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Blu-Ray and HD - is it really all that?

Started by Santa's Boyfriend, January 01, 2010, 10:32:02 PM

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Sony Walkman Prophecies

I think the main (only?) benefit watching a DVD through a HD tv is the fact that youre streaming a pure digital signal - youre not introducing any 'noise' as you would be with the old sets that generally only accepted analog signals.

Anyhow, my advice to anyone thinking of getting into blu-ray would be to avoid it altogether unless youre going to get a full 1080p set and at least 37inches, otherwise i think the benefit is far too minimal. Ive got a 20inch at 720p and was told it wasnt worth the upgrade, and in hindsight my friend was probably right.

Having said that, if i up the sharpness and wack plenty of noise reduction on the tv i find can still get pretty good results which certainly are noticeable. For instance; i was watching the new Bladerunner print on blu-ray last night and had to keep telling myself that it was filmed in 1982 - the sharpness and detail of it almost made it look cgi at certain points. But the full resolution of the format is still somewhat wasted by the small size of my set, as i said; i really think you need something at least 37inches to get full benefit of HD.

AsparagusTrevor

Quote from: Sony Walkman Prophecies on January 03, 2010, 01:58:33 AM
I think the main (only?) benefit watching a DVD through a HD tv is the fact that youre streaming a pure digital signal - youre not introducing any 'noise' as you would be with the old sets that generally only accepted analog signals.
Plus, being able to play a DVD in progressive scan rather than interlaced helps a lot.


I have a 40 inch TV, and sit about 2m away from it, and the difference between a DVD (on my upscaled DVD player) and HD media is negligible at that distance. I don't own any Blu-Ray playing device, but I have downloaded BD rips and played them through the TV, and I have my PC hooked up to play games through the telly. When watching/playing HD content, I like to sit a bit closer to benefit the extra clarity more.

How I look at it; playing standard def digital stuff through a CRT TV looks great. Even digital TV looks good through a CRT TV. The clarity of a DVD on a CRT TV looks better than on an LCD/Plasma TV. The CRTs aren't picking up any imperfections like the LCDs/Plasmas. SD-TV on a LCD/Plasma looks terrible, it looks like watching Youtube videos. It's picking up all the noise, all the compression artifacts. To me, DVD to Blu-Ray on an HD TV is like the jump from VHS to DVD on a CRT TV. All the holes of imperfection are filled, the picture looks as clear as it should.

Glebe

Quote from: Pseudopath on January 02, 2010, 02:45:58 PMIsn't that caused by playing 5.1 Surround Sound through stereo speakers? You can usually adjust the audio settings in the DVD menu to counteract this.

If you do have a proper 5.1 amp, there may be an 'Auto Volume' setting (this is certainly the case with my mate's LG system) which causes all sorts of daft problems. Turning this off should beef up the sound considerably.

I've discovered TrueHD sounds quite vague through the TV speakers. I think you really need a proper speaker system to hear it properly. Which I don't have.

thugler

It's not all that a leap, but it is nice. Much the same as the jump from vhs to dvd, it's nice, but your still watching a film, and it's largely the same film. I have just bought a massive telly, but the upscaling on dvds etc. is fairly decent, so it's not horrible to watch SD stuff. Don't think I'm going to be buying many blurays if any. They seem quite expensive and I think it'll all be digital distribution soon.

biggytitbo

Quote from: thugler on January 03, 2010, 11:01:37 PM
It's not all that a leap, but it is nice. Much the same as the jump from vhs to dvd, it's nice, but your still watching a film, and it's largely the same film. I have just bought a massive telly, but the upscaling on dvds etc. is fairly decent, so it's not horrible to watch SD stuff. Don't think I'm going to be buying many blurays if any. They seem quite expensive and I think it'll all be digital distribution soon.

Really? Apart from the very latest releases you'll be hard pushed to pay more than a tenner for any blu ray these days. I got the Dark Knight, Baron Munchhausen, Blade Runner, Children of Men, Italian Job, Casino Royale etc for £8,£9 each.

