What is grain and what are the benefits?

[Kuraudo]

Are these both Myths?

1. HD Dud has a bit less grain than Blu-Ray
films
2. DVD because it is less resolution doesn't show as much noticeable grain
as a high resolution HD movie like Blu-Ray.

I heard this from a friend, but I have yet to find anything that verifies its truth. So these are lies?

Anyways I don't mind grain if it makes the film specific for it, its artistic in its choice.
However, I don't think Film Grain is good when you want to demo your new pristine LCD HDTV to a friend/Relative for the first time.

[FilmmakingFiasco]

Originally Posted by Kuraudo

Are these both Myths?

1. HD Dud has a bit less grain than Blu-Ray
films
2. DVD because it is less resolution doesn't show as much noticeable grain
as a high resolution HD movie like Blu-Ray.

I heard this from a friend, but I have yet to find anything that verifies its truth. So these are lies?

Anyways I don't mind grain if it makes the film specific for it, its artistic in its choice.
However, I don't think Film Grain is good when you want to demo your new pristine LCD HDTV to a friend/Relative for the first time.

Having seen Paramount's Sahara and all three Mission Impossibles on both HD-DVD and Blu-ray, I will testify that, yes, some HD-DVDs had less grain than their Blu-ray counterparts. On each of these titles, the HD-DVD version used a VC-1 encode and the Blu-ray was an MPEG-2 encode.

These were rarely instances (and MPEG-2 can look fantastic in some cases: see Kingdom of Heave for example). It has nothing to do with them being on HD-DVD or Blu-ray, just the way that they were encoded.

2. DVD is less resolution and people were also watching them on smaller TVs with lower resolution. So, I could see how that could be true. (Doesn't mean that's the reason why there IS less grain though..just seems plausible to me).

[Zvi]

Grain as it was explained by Gavin exists because of the film technology imperfection. If the director introduces it on purpose that's different but otherwise it's there not because it's good but because film isn't good enough. I certainly hope eventually it'll be gone.

[bix105]

Is it safe to say that the grain on film is equivalent to a pixel in digital?

[Grubert]

Originally Posted by Kuraudo

Are these both Myths?

1. HD Dud has a bit less grain than Blu-Ray
films
2. DVD because it is less resolution doesn't show as much noticeable grain
as a high resolution HD movie like Blu-Ray.

I heard this from a friend, but I have yet to find anything that verifies its truth. So these are lies?

Anyways I don't mind grain if it makes the film specific for it, its artistic in its choice.
However, I don't think Film Grain is good when you want to demo your new pristine LCD HDTV to a friend/Relative for the first time.

The thing is that grain is a bitrate hog. In other words, if you have a grainy film you need high bitrate to compress it without artifacts. Otherwise, the image will become noisy (sometimes video noise can be mistaken for film grain, but that's a whole different debate).

Now, if you filter away the grain before, then you can get a much lower bitrate and no visible artifacts. I suspect that's what happened with Batman Begins, because it is much too soft for a movie shot anamorphic. Just compare the Batman Begins HD DVD and the The Prestige Blu-ray (both directed by Christopher Nolan, both photographed by Wally Pfister).