Paramount Comparison

[Josh]

http://www.dvdtown.com/article/param...titlesre/4091/

What is impressive is that Paramount has nearly duplicated their efforts by brining these titles from their 30GB HD-DVD homes to their smaller constrained 25GB Blu-Ray platters. The image quality is so close, that it is hard to tell if one is better than the other. I'm not going to even attempt to pick a winner between the two formats on picture quality. To fit the films into a smaller space, Paramount has squeezed in smaller Dolby Digital soundtracks. This does result in a slightly less vibrant sound experience, but the difference is not all that dramatic. If anything, HD-DVD comes out the slight winner in this comparison based upon the soundtrack differences. Supplements are identical between the two releases. I would have preferred for a different set of three titles, but this is only the start of support for the format from Paramount. It is comforting to see that Paramount has released high quality Blu-Ray releases that are not as marred by poor quality as the initial efforts by the Blu-Ray only studios.

Good to hear. These were rumored to be MPEG-2. Has that been confirmed or denied?

[zombie]

Glad to hear they're identical in PQ. I still haven't read any confirmation about the codec though.

[GoldenRedux]

Not exactly a glowing review for TR. It's a good thing I just dropped the title from my Amazon BD pre-orders in favour of a Magnolia title.

[zombie]

Yeah Tomb Raider doesn't look very good on HD DVD either.

[shamus]

You left out this part Josh....

For instance, one scene in "Tomb Raider" looked a bit more detailed on the Blu-Ray release, while one of the action scenes in "Sky Captain" jumped a bit on Blu-Ray. Unless you tried very hard, you would have a tough time finding any true differences.

[WriteSimply]

I guess Mr. Winkelspecht have not read Dolby's posts on AVSF. DD+ at 640kpbs on HD-DVD is the same in audio quality as DD at 640kpbs on BD.


fuad

[Deciazulado]

Originally Posted by nyg

Yeah Tomb Raider doesn't look very good on HD DVD either.

I've seen TR on IMAX. The image quality didn't impress me much. I had seen better 35mm Anamorphic projection than that. TR on IMAX was grainy on parts. The Super35 (10mm x 23.9mm) Kodak Vision 500T negative scenes must be like that while the Eastman EXR 100T scenes might be the better looking ones.

[Blu-rayrules]

Really when you see a comparison between HD-DVD and Blu-ray and say (for example's sake) that the HD-DVD is slightly better. Now if Blu-ray wins you either have to invest in unsupported HD-DVD Hardware or the movie has to be redone. It sort of makes you say, Crap i hope they will redo this movie.

[Applefiend]

Tomb Raider arrived this morning, crappy picture quality, but I've seen worse on Blu Ray.

Sleepy Hollow is about the same.

I remain a Warner/BV/Recent Sony Nazi.

[ProvenFlipper]

Originally Posted by WriteSimply

I guess Mr. Winkelspecht have not read Dolby's posts on AVSF. DD+ at 640kpbs on HD-DVD is the same in audio quality as DD at 640kpbs on BD.


fuad

Yes, but the does anyone know the bitrate of DD on Paramounts titles? We know that Warner is using 640kbps, but what is Paramount using. It's possible that they used a higher bitrate DD+ on HD-DVD and had to downsample the audio to fit on a BD-25?