Santa's Boyfriend

That's an interesting part of it though - Blu-rays cost about the same as DVDs did 5 years ago, and if you're ordering online, they usually cost less.  DVD prices really have plummeted, it seems extraordinary that you can buy a film like Shawshank Redemption in Tesco for £2.99.  Can they really make a profit on that, or are they using sweatshop labour?

I also don't think the digital distribution model will be up to snuff for quite a while yet.  PS3 already has an online video catalogue, but it doesn't upscale the SD stuff, and even the HD stuff has compression artifacts that you won't find on a blu-ray.  But perhaps more importantly, the download simply isn't fast enough.  The HD films are in the gigabytes, meaning you can't simply decide to sit down and watch a film - you have to decide hours in advance what you want, set it to download and hope it's done by the time you want to watch it.  If there's one thing iPlayer and so on have shown, people don't necessarily want to download a film unless they actually want to keep it - they want to be able to stream content, which for HD isn't really a viable option yet.

Alberon

One thing I did look for when buying an HD telly was to get one that was capable of doing SD well, and it does vary from TV to TV. I do find now that when I'm watching something on Channel 4 or Sky 1 I always switch to the HD versions of those channels as the SD material there looks much better as they aren't as compressed as on the SD channels.

I see Blu-Ray as an evolution of DVD rather than a replacement. It is better, clearly, but I think for most people the DVD will be good enough and they won't replace their old collection with Blu-Rays, even if all the new stuff they get is on the new format.

Blumf

Quote from: biggytitbo on January 04, 2010, 08:21:33 AM
I got the ... Baron Munchhausen

How's the colour on that? I'm seeing some horrible distortions on mine, like a badly stored gif or somebody playing with a solarization filter. Most notable on the sky backgrounds.

Wondering if it's the disk, or some iffy setting/firmware on the player/TV.

biggytitbo

Quote from: Blumf on January 04, 2010, 09:30:44 AM
How's the colour on that? I'm seeing some horrible distortions on mine, like a badly stored gif or somebody playing with a solarization filter. Most notable on the sky backgrounds.

Wondering if it's the disk, or some iffy setting/firmware on the player/TV.

No, seems fine. I was really impressed by the picture, colors and detail are lovely. The only problem with it is there's a lot of film grain especially in the SFX and model shots.

bill hicks

Quote from: Santa's Boyfriend on January 04, 2010, 08:24:45 AM

I also don't think the digital distribution model will be up to snuff for quite a while yet.  PS3 already has an online video catalogue...But perhaps more importantly, the download simply isn't fast enough.  The HD films are in the gigabytes, meaning you can't simply decide to sit down and watch a film - you have to decide hours in advance what you want, set it to download and hope it's done by the time you want to watch it.  If there's one thing iPlayer and so on have shown, people don't necessarily want to download a film unless they actually want to keep it - they want to be able to stream content, which for HD isn't really a viable option yet.

I can't talk to the PS3 video service, because I haven't got one, but the Xbox 360 video marketplace (sorry, Zune marketplace) is very, very good. One of the big problems I always had with it in the past was downloading a huge film (Eyes Wide Shut, which was fucking beautiful btw, was nearly 6GB I think and took an age) but the new model with full 1080p streams is fantastic. I know it's a bit of a stupid point to make (Microsoft are pretty good at writing software! Amazing!) but the way they manage the buffering is really impressive. It starts out in shitty artefact-o-vision and then immediately cleans up as it buffers. Takes about 10 seconds for the quality meter at the top to switch up to 1080p. Still not Blu-Ray level obviously, but more than enough to impress.

Also the upscaling in the 360 is really good too. Anyone who doubts just how good a well compressed DVD can look should give it a go. I remember me and my flatmate watching Chronicles of Riddick a few years ago and being astonished at how clear and clean it was. Planet Earth, of course, is also amazing. It'll never be as good as true HD, but it still looks fantastic.

EDIT:

And to the post about cinema projection if the image is juddering then the film has been laced incorrectly through the projector. If you see any then go outside and tell a member of staff and the projectionist will sort it. If you have any problem with a picture then just mention it to staff. The only thing we can't fix is scratching and emulsion degradation, since that is a byproduct of the film passing through the projector, but you can mitigate that somewhat by seeing a film in the first week or so of release.

mobias

If anyone here has a Blu-Ray player rigged up to a big high def TV and wants a truly jaw dropping visual experience then I fully reccommend the Blu Ray edition of Baraka. Its apparently the most highly resolved Blu Ray transfer yet. I bought it a couple of months back its simply incredible to watch. Simply beautiful on my big tele.

