Picture Quality.

[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.

[Deciazulado]

Originally Posted by baccusboy

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.

Sure.. Ok do you know that you're in Blu-ray Region A and all of America and Japan are in region A? So, for your area and intended purposes, Blu-ray is region free

Originally Posted by baccusboy

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.

66% of the Star War movies were shot on film.

Anyway, I sometimes get the impression that some High Definition enthusiasts (I'm not talking about baccusboy, I mean in general) have been spoilt by computers, games, and CGI images. Movies have been made for a hundred years ON film, so 99% of them are gonna look like film and not like CGI renders. (Maybe Hollywood should resurrect and use 70mm film from now on for this new type of patron ) Film does not look exactly like CGI.

But appart from all that. I've seen some BD demo disc that blow away your mind, while at the same time I've seen others that are noisy. Sometimes these noisy demos are played on a Samsung without the firmware upgrade, (or sometimes even on top of the line BD players), with the sharpness on the display racked up all the way to maximum, like if you were watching a VHS tape, and they look horrible, run for your life horrible, where you can see all the compression noise like a blizzard and the edges overenhanced as sharp as nails.

That's not to say that all BD have looked splendid. they can do better. they should do better, and hopefully they will. Some transfers are more equal than others. In any medium.

[baccusboy]

Originally Posted by 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.

But my point is, if I spend this much money to "upgrade" to High Def equipment, I don't expect to worry about whether or not the Bluray DVDs I buy are going to suffer from poor transfer quality or not. This should be a non-issue, but it's not. A fair share of these movies suffer from poor conversion, apparently. It's hit-and-miss.

Maybe they are getting better at the conversions, but I get the distinct feeling that many studios are not putting the effort into converting their movies well, possibly because they're worried about BR and HDDVD being cracked early (why put out the best quality now, when it's safer to re-release it later) or perhaps, they're just waiting to see which format wins before they invest a lot in supporting one over the other.

Converting movies is not rocket science, and it's not like large film companies don't have the money to do it right. Once you learn the right way to do something like this -- you just do it.

[WriteSimply]

Originally Posted by baccusboy

But my point is, if I spend this much money to "upgrade" to High Def equipment, I don't expect to worry about whether or not the Bluray DVDs I buy are going to suffer from poor transfer quality or not. This should be a non-issue, but it's not. A fair share of these movies suffer from poor conversion, apparently. It's hit-and-miss.

For the most part these days, they've been a lot of hits and not much of misses. However, you said it yourself: you saw demo clips. It's not the same as actual releases.


fuad

[Typhon]

i believe that Superman was one of the 1st movies to be shot front and back in HD..so thats y that film looks great...to bad it sucked !! haha...

[baccusboy]

Originally Posted by WriteSimply

However, you said it yourself: you saw demo clips. It's not the same as actual releases.

Yes... but consumers on the showfloor are making buying decisions based on demo clips (in many cases). That makes demo clips even more important.

When car manufacturers display a car at an auto event, you can be darned sure that the car will be spotless and perfect -- waxed to a high-gloss shine, and with a gorgeous model in a bikini on the hood. If they just drove it there straight from the factory without any prep or washing, it would look dirty and unpresentable. People don't just say, "Oh, that's a demo. It looks like crap because it's a demo."

The car makers put time into making sure the image presented is one that makes consumers say, "Wow... I WANT THAT CAR!"

Now, enter the Samsung/Bluray demo disk I saw.

When a huge company like Sony, fighting to win a format war, creates the sexiest DVD format on Earth, they need to at least be sure the image shoppers are seeing is a good one. But a dirty (grainy) and poorly-converted Bluray demo disk is what shoppers are presented with, courtesty of Samsung.

And I find it quite interesting that these same movie clips that looked bad in the demo are also ones that people on here say look less-than-stellar, or worse than they should: XXX and Superman to name two. Nobody cares about XXX, but Superman is new and was shot in HD. More than one person on this forum (earlier in this thread) stated that the quality of the Superman DVD is flat, washed-out, and one person even stated that the standard definition DVDs looked better (I have to agree, although demo clips are what I saw). Superman IS a new movie. It WAS shot on HD. The BR version STILL looks sub-par to people who have seen the full movie.

Is this what is to be expected of Bluray?

We should walk away from every Bluray experience saying, "WOW!"

