc., all boast some flavor of "digital", with hints and sometimes outright bogus claims of HD too. But in the final anaylsis, lots of it looks not so great, and when the consumers starts stretching it and skewing it trying to get the "HD" out their no-bang-for-the-buck investment, it is most surreal.
Just shoot me now.
cracked ? (Score:4, Interesting)
lack of early adopters ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps a slashdot poll is needed.
I will buy HD-DVD/Bluray:
1) As soon as one of them is sold.
2) When one of these formats wins
3) When the DRM is removed or overcome
4) When the price drops
5) When the HDDVD-ROM/RW is available.
6) 1-5
7) When Hell exists and is frozen
Re:Something else to consider... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Something else to consider... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, its like the "digital" boom in the 80s. Marketing started selling digital analog speakers, and then changed it to "digital ready".
I like HD content. I've got a really nice fully upscaled 1920x1080p setup, and let me tell you, DVDs just don't cut it anymore. I watched some horrible movie the other day on my set, and I asked my friend how old the movie was, I was guessing 10+ years. It was only a couple of years ago, 2002 to be exact.
HD/HDTV is an absolute mess. HDMI, DVI, component, DRM, DD, stereo, stereo hacked to be Dolby Surround, 2.0, 2.1, 5.1, 6.1, 7.1, DD, DTS, analog, digital, upscaling, upsampling. I know all this stuff, and its still difficult to convince a surround processor to do the right thing. Its next to impossible to get anamorphic, 4:3, letterbox, and whatnot correct. I have a $1,200 surround processor, a $2k 7 channel amp, a $2k upscaler, and in my opinion the negotiation between the analog and digital formats and getting them right is trial and error at best. At the UI level, its alpha or beta quality for the user. Honestly, if I weren't a geek and knew and cared about this stuff, I would be very disappointed dropping 1/3 of what I have invested in my equipment as far as an end user experience.
If I knew someone that had X million of VC money, I would start my own electronics company that integrated this crap and made it work right so that the average joe can just buy it and enjoy the content.
To me stretching a 4:3 640x480 interlaced picture to a 1920x1080 resolution with crappy interpolation and making the faces and bodies almost 2x their width is almost a crime. But for years, people though that is what HD is all about. If I were to show them real HD content, they might cry.
1080i vs 1080p for film-source content irrelevant (Score:3, Interesting)
1080p purists, please stop whining. 1080i vs 1080p for film-source content is irrelevant.
Films are filmed at 24 frames per second. They're stored on the HD disks as 1080p24.
1080i is displayed at 60 fields per second, 30 full-frames per second.
The player performs a telecine operation on the material to convert from 1080p24 to 1080i60 and then outputs it to the TV.
There is this nifty techinque called inverse telecine that lets your 1080p-capable TV reconstruct the progressive frames from the interlaced output of the player. Ignoring additional image processing happening inside the TV, it will be displayed as bit-identical to the stored content on the disk, as 24 progressive frames per second, 1920x1080. Please set your TV to "film" mode and get over it.
The only place 1080p is going to matter is for video-source material with 30 or 60 progressive frames per second, like sports, live events, and pr0n. There isn't going to be a lot of that released on discs, at least at first. IIRC most HD production trucks aren't even capturing in 1080p30 or 1080p60, and it certainly isn't being delivered in 1080p by ANY consumer solution at the moment.
So please, stop whining about 1080p. There's nothing being produced to watch with it yet.
Well... maybe... (Score:5, Interesting)
This replaced the 27" JVC CRT we'd had for well on 13 years.
We have a JVC DVD player that will output 480p (aka "progressive scan") and we updated our digital cable box to the HD-capable + built in DVR box provided by the cable company (Cogeco) with an upgrade to HD service.
And for grins, I picked up a calibration DVD (Digital Video Essentials) to set the screen settings on the TV. I wasn't able to get them reference-perfect, but got pretty close.
The old CRT TV had a really good tube for its size, so the primary benefits would be the bigger screen size, the increased resolution on DVDs (480p vs 480i) and the occasional HD broadcast (720p vs 480i).
We're running component inputs switched through the sound system, but I hooked up the SVideo cables in parallel for debugging and comparison purposes.
My take on it is this:
1) DVDs are much nicer in 480p full widescreen than in 480i over SVideo. An SVideo signal blown up that big starts to show pixelization and other scaling artifacts. 480p adds enough extra information to eliminate most artifacts and lets you concentrate on the movie. Superbit transfers that increase picture bitrate at the expense of extra fluff are the best.
2) Standard TV depends a lot on the quality of the source material. Stuff filmed with a 480i NTSC camera is a little blocky, and sometimes (like on animated shows like the Simpsons) you can see visible ringing. It's not horrible, but it is there.
3) HD TV also depends a lot on the source material, and a LOT of "HD" is really upconverted NTSC stuff; most network TV in particular. Quality is a little bit better than standard TV (I assume the networks have better upconverters than I do) but you can still tell that you're looking at an upconverted NTSC signal. Sometimes, I'm pretty sure that "HD" movies, as shown on "Movie Network HD" are 480p DVD signals upconverted.
4) But real HD, shot with a real HD signal, is INCREDIBLE. Like, WOW, is that ever pretty. Amazingly, PBS-HD usually has the best/most real HD content, with the sports networks coming in second. Watching the Super Bowl in HD was just amazing, and to my mind, justified the purchase.