From the wikipedia entry

"Following previous DVD releases, in 2007 the original 65 mm negative was re-scanned at 8K (a horizontal resolution of 8192 pixels) with equipment designed specifically for Baraka at FotoKem Laboratories. The automated 8K film scanner, operating continuously, took more than three weeks to finish scanning more than 150000 frames (taking approximately 12–13 seconds to scan each frame), producing over 30 terabytes of image data in total. After a 16-month digital intermediate process, including a 96 kHz/24 bit audio remaster by Stearns for the DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack, the superior result was finally re-released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc in October, 2008. Project supervisor Andrew Oran says this remastered Baraka is "arguably the highest quality DVD that's ever been made".[1] Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert describes the Blu-ray release as "the finest video disc I have ever viewed or ever imagined."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baraka_(film)

Alberon

What I said the cinema picture was juddering it's me being over picky. If you see text on a dark background you can see it moving very slightly. It's not noticable when the action is going, but it's there.

I know it's blown up a lot bigger than on my TV screen, but even still it seems not as sharp as it should be.

The Masked Unit

Anyone seen/got an LED TV? They are absolutely fucking stunning, to the extent where me and the girlfriend will stand in frromt of one in Comet for hours transfixed. They make my Toshiba 720p LCD look practically SD.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

I was looking at tellies earlier and noticed that the larger ones (40" or more) had a slightly crappy looking posterized look to the image. They were running a blu-ray demo as well, so I dread to think what a standard definition signal would look like on one.

Nik Drou

I'll often find myself in Curry's squinting at the LED/LCD comparison tellys and not being able to tell the difference, beyond the fact that one's thinner.

In terms of Blu-Ray, the first film to convert me to it was Wall-E, on a Sony Bravia.  All animation really benefits from the format, but Pixar in particular is just stunning and it's worth the upgrade just for that.  It really can vary from film to film, though.  Iron Man and Hancock, despite being enjoyable movies, didn't wow me any more in HD.  There Will Be Blood, however, is immense on Blu-Ray.  I suppose it's more down to the cinematoraphy than anything else.

Also, I'm not normally one for blokey, 'I-need-me-a-bigger-dog-than-Kev' one-upmanship, but after seeing Spider-Man 3 being displayed on a 60" LCD screen, I'm fairly convinced that there's something magical about that size that vastly improves the experience. 

Artemis

Crikey! I've been happy with my Samsung 32" for the last year or so but I'm going to be in the market to sell that and upgrade to a 42" soon. 47" might be a little too insane - can you have too big a screen? Shirley.

An tSaoi

I'd say you can. Watching analogue telly on too big a screen would be a nightmare.

biggytitbo

Quote from: The Masked Unit on January 04, 2010, 07:35:16 PM
Anyone seen/got an LED TV? They are absolutely fucking stunning, to the extent where me and the girlfriend will stand in frromt of one in Comet for hours transfixed. They make my Toshiba 720p LCD look practically SD.

LEDs are LCD TV's, same technology, its just the back-lighting they use is brighter and more energy efficient.

I just put a 46" Sony Bravia on the wall and it's stunning. Got a PS3, and though DVDs look great, sat around 3 metres away, Blu-Ray is amazing. Determined not to buy too many Blu-Rays though. Only 'classics' that I've seen and could conceivably watch more than once. I have too many DVDs. Don't want to go down that road.

Impressed by broadcast SD digital TV too. Looks better than in any shop where the signal is shared by 20 TVs.

Best thing is that my computer has a HDMI output, so my UKNova/The Box accounts are getting put to really good use now.

bill hicks

Quote from: Artemis on January 05, 2010, 01:27:29 PM
Crikey! I've been happy with my Samsung 32" for the last year or so but I'm going to be in the market to sell that and upgrade to a 42" soon. 47" might be a little too insane - can you have too big a screen? Shirley.

