Picture Quality.

[dipset420]

i havent watched a whole blu-ray movie i only saw a few minutes of movies at bestbuy on their tv's. anyway i want to know if there is a huge differnece in picture quality's for some movies.
because they had superman returns and it was good quality but could of been better i noticed it being grainy. and then the other day when i returned my ps3 they had the brothers grimm playing on the same tv and blu-ray player as superman returns was on the last time i had went.
and the PQ on that movie was the best i had seen. there was no grainy picture or nothing it was perfect.

so is there that much of a differnece between some movies??

also the tv i plan on buying is going to be 50 inch or smaller so would it be better to get a 1080p set or not

[john_1958]

all hometheatre stores don't have their tvs fine tuned to their highest quality
so yes it all depends on the TV set not just the DVD

yes get a 1080p set because not all HDTVS are considered HD some only do 1280x720p so you lose picture quality as 1080 is downconverted to 720p

[Chad Varnadore]

There's that much difference between discs, but more importantly you should know that there's that much difference between films. Many films are going to look grainy. Grain is a natural artifact of film and if no resolution is lost from the mastering and authoring stages, it'll still be visible to the degree that was intended. Grimm has grain too, but it's not as dense as SR, which may have been altered to better suit the first two films that the story follows.

That said, as you've already witnessed, there are much "better" looking discs out there than SR, even though SR may be faithful to the look the DP was going for.

[nobody]

Originally Posted by dipset420

i havent watched a whole blu-ray movie i only saw a few minutes of movies at bestbuy on their tv's. anyway i want to know if there is a huge differnece in picture quality's for some movies.
because they had superman returns and it was good quality but could of been better i noticed it being grainy. and then the other day when i returned my ps3 they had the brothers grimm playing on the same tv and blu-ray player as superman returns was on the last time i had went.
and the PQ on that movie was the best i had seen. there was no grainy picture or nothing it was perfect.

so is there that much of a differnece between some movies??

also the tv i plan on buying is going to be 50 inch or smaller so would it be better to get a 1080p set or not

The Xbox 360 is better...think about it!

[KenThompson]

I bought the wife a xbox 360 for Christmas last year and let me just say its nothing special.

[KenThompson]

Superman returns was a 4.5 star rating at HD Digest. So something is not right in your set up.

[GTP]

Superman Returns is a 3/5 star at most release.
It looks flat with no detail....and is easily outdone for detail by numerous sd dvd's played back on top players.

Its tier 3 at best IMO.

[Chad Varnadore]

Originally Posted by KenThompson

Superman returns was a 4.5 star rating at HD Digest. So something is not right in your set up.

The only way SR might qualify a 4.5 rating is from the perspective that the look of the disc is innate to the look of the film. It seems to be based on the theatrical experience I went to also. But, theatrical showings have all too often proven not to be the best indicators of what a films visual design is capable of. And there has been some controversy as to whether SR does look as good as it did in some digital theaters. Relative to the detail found in many other discs, SR is at best a 3.5 and that might be a little generous. I don't deduct in my reviews for grain unless it appears exaggerated by the encoding.

I won't go into my thoughts on Peter's ability to evaluate home video or the films they're derived from. Suffice it to say, I never turned to him when he was reviewing DVDs for DVDfile either. But, he can spin an eloquent yarn. Dan Ramer who still reviews there does a nice job though. We use a much more revealing and IMO reliable system in our evaluations than Peter. Based on some of Peter's reviews that I've read, it appears he still has some color decoder issues with his display in need of address or he's not feeding the display the optimal colorspace. We have made the effort to try to know the technologies involved to attempt to remove or at least understand how the components and environment may bias perception of the software being judged in the event that it's not something we can address thru calibration, as every display type has design limitations that can't be avoided or removed thru optimal calibration. But sometimes if you know enough about those limitations and are equiped with an understanding of the dynamics of the technologies at work, you can remove them from the chain temporarily for more accurate evaluation. If Peter's system and apparent knowledge base is consistent with your own, I'm sure most of what he says will seem more accurate to your own impressions though.

BTW that last bit was not intended to be in any way demeaning of yourself or your equipment.

[KenThompson]

Originally Posted by Chad Varnadore

The only way SR might qualify a 4.5 rating is from the perspective that the look of the disc is innate to the look of the film. It seems to be based on the theatrical experience I went to also. But, theatrical showings have all too often proven not to be the best indicators of what a films visual design is capable of. And there has been some controversy as to whether SR does look as good as it did in some digital theaters. Relative to the detail found in many other discs, SR is at best a 3.5 and that might be a little generous. I don't deduct in my reviews for grain unless it appears exaggerated by the encoding.

