Two personal frustrations - Film Grain and blu-rays compared to DVD

[bluskies]

(LOL, I know, someone is going to say, "I get frustrated by people who misspell 'frustrations' in the header." Sorry, did a typo but the system doesn't let me correct the header.)

I wasn't sure what to call this thread at first, but settled on "frustrations." Not with Blu-ray, but with people's opinions surrounding the Blu discs.

Two things bugging me:

1. While I am happy to know that Blu releases generally are incredibly better than the DVD release, I am tired of each Blu title that is being reviewed having to go through "So, how does it compare to the DVD?"

The reason I am frustrated by this is I was around when VHS gave way to DVD, but I certainly don't recall every review of a DVD title having to be compared to the VHS version.

As it stands, we aren't able to just say to some outsider the Blu-ray image is great. No, they require we get ahold of the old DVD release and do a side-by-side comparison.

I mean, are we going to go on and on for years, each time a Blu-ray title is issued, having to answer the question, "How does it compare to the DVD?" It will be nice when we can finally get to a point when it will become an acknowledged fact, without asking, that each Blu-ray release will be better than the DVD (I hope!).

2. Next thing that frustrates me...the subject of fillm grain. And here is where I will be flogged by the multitudes...but Blu-ray is a superior visual format and to me, I get frustrated by a number of people saying, "The more grain, the better! Damn it, I want to see more grain on screen than there is in a silo! I don't care that I can't just sit there and enjoy the movie because there is so much grain it is distracting...I want purity!" And if you disagree wth the experts, you are shunned (even if some here silently agree with you, but they dare not say anything lest they get looked down upon, too).

I just finished watching Amadeus and thought the picture quality was exceptional, so I looked up a review of it and the reviewer gave it a relatively low rating because they detected DNR and felt edge enhacement must have been used. It has been this way for a number of different Blu titles where I think the image looks great but expert reviewers say the image has been manipulated and damn the studios for trying to make the Blu-ray high definition image look better. Then I read a review of Sideways just a few minutes ago, which I bought yesterday on sale but haven't had a chance to watch yet, and the reviewer said it has soft images with enormous amounts of grain clearly visible and that is wonderful. Geez, one feels that high-def images can't be any good until you have someone over to watch a movie and they say, "What's with the ten thousand mosquitoes all over the picture? I thought high definition was supposed to be the best, clearest image there is" and you reply, "Shut up! That's film grain, that's how you know this is the best image you can get!"

I mean, what the hell's wrong with the image looking stunning? Didn't we buy Blu-ray because the image looks better and more colorful?

Sigh, go ahead, my back is bare...lay on the cat-o-nine tails.