Lethal Weapon 2

[TallCoolOne]

hey all,
i just got this bluray movie and i have to say it's the worst looking one i've seen. It's not the old film glitches like dust and speckles or noise that bothers me, the whole movie just looks very low resolution with tons of aliasing. At first I thought something was wrong with my setup like maybe i was in 480p for some reason but nope, it's just the movie. In fact, I think my original DVD of the same movie being upconverted through my DVDO VP50 processor looks quite a bit better than the BD playing from my PS3. Anyone else have this and seeing these major jaggies in it? the hi-def digest site didn't comment on this in their review so i was wondering what's up, is it just my copy?
thanks

[Chad Varnadore]

Originally Posted by TallCoolOne

hey all,
i just got this bluray movie and i have to say it's the worst looking one i've seen. It's not the old film glitches like dust and speckles or noise that bothers me, the whole movie just looks very low resolution with tons of aliasing. At first I thought something was wrong with my setup like maybe i was in 480p for some reason but nope, it's just the movie. In fact, I think my original DVD of the same movie being upconverted through my DVDO VP50 processor looks quite a bit better than the BD playing from my PS3. Anyone else have this and seeing these major jaggies in it? the hi-def digest site didn't comment on this in their review so i was wondering what's up, is it just my copy?
thanks

It's the disc. Warner has all but admitted fault. They've corrected the problem since then. Though, considering the nature of the problem, in that filtering caused it, still makes their high def authoring somewhat suspect. Other titles specifically affected include with both loss and aliasing: The Fugitive, Full Metal Jacket, Perfect Storm (hopefully why PS has been delayed), and Lethal Weapon 1. Though considering the unnatural softness of Unforgiven, Lady in the Water, and some others, you have to wonder if they're still filtering some of their titles, but they just figured out how to do so without introducing aliasing.

[TallCoolOne]

Originally Posted by Chad Varnadore

It's the disc. Warner has all but admitted fault. They've corrected the problem since then. Though, considering the nature of the problem, in that filtering caused it, still makes their high def authoring somewhat suspect. Other titles specifically affected include with both loss and aliasing: The Fugitive, Full Metal Jacket, Perfect Storm (hopefully why PS has been delayed), and Lethal Weapon 1. Though considering the unnatural softness of Unforgiven, Lady in the Water, and some others, you have to wonder if they're still filtering some of their titles, but they just figured out how to do so without introducing aliasing.

interesting...but how do you actually ship a title looking like this? i mean they must've not even QA'ed this at all, not even put the disc in to make sure it works...it looks bad throughout the movie, pretty much any scene...unbelieveable. I wonder if i can get a refund since my non-BD version looks better.

[GasCat]

I purchased Lethal Weapon and Lethal Weapon 2. Lethal Weapon 2's transfer is one of the best ones I have ever seen. I was surprised how good an older film could look. (On the other hand, Lethal Weapon's transfer was not that good.)

I read the previous comment and you definitely have a bad disc.

The UPC I have is: 012569829497
ISBN: 1-4198-3804-0

I would recommend this film to anyone who is a stickler for picture quality. I froze numerous scenes stared at the picture and said aloud, "Now that's high definition".

[Deciazulado]

Not to sound rude or anything, but do you have a 720p TV and/or sit at 3+ PH from the 16:9 screen? Just want to confirm something..

I will agree with this part:

Originally Posted by GasCat

Lethal Weapon 2's transfer is one of the best ones I have ever seen. I was surprised how good an older film could look.

But I also agree with this:

Originally Posted by TallCoolOne

the whole movie just looks very low resolution with tons of aliasing ... Anyone else have this and seeing these major jaggies in it? the hi-def digest site didn't comment on this in their review so i was wondering what's up

Same UPC and ISBN

The transfer quality, is as good as a VC-1 46 Mb/s, if it had been full res..

[GasCat]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

Not to sound rude or anything, but do you have a 720p TV and/or sit at 3+ PH from the 16:9 screen? Just want to confirm something..

No problem, ask any questions. I do not understand this phrase:
"sit at 3+ PH"

Pllayer : PS3
Resolution: 1080p
Set: Samsung HL-S5687W 56" 1080p DLP
Viewing Distance: 8 feet (Minimum distance allowable for 56" screen according Samsung's PDF:entitled: "Viewing Distance For A TV")

There are absolutely no aliasing problems or jaggies. I purchased the disc directly from Warner Bros. There was a delay but finally it arrived 1-2 weeks ago. I would think you have the same disc if the UPC is the same.