I won't go into my thoughts on Peter's ability to evaluate home video or the films they're derived from. Suffice it to say, I never turned to him when he was reviewing DVDs for DVDfile either. But, he can spin an eloquent yarn. Dan Ramer who still reviews there does a nice job though. We use a much more revealing and IMO reliable system in our evaluations than Peter. Based on some of Peter's reviews that I've read, it appears he still has some color decoder issues with his display in need of address or he's not feeding the display the optimal colorspace. We have made the effort to try to know the technologies involved to attempt to remove or at least understand how the components and environment may bias perception of the software being judged in the event that it's not something we can address thru calibration, as every display type has design limitations that can't be avoided or removed thru optimal calibration. But sometimes if you know enough about those limitations and are equiped with an understanding of the dynamics of the technologies at work, you can remove them from the chain temporarily for more accurate evaluation. If Peter's system and apparent knowledge base is consistent with your own, I'm sure most of what he says will seem more accurate to your own impressions though.

BTW that last bit was not intended to be in any way demeaning of yourself or your equipment.

On your own website and review you gave Superman Returns a 4 star rating. So I'm just going by what the sites are saying. I'm no expert so thats why I check and see what they are saying.

[JTK]

Originally Posted by nobody

The Xbox 360 is better...think about it!

I thought about it, since I own both a 360 and a PS3.

Nope.

[gmz]

Maybe somebody can shed some light for me, with regards to certain titles on blu ray being of better quality than others. Some titles are considered reference standard ie: that show off the best picture quality that blu ray has to offer in 1080p, and others are not up to standard and are of poorer quality than most hddvd. Why is that? And how does one figure out which titles are the good ones on blu ray?

[Ascended_Saiyan]

Originally Posted by gmz

Maybe somebody can shed some light for me, with regards to certain titles on blu ray being of better quality than others. Some titles are considered reference standard ie: that show off the best picture quality that blu ray has to offer in 1080p, and others are not up to standard and are of poorer quality than most hddvd. Why is that? And how does one figure out which titles are the good ones on blu ray?

I shall entertain this question even though it sounds trollish. BTW, Blu-ray has better overall PQ than HD DVD. So, to say others Blu-ray titles are poorer quality than most HD DVDs is completely incorrect.

PQ varies on titles of ALL HIGH-DEF FORMATS because they are all shot and processed in different ways. Typically, if the movie budget is low, you should expect a less than impressive transfer to high-def.

That's the short of it!

[Deciazulado]

Hi gmz, welcome to the forum. Please use the Search function before starting a new thread.

We already had a thread called "Picture Quality"

So I've sent your post here.

Also, a couple of recent threads have touched a little upon things that influence PQ too:

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=5486

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=5593

[gmz]

Originally Posted by Ascended_Saiyan

I shall entertain this question even though it sounds trollish. BTW, Blu-ray has better overall PQ than HD DVD. So, to say others Blu-ray titles are poorer quality than most HD DVDs is completely incorrect.

PQ varies on titles of ALL HIGH-DEF FORMATS because they are all shot and processed in different ways. Typically, if the movie budget is low, you should expect a less than impressive transfer to high-def.

That's the short of it!

I wasn't implying that blu ray the standard is below hddvd what i was saying is that certain films on blu ray look worse than a lot of the hddvd films. As far as a film being a lower budget meaning it's of poorer quality I'm not quite sure I agree. True if a film looks bad in it's original format than yes, it wont look good in any format Blu ray, HD, or Standard. But if A film does look good in it's original state but the blu ray still comes up looking soft than it must be a transfer issue. I guess what I'm getting at there's a lot of fillms out there in blu ray land but only a percentage of them represent the standard that would make blu ray proud. As a consumer I just want the best possible picture quality available out there. Yes on paper blu ray 1080p is the highest res possible but that doesn't always parlay into the best picture available. I guess Blu ray should be a little more selective in pursuing transfers that do it justice.

Viewing Gear
Pioneer Elite PRO-FHD1
Pioneer Elite BDP -HD1

[baccusboy]

I just got back from Costco near Sangbon station in Seoul, where the Samsung BDP1000 Blu-ray player was demoed at 1080p (same resolution as my set). The TV was a 50" Full HD Samsung PAVV model.

I was shocked.