I'm not a fan of big tellys. Got my fucking lovely 22" LG telly yesterday and have been drooling over it ever since. I don't have a lounge and have a slightly mental aversion to furniture so I don't sit 1km away from it like most people do. I generally use it sat about 1m from the screen sat on the floor/lyling down, ocassionally on my bed which is maybe 2m away. From those distances a 22" telly is plenty big enough. My ex-flatmate had a 32", as does another mate of mine, and it's just big enough to be overwhelming if I sit too close to it. Unless you've got a massive room I think 22"-26" is about the right size.

Aside from furniture I also have a hatred of spending money too so I like smaller tellys for that reason. Mine was £179, which on reflection is a bloddy stupid price to sell a telly for. No wonder the global economy is fucked.

Santa's Boyfriend

Quote from: Steve Lampkins on January 05, 2010, 03:22:34 PM

Best thing is that my computer has a HDMI output, so my UKNova/The Box accounts are getting put to really good use now.

You don't need it if you've got wireless broadband, simply store all your stuff on your computer, download the PS3 media server, and stream the files wirelessly to the PS3.  It plays really well, even my crappy old steam-driven computer can handle streaming most files.

biggytitbo

Quote from: Santa's Boyfriend on January 05, 2010, 04:55:11 PM
You don't need it if you've got wireless broadband, simply store all your stuff on your computer, download the PS3 media server, and stream the files wirelessly to the PS3.  It plays really well, even my crappy old steam-driven computer can handle streaming most files.
The PS3 can also stream media directly from your computer just using windows media player shares.

Artemis

Well I usually watch TV on my bed, about eight foot away from my TV. 32 inches is cool but I could definitely squeeze in something bigger. 47 would be a bit silly, but 42 inches? Sounds good to me (?)

Lee

Far be it from me to recycle old posts, but that's exactly what I'm going to do. In relation to Blu ray sound, here's what I wrote about Japanese noise-makers Geinoh Yamashirogumi and their remastered soundtrack to Akira - and why BR audio is most definetely a step up:

Quote from: IIt seems they've been working on a theory called hypersonic sound, that is sound recordings that can reach frequencies over 100KHz. If that means nothing to you, the vast majority of people can only hear up to around 15KHz. They claim however that this can have powerful, rewarding effects on the brain, heightening psychological and physiological states, in particular the part of the brain that controls pleasure. This excellent mini-site (in English) outlines the theory and practise behind hypersonic sound, and how they implemented it into their remastered audio track for the Akira blu-ray, released back in March, and most importantly, the technical requirements needed to experience it fully (which are beyond the reach of all but the most devoted and wealthy audiophiles right now - Lee). They apparently demonstrated this live back in May with a gamelan day festival in Tokyo that I so wish I could have been there for.

the midnight watch baboon

I calibrated my 46 incher last week and the difference when watching Blu-rays, HD and also standard def and DVDs is most marked. Much less grainy.

Depressed Beyond Tables

I bought a Panasonic high definition DVD player. Found out about a year later that it doesn't play HDDVD formats but is a high definition DVD player. It even has a HD cable out. It doesn't play HDDVDs but it is a high definition DVD player.

High definition indeed.

chocky909

So it has an HD output but no HD input? Clever that. A lot of these high definition (upscaling) players do a worse job of scaling up the SD image than your HDTV would anyway.

Depressed Beyond Tables

Yeah I bought it during the last format war. So instead of taking sides I just bought a pile of crap. Looks good tho. Plus it plays all regions so not a complete waste.

papalaz4444244

Question: Aren't downloaded "HD" films just shitty, highly compressed versions of HD movies, the video equivalent of mp3s?

(If I was tempted by HD I wouldn't waste any money on these. Beside, you can't lend downloaded movies to your pals.)

biggytitbo

Quote from: papalaz4444244 on January 06, 2010, 02:30:07 AM
Question: Aren't downloaded "HD" films just shitty, highly compressed versions of HD movies, the video equivalent of mp3s?

(If I was tempted by HD I wouldn't waste any money on these. Beside, you can't lend downloaded movies to your pals.)

Yeah the HD trailers I've seen are so compressed you lose all the benefit of it being HD. That's the beauty of Blu-ray, you rarely if ever seen any compression in the picture, unlike even good DVDs.