Originally Posted by TallCoolOne
the whole movie just looks very low resolution with tons of aliasing ... Anyone else have this and seeing these major jaggies in it? the hi-def digest site didn't comment on this in their review so i was wondering what's up

I completely disagree with this statement. The person who wrote it has some other problems going on. If you feel that way then there is something else wrong with your system. Give me a time in the film when you have the problem.

Look around this time frame: 1:10:38
The camper has venetian blinds which I would think would be very bad for someone who has an aliasing problem. I see no problems at all. I'll see if I can post a pic later.

[Brad Ley]

Originally Posted by GasCat

I completely disagree with this statement. The person who wrote it has some other problems going on. If you feel that way then there is something else wrong with your system. Give me a time in the film when you have the problem.

Look around this time frame: 1:10:38
The camper has venetian blinds which I would think would be very bad for someone who has an aliasing problem. I see no problems at all. I'll see if I can post a pic later.

No, actually he's dead on accurate. I also thought LW2 was a fantastic looking disc when I first got it. That was back when I was viewing everything on a 50" CRT @1080i. I've since moved up to a 70" LCOS 1080p and Lethal Weapon 2 is one of the worst (if not THE WORST) Blu-ray and HD-DVD titles available. The aliasing and jaggies are vicious and make the disc pretty much unwatchable. Don't be fooled that just because you can't see it on your display and set up that it doesn't exist. What you're actually experiencing is your display/display size/seating distance masking these artifacts. It is helping to masquerade poorer transfers and artifacts, but it also means that you're not seeing these discs as fully resolved as they can be.

As for High Def Digest, I'm starting to wonder if he actually even bothers watching these discs. In his review for Pursuit of Happyness, he mentions that the disc contains, "trailers for no fewer than twelve other Sony titles -- 'Spider-Man 2.1,' 'Spider-Man 3,' 'Surf's Up,' 'Casino Royale,' 'Stranger Than Fiction,' 'Rocky Balboa,' 'Stomp the Yard,' 'The Natural: Director's Cut,' 'Across the Universe,' 'Hitch,' 'The Holiday' and 'Catch and Release.'" The reality is that only a few of these trailers are actually on the disc, so where did he come up with this list from? (These trailers are most likely all on the standard def release, so the paranoid in me might hypothesize that he actually reviewed the standard DVD three weeks early and passed it off as a BD review.) He also says that the "Same Story, Different Movie" featurette from Payback is, "Presented in high-def and clocking in just shy of a half an hour." Not so... the video features on Payback are all 480i. I've kind of found that site to be about as useful for BD/HD news/reviews as asking a stranger off the street. I'd say the odds are the same that either has actually seen the disc.

[Deciazulado]

Originally Posted by GasCat

No problem, ask any questions. I do not understand this phrase:
"sit at 3+ PH"

Means "sit at 3 times or more the image Picture Height."

So if the TV screen or the movie image is 1 feet tall 3PH means sitting at 3 feet away (eyeball is 3 feet away from the screen) 4PH is 4 times etc. Since movies are suposed to be watched at the same height (it's their width that changes on screen), PH is used as viewing distance measurement, instead of the home theaterish screen widths

The TAP (Theater Alignment Program) guidelines specify seating distances of 1.4PH from the good front rows to 3.6PH for the bad very last row at the back of the theater. (For example if you seat in the middle of a theater designed that way you are at 1.8PH)

Originally Posted by GasCat

Pllayer : PS3
Resolution: 1080p
Set: Samsung HL-S5687W 56" 1080p DLP
Viewing Distance: 8 feet (Minimum distance allowable for 56" screen according Samsung's PDF:entitled: "Viewing Distance For A TV")

(Heh I love it when manufacturers recommend sitting distances more apt for watching DVDs, with 1080p displays)

ok you are at 96" from your screen.
Your screen is 27" x 49"

You watch 1.33 and 1.78 at 3.6PH and you watch 2.39 Scope movies at 4.8PH

So for 1.33-1.78 movies you are watching like seating from the last row of a theater (And for Scope you're much farther away)

I watched DVDs that way.

Originally Posted by GasCat

There are absolutely no aliasing problems or jaggies.