Summing up, on my system, I rate standard TV as "acceptable" (the increased picture size is slightly offset by reduced quality, with the size increase winning out by a noze) DVD is "good" to "very good" depending on the bitrate of the transfer (the big win is getting a good quality picture all the way out to the borders of the screen) and real HD signals are "outstanding".
Now, assume that somebody dropped a free HD-DVD player on me. Would I go out and re-purchase all my current flicks in HD?
I suspect not - there's a real step up in quality on a real HD signal when compared to a 480p signal; it's totally there. But that's not enough for me to go out and re-spend all that money. But I *would* get all my new purchases in HD, for sure.
How about early adopting? No bloody way - not until the industry sorts out which format is the standard, and until DRM is eliminated. The pain of choosing the wrong standard and having to deal with brain-dead DRM greatly exceeds the happiness of getting real HD content.
DG
Re:plays in Peoria?, redux (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting as well are Amazon's prices, $20-$25 for HD DVD. Netflix has said it won't be charging a premium for HD rentals.
There are mass market titles on the releae schedule. Apollo 13 next week. Ice Age, Harry Potter, Bravehart, The Lord of the Rings, not that far down the road. This technology could take off a lot faster than Slashdot's skeptics may be willing to admit.
DRM may not even be a speed-bump.
Re:plays in Peoria?, redux (Score:3, Interesting)
I know people who would hook up 2 pairs of extra speakers to their STEREO system, and claim that they have the same surround as me (produced by 6 speakers on a DTS system)
They also do not notice if the local pirate DVD rental store completely misses the aspect ratio of movies when "burning subtitles" permanently onto movies.
They also really do not care when there is a quality problem, and think that I am a snobbish asshole when I stand up and leave refusing to watch.
OK, in Costa Rica at some particualr video rentals they actually use copies of DVDs.
While most of the time it is a copy of the original DVD (single layer, so special features and some audio tracks are stripped) , at other times they release unacceptable quality screeners, or some digital format release before the actual
DVD (usually messing with aspect ratio when they subtitle it, but sometimes with 5.1 digital audio at the same time)....
Just for the record: I do not like renting from there and I do not agree with what they are doing, but sometimes a movie or two somehow makes it to my player (e.g. friends drop by, or I am really desperate to see something and it is not in the decent rentals at all (e.g. asian horror))
Now anyway, when people do not notice that they are looking at a screener, with dull colors and echoed audio, I doubt that they actually notice the difference between HD and non-hd
Re:Something else to consider... (Score:3, Interesting)
I would like to respond to this comment, because there are some people, who don't know any better, that may light on what you've said and develop incorrect understanding.
The fact is, 35 mm film is a very high resolution medium. I'm speaking of original camera negative (OCN) here. Yes, by the time you get to distribution prints the resolution has been reduced--moreso for optical workflows, less so for digital intermediate (DI) workflows--but this isn't really relevant to, for instance, home video production, since both standard definition (SD) and high definition (HD) video masters won't typically be derived from distribution prints (or at least they shouldn't be, IMO). Such masters are typically derived through a telecine process from first-generation color-timed prints made from the cut OCN (this is assuming the producer cares about quality at all). Digital intermediate workflows can, in theory, produce video masters as a by-product of the main theatrical release print production process, or at least derive the master from a first-generation inter-negative that avoids inter-positives and inter-negatives associated with optical workflows. This has the potential to greatly increase end product resolution.
A high-end DI workflow using a film scanner such as a Northlight might involve scanning at 6K resolution, then downconverting to either 4K or 2K, depending on the producer's needs. 4K has typically been used for demanding effects shots, while 2K has usually been deemed sufficient for non-effects work. (4K may be used more as DCI comes online--see below.) As you may know, 2K is 2048x1556, which is more or less equivalent to 1080 resolution, so you can see that the film itself actually offers much higher intrinsic resolution.
Now, of course, there are other factors. First, as hinted at, there may be compromises that result in suboptimal workflows (to save money) that result in reduced-quality end product. Also, the condition of the film plays a large role. What I've been talking about relates to modern emulsions that have been handled carefully. Obviously, poorly-handled film from days of yore won't offer the same results.
There is one other factor to consider here. For recent work like the two films cited in this article, and given a serious effort, there's no real reason the HD product shouldn't look very good. Using a high-quality telecine master, they should be able to produce good looking HD. (That said, clearly different qualities exist in the SD DVD mastering world owing to various compromises, both intentional and unintentional, so this is likely to continue into the HD realm.) But for older content, where rescanning is not deemed worthwhile or where original media is unavailable, then what I'm guessing might happen is they will upconvert SD content to HD. Frankly, I don't know if this would be better than a good quality SD version, but marketing concerns might drive folks down this path, for better or for worse. For instance, five years from now, will anyone want to buy SD DVDs, even for shows that were shot in SD? I don't know. If not, then if owners of profitable catalogs want to cash in on their holdings, they'll need to decide how to get to HD from their original assets. Upconverting SD to HD can be done with reasonable quality, but it will never be a good basis for judging HD quality. In this situation, though, I wouldn't blame the film.
Finally, I'd like to comment just a little on the promise of HD. I'm not at all sure that most people really understand what HD's promise really is. I think most people think (as I once thought) that the purpose of HD is to look "sharper" or "clearer," in general. This isn't really quite true. The real purpose of HD is to allow