The Close Encounters Of The Third Kind BD review thread

[davidPS3]

This should be a big hit for us and our team. A classic to say the least! Let's show Steven S. he made the right choice in Blu.

[Josh]

Borefest? Mind you, its a lot slower than Transformers, but its no borefest!

[Banjo]

This is one of my absolute favourites. I'm eagerly anticipating the release.

[TauHeel05]

HighDefDigest's review.

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/1022...ncounters.html

[quetzalcoatl]

Originally Posted by Alan Gordon

Looks great Josh!

I liked the PSN trailer, but this looks better still!

Won't this be the first HDM release with BOTH Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD MA? It will be interesting to see the comparisons...

~Alan

Without a doubt. I cannot wait to be doing test starting on Tues.

[zombieking]

I'll pick this one up because I like this movie and I want to show Spielberg some love on bluray!! Then maybe he'll give me War of The Worlds, Saving Private Ryan, Indy, Band of Brothers, and Shindler's List in return.

[sonicbox]

Originally Posted by ClaytonMG

Here's a question... what audio formats will be on the Blu-Ray? I believe the DVD will have DTS on it and given that Spielberg is a major DTS supporter, I am curious if the Blu-Ray will have some sort of DTS-HDMA track on it instead of TrueHD or PCM.

It strangely has two identical English Lossless soundtracks: DTS-HD MA 5.1 and TrueHD 5.1. Also, French & Spanish TrueHD 5.1. Not bad. I guess not that strange, since Spielberg was an early investor in DTS. Heh.

For legacy audio folks, they'll at least be able to get the 1.5Mbps core DTS extract, which might be better than 640Kbps Dolby Digital. The vintage age of this movie guarantees it won't be pushing the limits of any of our audio technology...

[digibob]

The finest film ever made. This will be the crowning glory for Blu. Spielberg couldn't have picked a better one of his classic films for his first Blu-ray. I own every format of this movie from VHS, laserdisc to DVD. I can't wait for this one.

[sonicbox]

Regarding audio DTS-HD MA & TrueHD "comparisons", I would hope they will be identical! Unless Spielberg's investment in DTS Corp. influenced them to lower the quality of the TrueHD source master. (Remember the days of DTS jacking up the volume to trick listeners?)

Lossless: Same data in... Same data out. Since this is Sony, TrueHD won't even have dialnorm flagged.

IMHO, due to the age of the movie and the less that optimum source audio tracks, I don't think this a title anyone will use for "reference audio" demo material.

[quetzalcoatl]

Originally Posted by sonicbox

Regarding audio DTS-HD MA & TrueHD "comparisons", I would hope they will be identical! Unless Spielberg's investment in DTS Corp. influenced them to lower the quality of the TrueHD source master. (Remember the days of DTS jacking up the volume to trick listeners?)

Lossless: Same data in... Same data out. Since this is Sony, TrueHD won't even have dialnorm flagged.

IMHO, due to the age of the movie and the less that optimum source audio tracks, I don't think this a title anyone will use for "reference audio" demo material.

It might not be a reference title but for now it will be the only title avail in the US that can show both formats. And yes the should be the same in theory but if that was truely the case then why would they be both out there. I am just wanting to hear them from the same track since so far the tests I have run with PCM and TrueHD the TrueHD tracks have been better. After this I will need to get a PCM/DTS HD MA track, which if I understand correctly Bruce Almighty has. And I can then compare them all using the same tracks.

[sonicbox]

You can ask both Dolby and DTS and they will tell you flat-out that their Lossless technology will output "perfect" PCM audio that is identical to the source PCM audio fed into it. So, if the same source is used for both TrueHD and DTS-HD MA encoding... it should be the same.

Now, if your gear is doing something different manipulating the resulting LPCM audio depending on the format... all games are off. But that has nothing to do with the format itself. Good luck with your testing.

Why both on CE?

Well, I already covered a few. Spielberg was an early investor in DTS. Really. Anyway, why not? Neither TrueHD or DTS-HD MA are mandatory. Plenty of space, so why not offer more options?

[davidPS3]

I have been looking forward to this since the day they annouced it. Don't forget to keep your volume level some-what on a medium level on that opening scene! You could blow your speakers out if the volume is to high.

[quetzalcoatl]

Originally Posted by sonicbox

You can ask both Dolby and DTS and they will tell you flat-out that their Lossless technology will output "perfect" PCM audio that is identical to the source PCM audio fed into it. So, if the same source is used for both TrueHD and DTS-HD MA encoding... it should be the same.

Now, if your gear is doing something different manipulating the resulting LPCM audio depending on the format... all games are off. But that has nothing to do with the format itself. Good luck with your testing.

Why both on CE?

Well, I already covered a few. Spielberg was an early investor in DTS. Really. Anyway, why not? Neither TrueHD or DTS-HD MA are mandatory. Plenty of space, so why not offer more options?

Not that I expect this movie to use it but remember that DTS HD MA has more bandwidth avail.

As to why I think the TrueHD tracks are better than the PCM is very simple. And it is not what the receiver is doing with wither one but the fact where do you think the better DACs are? And I cannot help but think it makes a difference. And I can test them w/o any processing of any kind and with some. And it makes no differnce in the tests so far which one gets chosen.

[sonicbox]

We're way off topic here, but we should try to understand this...

Originally Posted by quetzalcoatl

Not that I expect this movie to use it but remember that DTS HD MA has more bandwidth avail.

Right. It won't use it. The bandwidth statement is meaningless for this and most scenarios. The true "bandwidth" for either Lossless compression format is never more than what the original total source PCM 'bandwidth' is. (The worst case scenario: Unable to compress a specific range at all, which is extremely rare.) Note that DTS-HD MA might have less efficient compression than TrueHD on average (so it consumes more disc space), but that also makes no difference. The results are the same. Lossless.

As to why I think the TrueHD tracks are better than the PCM is very simple. And it is not what the receiver is doing with wither one but the fact where do you think the better DACs are? And I cannot help but think it makes a difference. And I can test them w/o any processing of any kind and with some. And it makes no difference in the tests so far which one gets chosen.

A DAC is used to take (digital) PCM audio and convert it to something (analog) you can hear. TrueHD and DTS-HD MA don't have DACs themselves, so neither one has a "better DAC." All the codecs do is output uncompressed PCM.

Are you exclusively using HDMI as your audio transport to a single receiver? If so, that means no matter what audio you are playing (bitstreams, LPCM, etc.)... you are using the DACs inside your receiver.

* FYI: Close Encounters on Blu-Ray uses a 48khz/24-bit audio master, which was sourced from 48khz/16-bit material. 5.1 channels of uncompressed 48kHz/24-bit LPCM audio would be 6.9mbps.

[philce3k]

all of you who are true believers please visit my website.

www.ce3k.me.uk

cheers
PHIL

[FilmmakingFiasco]

And the reviews begin to roll in. High-Def Digest posted their review this morning. The two-disc set is listed as highly recommended. http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/1022...ncounters.html

[The Big Blue]

The Digital Bits review will be up today.

[Riverside666]

Yeah whoever says that highdefdigest only support HD DVD is smokin Crack, because lately they've been giving Blu Ray's Great Reviews, The month of November was a very Blu Month, and we've only just begun.

[Josh]

I'm finishing up my full review right now, and hopefully it will be on HiHD sooner than later.

[rjg]

No surprise this looks as good as he says. I remember hearing a lot of work went into this title, its good to know Spielberg definitly likes Blu-Ray.
I MUST buy for me next week




http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/1022...ncounters.html