They are there, you're just sitting to far away to see them. If I sit and watch Lethal Weapon 2 at the same PH distance as you I can barely see it too (1080p direct view LCD (no lens) set, 1:1 pixel mapping, 0% overscan)

Originally Posted by GasCat

I completely disagree with this statement. The person who wrote it has some other problems going on. If you feel that way then there is something else wrong with your system.

There's nothing wrong with his system he's just seeing what's there, like Brad and Chad and I and others see.

There's also nothing wrong with your system, you're too far away to see it, and also, your Display is projecting the DLP through an (internal) lens, which tends to smooth out the "squarewave-like" jaggies, or actually, "limited horizontal resolution" pixels, in this case.

Originally Posted by GasCat

Give me a time in the film when you have the problem.

mm ok maybe the easiest way to see this is to look at the black and white (white letters on black background)

WARNER BROS.
presents

logo before it says Lethal Weapon 2 at the title credits in the beginning.

Warner Bros. presents is in all its horizontally pixelated glory. On a 1080p direct view you probably can see it from even at 3 PH from the Scope height! (5 feet on your case)

Sit at 3 or 4 feet and look at the logo, or at any high brightness highlights/edges thoughout the movie.

For example look at the scene starting at 10:10, on the middle right of the background there's a window filled with white light. There are two vertical bars (run up and down) in that window that seem to each occupy two actual pixels in width but are imaged at just one pixel that's upscaled onto two pixels wide and as the camera or film moves or weaves left or right you can see the bars jump from 2 pixel slot to 2 pixel slot instead of smooth pixel to pixel motion.

Warning: once you see these things you might not b eable to not see them afterwards!

Originally Posted by GasCat

Look around this time frame: 1:10:38
The camper has venetian blinds which I would think would be very bad for someone who has an aliasing problem. I see no problems at all. I'll see if I can post a pic later.

Well it's not aliasing, it's just looks as if the transfer seems to be something transfered in 1080 x 960 pixels, interpolated to 1080 x 1920 by multiplying the horizontal pixels 2x to make them 1920 wide. The vertical 1080 lines are smooth. The horizontal detail on the other hand, looks like it's about 2x pixelated (twice as thick as it should be. or half the lines) Maybe it's a 1080 x 1440 master or something.

In that particular scene (1:10:38) all the blinds are practically horizontally aligned, (so they go left to right so there's no horizontal resolution components lines) (lines that go up and down vertically) so there's no pixels to be doubled. As I said the vertical resolution of the transfrer is smooth and fine, it's the horizontal resolution that's doubled or pixelated.

Apart from that, the transfer is nice and clean and colorful, looks like if made from the original Scope neg, and with 100% of its 2.40 height (you can almost see the splices go by on scene changes!), scenes shot in sunlight look breathtaking (look at the shot on the beach at 1:10:24 wow) I think it looks great.

The transfer is a high bit-rate VC-1 (about 23 Mb/s) so maybe this was a way of achieving such a clear image when using VC-1 at the beggining of their VC-1 transfers: encode half the resolution to make a 1080 x 960 23 Mb/s look as clean as a 1080 x 1960 46 Mb/s transfer (which they can't do), and hope that MTF losses from projector lenses (or 720p panels) and normal (for DVD) viewing distances smoothed out and turned square wave pixels into smooth sine waves (which is what starts to happen when you pass a "square wave" though a lens) or the high frequency bandwidth of the display's video amplifier has a roll off (same difference) and hope nobody noticed.

Except, that you can't watch it projected on a big screen because of the pixelation (Something that is a piece of cake for other Blu-rays!)

[TallCoolOne]

Originally Posted by GasCat

I completely disagree with this statement. The person who wrote it has some other problems going on. If you feel that way then there is something else wrong with your system. Give me a time in the film when you have the problem.

Look around this time frame: 1:10:38
The camper has venetian blinds which I would think would be very bad for someone who has an aliasing problem. I see no problems at all. I'll see if I can post a pic later.

There is nothing wrong with my setup, all my other movies look good and some look amazing (Open Season, Happy Feet, Casino Royale, Crank).

Either Warner has issued a new version or you are sitting too far away to notice like Deciazulado said in his very elaborate explanation. As for me, I have a 45" 1080p LCD screen and I sit about 8 feet away and I can see the jaggies as clear as day in pretty much every scene. I did have lasik eye surgery though and have 20/10 vision now

I would be more than happy to take some pictures of it when I get home...it looks worse than the SD version of the movie upconverted through my VP50, no question.