Not by the great quality, but by the poor video conversion quality used in making the demo disk. The TV was not set up perfect, but it wasn't off enough to create the problems I saw.

There were multiple clips from Superman, followed by others, including the Vin Diesel movie, XXX. The color between the different movie clips was WAAAAY off. Shockingly bad. And then, there was a harsh grainy look to most movie clips except the digital images and HD commercial footage shot by Samsung (showing a guy in a room watching Bluray on his TV). That looked very good. The movie clips in between, though, were just gawd-awful.

The worst offender by far was the XXX movie clips. Some of them were a very deep orange, and extremely grainy (like film out of exposure). This wasn't an effect done on purpose. It was outright shoddy film transfer to the Bluray disk.

And now I find this thread on the bluray site. Just how bad are some of these transfers? As bad as that Vin Diesel XXX clip I saw? Are they rushing the transfers just to get disks out faster (for some sort of advantage)? If even 1/4 of the Bluray movies (or HDDVD, for that matter) look this crappy, then I don't even want to buy into one of these formats until prices drop below $200 for a player.

I walked away from watching the demo, shaking my head and hoping that HDDVD looks better. I could care less which player wins. I just want one to pull ahead of the pack, and drop in price so I can afford it. If I have any leanings, it would be toward HDDVD, simply because I live in Korea and I read that HDDVD won't be region-coded. Then I can buy my disks from the USA and ship them here. Past that, I really don't care what wins.

I quickly realized that true-life movies (non animation) have a sort of ceiling as to how good they're going to look in HD. I'm sure this holds true for both HDDVD and Bluray. Movies like Star Wars would likely look incredible. The clip of "The Dukes of Hazzard", which was also on the Samsung Bluray demo disk, was not very impressive. Actually, I am happy that I saw the demo, because now I feel much more relaxed about waiting until prices come down. No hurry here.

I have read about complaints of grainy footage from Bluray owners online. I never expected it to be THAT bad. Especially through HDMI, which is how they fed it.

Has anyone else seen this same demo? The Sony people should have someone from Samsungs head on a platter!

To top it off, this player (made here in Korea) is still $1,300! You can buy it for half that in the USA. Typical Korean price-gouging (and they won't let any HDDVD players in until next month).

[theknub]

baccusboy,
the two movies you have mentioned have had their fair share of issues. XXX is not regarded as a very good transfer. while i don't own it, many people have commented about it. superman i do own. many people complain about it, i haven't. i do agree it could have been better though. the image is thought to be overly soft. however, it is a vc-1 encode that was ported over from the hd-dvd encode. basically, it was not optomized for BD. BD did have its fair share of poor original transfers, but since then most have been spectacular. this would include older films like the searchers (not my experience, but that reported here) and films like rambo and american psycho have seen significant improvement but not at the same level as say crank, blsack hawk down, or tears of the sun.

[andyn1080]

Originally Posted by gmz

Maybe somebody can shed some light for me, with regards to certain titles on blu ray being of better quality than others. Some titles are considered reference standard ie: that show off the best picture quality that blu ray has to offer in 1080p, and others are not up to standard and are of poorer quality than most hddvd. Why is that? And how does one figure out which titles are the good ones on blu ray?

there are alot of good and bad looking bluray movies (more good then bad though thank god).

here are a few examples:

amazing-crank,ultraviolet,resident evil 2, saw3, ant bully, open season
good-lady in the water,silent hill,goodfellas
bad-monster house(i though it looked just like the dvd),crash (very gainy in black moments).

[Ascended_Saiyan]

Originally Posted by andyn1080

there are alot of good and bad looking bluray movies (more good then bad though thank god).

here are a few examples:

amazing-crank,ultraviolet,resident evil 2, saw3, ant bully, open season
good-lady in the water,silent hill,goodfellas
bad-monster house(i though it looked just like the dvd),crash (very gainy in black moments).

8 times out of 10 the PQ on a format is due to the film used and post-production process (basically, the movie budget and vision of the director).

Personally, I would have switched lady in the water with monster house in your rating system.

[Deciazulado]

Just a film tech tidbit: Images shot on color negative film (most movies) have more grain in the shadows than in the bright parts. (Images shot on silver b/w negative film are just the opposite)

[Knight-Errant]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

Just a film tech tidbit: Images shot on color negative film (most movies) have more grain in the shadows than in the bright parts. (Images shot on silver b/w negative film are just the opposite)

I didn't know that but it makes perfect sense from my experience.