Bill Hunt speaks to an avs member about Sony/BD

[BTBuck1]

Originally posted by RLSMITH on avsforums..

Bill Hunt comments on Sony titles

I asked Bill Hunt if he had any insight into Sony's plans for upcoming Blu-Ray disks. I have been concerned about the small number of Sony titles (5) currently announced with dates.

Here is his response, which he said I could post.

In addition to commenting on Sony, he makes some general remarks about the problems of transferring content to the hd formats. We are going to hear a lot more about this issue, and some patience is going to be required.

BTW: I reallly trust Bill to be fair and well-informed.


______
Well... to be fair, Sony is working on a LOT of Blu-ray titles right now.
They're getting ready to make some big announcements in the next few weeks.
It's interesting, because a title like The Fifth Element - I've actually
seen a side-by-side comparison of the Blu-ray Disc and the original D4
master tape. They're very close in terms of quality. VERY close. So the
issues that people have with that Blu-ray Disc are actually with the quality
of the original high-def master (which was apparently the best that the
studio could get from director Luc Besson) - something the studio (and a lot
of the high-def supporting studios working in BOTH formats actually) is
grappling with. High-def film transfers don't always shine just because
they're high-def - it actually brings out all of the flaws in the original
film elements. I've been told by more than one surprised studio exec (at
several different studios) that the films you'd expect to look amazing on
Blu-ray or HD-DVD are sometimes not the ones that actually do, so they
really are struggling with that at the moment. But I think... actually I
know... that Sony was pretty stung by the initial reviewer comments about
the quality of their early titles, so they've been re-evaluating and
re-focusing their efforts a bit to make sure that they don't get slammed
like that again. Sony has also been holding back some of their best titles
for the availability of 50GB discs, plus more advanced interactivity BD Java
implementation. But trust me when I say that the best announcements from
Sony as far as Blu-ray (and actually the best announcements from all the
studios on both formats) are yet to come.

Feel free to share that on the boards if you like.

Bill Hunt, Editor
The Digital Bits
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[theknub]

i really do think bill is a fair reviewer and reporter of news in the industry. he has done well to reserve his criticisms knowing the build quality of some companies as well as noting the shortfalls that everyone has experienced. assuming that what bill wrote has not been manipulated or anything, i like the direction that things are heading.

[BTBuck1]

I've been saying all along that the problems with the movies weren't mpeg2 but the master tapes. I've said this before "Sony didn't become the king of video by being blind" Blu disc is a champion format, now Sony just has to figure out how to deliver what we like to see (cleaned up masters), vs.. transparency to fugly masters.

[zombie]

I'm thrilled to hear that Sony didn't like the bad reviews of their earlier BD titles. It's clear that they're already taking steps to improve their discs with great reviews like those that Tears Of The Sun has gotten. Yep there's no mistaking it, Sony is gearing up to do what they should have done from the getgo, kicked HD DVD's ass!

[BTBuck1]

Sony's playing tune-in-tokyo with their encoders now to give us better quality. It's evident in better releases every batch all while maintaining mpeg2 support.

[Psiweaver]

Yeah I really like bill too and think he is very good at reviewing both at saying whats true but doing it in an unbiased way and just really laying down the facts. I can't wait for these big announcements and it doesn't surprise me that some of the discs didn't look that great simply because with hi-def like bill siad there is a lot more room to notice the flaws.

[Deciazulado]

The Fifth Element - I've actually seen a side-by-side comparison of the Blu-ray Disc and the original D4 master tape. They're very close in terms of quality. VERY close. So the issues that people have with that Blu-ray Disc are actually with the quality of the original high-def master (which was apparently the best that the studio could get from director Luc Besson)

Since the specs of dirt that I saw on that disc transfer were black, the original film element used for that transfer was either the interpositive (2nd generation) or a print (4th generation) and not the original negative so a transfer from the original element will look much better (Interpositives have normally half the resolution (1/4 the data) of an original negative, for example).

In any case I saw TFE disc displayed optimally on a 768p display (570 x 1366 effective image resolution) and it looked fairly well compared to a 35mm average theatrical projection. A 1080p transfer (804 x 1920 effective image resolution) redone from the original Super35 negative would probably surpass the average theater presentation easily if done correctly

[Rob Tomlin]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

Since the specs of dirt that I saw on that disc transfer were black, the original film element used for that transfer was either the interpositive (2nd generation) or a print (4th generation) and not the original negative so a transfer from the original element will look much better (Interpositives have normally half the resolution (1/4 the data) of an original negative, for example).

In any case I saw TFE disc displayed optimally on a 768p display (570 x 1366 effective image resolution) and it looked fairly well compared to a 35mm average theatrical projection. A 1080p transfer (804 x 1920 effective image resolution) redone from the original Super35 negative would probably surpass the average theater presentation easily if done correctly

Good post.

I like Bill Hunt. But when it comes to TFE, I too believe that they used something other than the original master. There was far too much dirt in the print. Certainly much more than in the DVD transfer(s). Bill almost seems to imply that the HD format revealed these specs of dirt, where they were hidden by the SD DVD. I don't believe that to be the case at all. Those dirt specs would have easily been seen on the SD DVD as well. They simply weren't there.

[Psiweaver]

Yeah my guess is that they got lazy and didn't feel like remastering the whole movie for what they viewed as minimal sales and so said oh well screw it and just transfered it over without really working too hard on it.

[Rob Tomlin]

Originally Posted by Psiweaver

Yeah my guess is that they got lazy and didn't feel like remastering the whole movie for what they viewed as minimal sales and so said oh well screw it and just transfered it over without really working too hard on it.

That makes as much sense as anything else. We just need to keep the pressure on so that attitude changes.

[AV_Integrated]

My guess is a little bit different. I think the entire industry got caught a bit behind the curve on things and fully expected more delays and potentially releasing Blu-ray a bit later in the year. They were rushed and simply didn't have the time to do things perfectly when the first movies came along. The early encoding software wasn't fully tweaked to perfection and for whatever reason hadn't been put nearly through the paces that HD-DVD encoding software had been to that point.

Perhaps a bit to cocky on the part of Blu-ray, it was a clear wake-up call when initial reviews seriously panned the Blu-ray format. I think it is very fair that it only took a couple of months for Blu-ray to get things under much tighter control and quality of movies to go through the roof. It does suprise me to some extent how far quality has jumped with MPEG2 on 25GB discs, but clearly MPEG2 + 25GB IS possible for very high quality. I long to see what MPEG2 + 50GB can deliver! I am psyched that all three major codecs are in use with Blu-ray and that all are delivering very good results.

I figure that in a year comments on the quality difference between the formats will be non-existent and hopefully PS3 will inspire Universal to make the Blu-ray studio lineup complete.