Blu-ray Review VS Blu-ray Review...

[Moefiz]

I have notice this for sometime now but the blu-ray reviews over at HDD.com seem to be off from the review of the same movie on this site.
For instance the Planet Of The Ape review that is posted here is excellent all around while over at HDD.com its not(out of respect to the critics here I won't post a link to the review).

I am just curious did anyone else notice this.

[crackinhedz]

you mean two reviewers have different opinions? (isnt that normal?)

or they are copying the reviews here and just changing them slightly?

not sure what you mean.

[Xen]

He means there are differing opinions. It can be a bit odd when one says it's great and one says its only average though. One say average, one above average, that's one thing, but there is a big difference between the two sites on this title.

I'm going to take the Bluray.com review because I agree with them that it's a 5 star movie, while HDD didn't really seem to care for it. (My point being that I tend to pick the reviewers who agree with me on the movies themselves)

[Moefiz]

Originally Posted by crackinhedz

you mean two reviewers have different opinions? (isnt that normal?)

or they are copying the reviews here and just changing them slightly?

not sure what you mean.

It's normal to have different opinions but on some title the difference is like night and day.

[GGX]

Peter Bracke reviewed the Planet of the Apes Blu for HDD. He's basically the guy that likes the attention given to him for saying the opposite about a movie. So if a movie is critically acclaimed he says its terrible. If its a movie that has a reputation for being bad he gives it a positive review.

[assydingo]

I noticed that to... at Bluray's gave really nice looking screenshots. So I'd believe them.

[Teabaggins]

here's the thing: reviewers can have differing opinions about the actual movie, direction, plot, acting, etc

however, I think all reviewers should be around the same level as far as PQ AQ etc go, right? shouldn't there be a general standard for such "solid" things?

which of the two were you referring to ?

[PCiAM]

Originally Posted by assydingo

I noticed that to... at Bluray's gave really nice looking screenshots. So I'd believe them.

I take a look at both sites, and more often than not the reviews are pretty similiar per each title, though there are varying degrees of opinions. I can see how the original poster gets confused though... if two people have drastically different opinions regarding picture quality for instance, it's definitely interesting. I do tend to take this site more seriously though--for one, the reviewers here actually try to post screenshots that somewhat come closely to capturing the detail and clarity of the transfers, even if you can't completely mimic blu ray quality with computer screenshots.

[Cinema Squid]

I track reviews from about 20 sites on my website to calculate consensus video/audio/extras scores for titles and surprisingly enough most Blu-ray reviews hew pretty closely to the average score in general. On average, most reviews tend to be within one-quarter to half-a-star of the average in a given video/audio/extras category (i.e. within +/- 5 to 10 on a 100 point scale). I would say that this site and HDD are essentially tied in terms of "accuracy" of subjective scoring.

With that being said, there can sometimes be great individual variance in the reviews for a particular title, so it's always a good idea to read more than one review if you are on the fence for a purchase. It's also worth keeping in mind that the general quality of Blu-ray releases has been pretty good with an average of 75/100 or 3.75/5 in PQ and AQ for all titles, with extras being the largest differentiator between titles.

[Chad Varnadore]

Originally Posted by Teabaggins

here's the thing: reviewers can have differing opinions about the actual movie, direction, plot, acting, etc

however, I think all reviewers should be around the same level as far as PQ AQ etc go, right? shouldn't there be a general standard for such "solid" things?

which of the two were you referring to ?

You'd think... but, no. Unfortunately, even if every reviewer used the same gear, calibrated just as proficiently to avoid electronic disparity, appreciation of film and with many reviewers, respect for artistic intent, varies widely. As much as you try, it's almost impossible to seperate subjective appeal, in what is innately subjective evaluation, regardless of the most objective intention. Even with like minds and similar components there can be more trivial dissent.

Maybe if we could throw a disc into a computer which would in turn spit out values of light output, high frequency readings, color balance and saturation.... It might be a good corroborator, just as clocking the bitrate can be useful in verifying the source of questionable noise, but an artistic thing will always be dependent on the human perspective to fully appreciate.