I haven't seen an HDDVD demo disk, or a movie played on it. When people start seeing demos of these players side-by-side at Best Buy and Circuit City, if HDDVD sales material looks better (and gosh, I can't imagine it being worse) then people will think, "Oh, HDDVD is better than Bluray" or "The movies coming out on Bluray look like crap compared to HDDVD."

And deservedly so.

[gmz]

Originally Posted by baccusboy

the Superman DVD is flat, washed-out, and one person even stated that the standard definition DVDs looked better (I have to agree, although demo clips are what I saw). Super

I haven't seen an HDDVD demo disk, or a movie played on it. When people start seeing demos of these players side-by-side at Best Buy and Circuit City, if HDDVD sales material looks better (and gosh, I can't imagine it being worse) then people will think, "Oh, HDDVD is better than Bluray" or "The movies coming out on Bluray look like crap compared to HDDVD."

And deservedly so.

You bring some very valid points to the table, and I agree. Ultimately I want to see the product that I'm paying for, not something inferior. I didn't buy a blu ray player to watch films that another type of standard player with some video processing & upconverting, can produce equal or better results. Of course that being said there are many examples of stellar picture quality, it just has to be more consistent & without doing research on your own it's hit & miss depending on the films that you buy.

[Deciazulado]

Originally Posted by baccusboy

And I find it quite interesting that these same movie clips that looked bad in the demo are also ones that people on here say look less-than-stellar, or worse than they should: XXX and Superman to name two. Nobody cares about XXX, but Superman is new and was shot in HD. More than one person on this forum (earlier in this thread) stated that the quality of the Superman DVD is flat, washed-out, and one person even stated that the standard definition DVDs looked better (I have to agree, although demo clips are what I saw). Superman IS a new movie. It WAS shot on HD. The BR version STILL looks sub-par to people who have seen the full movie.

Correction: you should say "The High Definition version STILL looks sub-par to people who have seen the full movie."

This is a VC-1 encode done to fit on an HD DVD and ported over to the Blu-ray disc.

The second image I posted earlier was taken from the HD DVD.

As for xXx, that was one of the first week of release Blu-ray titles, 7 months and a half ago*.









*(probably done to counter Universal's Vin Diesel offerings :P) oh what a night, late in summer back in 2 oo 6

[john_1958]

Originally Posted by Knight-Errant

Yeah HD cameras are good at shooting HD in theory lol

I understood that Superman Returns was shot at a higher resolution than 1080p could display?

Hd cameras are better then film

[theknub]

care to explain why? i like my film grain personally

[degas]

Originally Posted by john_1958

Hd cameras are better then film

I feel the exact opposite - film owns HD Video every time

[baccusboy]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

Sure.. Ok do you know that you're in Blu-ray Region A and all of America and Japan are in region A? So, for your area and intended purposes, Blu-ray is region free

I missed this earlier. Wow, that sounds great.

On another note, I went back to that same store and saw the same Samsung Bluray demo again. I saw a few more movie clips from it: Batman, 50 First Dates, and Chicken Little (I think that was it).

Batman looked excellent.
50 First Dates was far worse than a regular DVD (I'm not joking at all -- horrible color and grain beyond belief on some shots).
Chicken Little looked very good.

I know 50 First Dates isn't something many people would buy, but it was as bad, almost worse, than xXx was.

[Knight-Errant]

I watched Superman Returns on my brand new Sony Pearl last night and I have to agree that it's dull looking, unnaturally so.

The images posted earlier tell the tale for me. It could clearly look stunning, yet doesn't. I can't comment on what the D version looks like as I haven't seen it.

I think it's probably a case of the film not being optimised for BD.

[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).

[Pat Bateman]

Originally Posted by Knight-Errant

I think it's probably a case of the film not being optimised for BD.

I have a stupid question but what do you mean optimised for BD?

[Knight-Errant]

Originally Posted by Pat Bateman

I have a stupid question but what do you mean optimised for BD?

Well a dual-layer BD can take a greater amount of data than a dual-layer HD-DVD.

I'm no expert though, just an enthusiastic amateur

[Pat Bateman]

Originally Posted by Knight-Errant

Well a dual-layer BD can take a greater amount of data than a dual-layer HD-DVD.

I'm no expert though, just an enthusiastic amateur

Me too. Thanks.

[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.