Are studios rushing processing too much to win the content war?

[baccusboy]

As I posted in the other "picture quality" thread, I saw a demo of the Samsung BDP1000 player at Costco near Sangbon station in Seoul today. Much of the movie footage they used was overly grainy, or the colors were way off. This wasn't a fault of the player, or the 50" Samsung PAVV 1080p TV (although the TV's setup was a bit dark) being fed via HDMI. This was a conversion issue.

I am wondering if studios aren't "rushing" the conversion process in order to get out as many disks for their particular format as quickly as possible. Many people, as is well know, believe that the format which can offer the most content will be the eventual winner.

I know a bit about processing and video, having spent 8 years as a TV producer and 4 years editing on AVID Media Composers. I know less about film, but I do know that great pains are taken to "clean up" images when transferred from film to standard DVDs. I have seen excuses stating that "you'll get more grain because it's such a high resolution", etc., but I know better. The complaints about grain, in particular are setting off alarm bells in my head (as are other comments about movie quality).

I'm not talking about just Bluray or HDDVD here (although it was the Samsung BR demo that was just horrible). I'm curious... do you guys get the feeling we're being short-changed on quality, just so they can release more titles quickly?

Could this kill a format?

[degas]

I agree that some companies seems to release content a little too early/fast.
I just think it's a bad idea to release movies on HD, when they're not up to the test yet - like Planet of the Apes for instance (which in my mind has the potential to look great, but no effort seems to have been made to make that happen).

For me personally, it doesn't make sense to buy a movie on Blu-ray if it's not a substantial improvement ("all it can be") over the SD version. Especially since most of us has double/tripple-dipped on SD for years now.

And when it comes to catalogue titles - I simply don't feel the rush, since I'm likely to own my favourites in SD anyways. If it's a clear improvement - I'll buy for sure, if not - I have no problem waiting (since I'm pretty sure they'll redo it at some point).

I think this is gonna reflect badly on HiDef in the end, if studios continue to release poor masters on HD, just to get stuff out there.
All it does is plant more doubt in the potential customers mind - "it doesn't look THAT much better than SD".

That said, I'm feeling this way since we all know how good it CAN look if done properly, like BHD, KoH, Crank and so on.

But no, I don't think it will kill the format. But it has the potential of making people adopt it later.

[KenThompson]

Seems Fox's new releases with exception to Phone Booth are all lacking in quality acording to the reviewers, sad news to me. If there is no improvement over standard dvd then why buy except to keep our format going. It can't be the extras Fox is giving us because there are none.

[baccusboy]

Well, at several hundred dollars a player, and a fair share of titles that are rumored to look bad, it has scared me off of buying one!

[BLu-Balls]

Originally Posted by baccusboy

Well, at several hundred dollars a player, and a fair share of titles that are rumored to look bad, it has scared me off of buying one!

A BD says he'll buy a player. Plus there's only so much a studio can do to restore the PQ.

[dobyblue]

One need only look through the reviews to see that Fox are getting their fair share of 4/5 to 5/5 in PQ reviews.
I don't care about extras on old movies. It's getting the old movie in 1080p and lossless audio that's important.
You'll see good extras on new releases like when FF4 Silver Surfer comes to Blu-ray.

[goodstuff]

All Fox reviews from HDD:

Entrapment: 4.0
Phone Booth: 4.5
Planet of The Apes: 3.5
Men of Honor: 4.5
Speed: 4.0
Courage Under Fire: 4.0
Alien Vs. Predator: 4.0
Rising Sun: 3.5
Transporter 2: 4.5
Devil Wears Prada: 4.5
Kingdom of Heaven: 4.5
The Transporter: 4.5
Ice Age 2: 4.5
Fantastic Four: 4.0
The Omen: 3.5
X-Men 3: 4.0

Doesn't look too shabby to me (and we all know how Peter loves to give out 5 star reviews). Haven't seen any other reviews of 2/13 titles, but there have been 3.5 reviews from before. I'm not worried at all.

[NovaBomb]

no

[JTK]

Also: No.

[Blackraven]

From titles made in Janauary 2007 and beyond, I think this won't be an issue at all.

Although it was indeed true before in the first-gen releases of Blu-ray (like 5th element and Terminator which looked like s**t based on reviews).

This time around, it seems that they are bouncing back with the quality.

For me, as long as it's as good as the SD version, then Blu-ray it is for me.

[NovaBomb]

Sorry for the lack of words before... anyways, you can never trust TV displays at stores. First of all you got to ask yourself "is it hooked up properly?" some places will purposely show some TV's better that others, for the selling features. They want to sell the more expensive TV and show that it is highly superior then the other ones, even though its not that different when hooked up properly. Also, when you see 50 TVs showing the same movie, you got to remember that they are splitting the feed to all the TV's therefore loss of PQ.

[theknub]

my reply to you in the picture quality thread
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...4&postcount=23

[Amon37]

It sucks that stores aren't protraying the PQ the way it should be, but until you see it on your own TV and your own player I'd reserve judgment.

[Chris Beveridge]

Originally Posted by goodstuff

All Fox reviews from HDD:

Entrapment: 4.0
Phone Booth: 4.5
Planet of The Apes: 3.5
Men of Honor: 4.5
Speed: 4.0
Courage Under Fire: 4.0
Alien Vs. Predator: 4.0
Rising Sun: 3.5
Transporter 2: 4.5
Devil Wears Prada: 4.5
Kingdom of Heaven: 4.5
The Transporter: 4.5
Ice Age 2: 4.5
Fantastic Four: 4.0
The Omen: 3.5
X-Men 3: 4.0

Doesn't look too shabby to me (and we all know how Peter loves to give out 5 star reviews). Haven't seen any other reviews of 2/13 titles, but there have been 3.5 reviews from before. I'm not worried at all.

It's worth noting that outside of a couple of catalog titles, the ones he generally doesn't care for are ones that are heavily post-processed. Which means we likely ARE getting what we're supposed to be seeing. Not all film will feel truly deep and dimensional. I don't want my films to look like Bikini Destinations in terms of depth and color just yet. Some films will work for that though but a lot of them won't.

[baccusboy]

Originally Posted by Amon37

It sucks that stores aren't protraying the PQ the way it should be, but until you see it on your own TV and your own player I'd reserve judgment.

The player was set up using HDMI. The settings were not that far off.

I feel the culprit is the Samsung Blu-Ray demo disk. The Samsung-shot footage looked great. The movie footage within looked horrible.

This is not a set-up issue. Trust me. I believe the issue of poor movie releases needs press attention. People buy an HDTV and spend hundreds, or over a thousand on a player, and they get movies that look like they were dubbed off of a movie theater screen using an ENG (Elec. News Gathering) Hi-Def field camera.

[JTK]

Originally Posted by baccusboy

Well, at several hundred dollars a player, and a fair share of titles that are rumored to look bad, it has scared me off of buying one!

Stop believing everything you read on the Internet, sight unseen.

I don't understand how or why so many people do this. You wouldn't buy a car or a house this way, so why electronics?

There are a lot of biased and misinformed people out there deliberately spreading untruths.

Instead: Believe what you actually see and hear for yourself, firsthand.

That's all that really matters in the end.