Dinosaur review - "brilliant transfer"

[Chris Beveridge]

The blu-scape film itself was great but what impressed me the most was the intro to it, where it shfits from a watercolor to reality and then does the break-up into a million spheres and reforms into the tv panels. THAT was frickin gorgeous. And major kudos to Disney for making it a loop as well if you want so it'll look great in a retail environment.

[ProvenFlipper]

Originally Posted by Chris Beveridge

The blu-scape film itself was great but what impressed me the most was the intro to it, where it shfits from a watercolor to reality and then does the break-up into a million spheres and reforms into the tv panels. THAT was frickin gorgeous. And major kudos to Disney for making it a loop as well if you want so it'll look great in a retail environment.

Yeah, that part was great. I was watching it with my girlfriend and she made me rewind it back so we could see it again.

[elitegangsta]

It seems like everyone is quite pleased with Dinosaurs transfer. All of the reviews have been great, so I will not beat a dead horse on this one. Just placing my two cents... OUTSTANDING TRANSFER!!!!!! definately the best I have seem on a Blu-Ray disc to date (and I pretty much have seem every release and own just about all of them).

[Deciazulado]

Well, I finally got to see BD at full 1080p.

he he hehehe hehe he he hehehe



sorry I'll compose myself now.

It was again the MPEG-2 single layer Ultraviolet disc, but this time on a 1080p D-ILA. The Samsung's output still was 1080i but the D-ILA was deinterlacing it correctly (I made sure to confirm it by again watching the end titles and,) apart from the 24 to 60 3:2 judder, this time the letters were perfectly defined, smooth (not one iota of line-doubled jaggies), and sharp. (I stood 2 feet from the screen for that!)

At 3x picture height (the distance the chair on the store was set up) (that would be about 1.7x screen width for screen width distance measurers) the image looked perfect. No noise, so clean, like looking at a chrome on a transparency illuminator. Never seen 35mm projected so clean (Well there's some Scope films shot in Eastman ISO 50 film but the prints get dirt!). It looked like VistaVision.


UV has this "soft diffusion filter look" (which would show off any noise/grain if it had it), but there are also super sharp shots w/o it and those looked scrumptious too. Only at my preferred, movie theater-like watching distance of 1.5x picture height for Scope movies (I do that by making what would be the "Letterbox" 0.75% tall area of a Scope-movie disc be the "base picture height") (that makes the seating distance to be about 0.6x screen widths for a 1.78 screen, about twice as close as Chad sits ), did I see some fine pixel structure and residues of mpeg-2 noise (The D-ILA screen was great for this as it showed no screen-door effect and you could see the BD image structure without hindrance)

As you can tell I'm very pleased from what I saw this time, and really think that from this example just MPEG-2 and one layer did a very good job. Nah. Excellent. And on a Samsung!

Which brings me to Dinosaur.

Originally Posted by Chad Varnadore

There's a lot that doesn't seem to add up about the Dinosaur disc itself. I think part of it is being an all digital creation, peoples expectations were very high and may be penalizing the disc for what is innate to its design or could be a limitation of the master done back in 2000.

--o--

But, as Dinosaur used real life stills for backgrounds, the detail in the CG animation doesn't seem to fit the utter lack of definition in the landscapes. Whether innate, a limitation of the existing (non-current) master, or even resultant from the nature of the source tripping up most deinterlacing solutions, I do not yet know. But, hopefully, I'll be able to rule out deinterlacing soon. Only Disney knows the answer to the other.

I've only seen Dinosaur in 35mm.

As Chad said his projector is deinterlacing film properly, and Kris from Secrets confirmed it, and they know what they're talking about as they're basically THE deinterlace reference, that is making me worry about the Dinosaur transfer, because my expectations for it, and specially after seeing UV in true 1080p (and on the "ebil" Samsung no less!), are that the Dinosaur BD should look AS GOOD, if not TWICE BETTER, as this film sourced pic (which seems to be scanned from, or as, a 1.25k film render):


Maybe Chad could throw this pic on the Ruby and compare it to the BD frame directly?

If it doesn't look twice as good, the BD is not rendered with 1080p quality, if it looks about the same as the pic, it's about a 720p render (Hollywood would call it a 1.25k render), if it looks worse than this something went wrong in the transfer, as a PAL 576 x 720 master would be very close to this!


Chad mentions the master done in 2000. Wouldn't a HDTV video master (as opposed to the true high resolution digital file used for film rendering, for example, Toy Story was rendered at 1.5k wide for 35mm (1536 pixels wide for the "Camera Aperture" area, equivalent to a "800p" transfer, using approx. 800 x 1480 pixels for the 1.85 Projector Aperture area) done in 2000 be a 1080i transfer, optimized (vertically filtered) for 1080i CRTs? maybe even 1080i x 1440 quality?

Maybe Chad can run Dinosaur through the VP30 and see if the end result (bobbed) looks similar to the direct Samsung to Ruby output. (If it doesnt look half as good through the bobbed VP30 as the direct output, the Dinosaur transfer is not really 1080p!) (UV looked so much better at 1080p as opposed to 1080 bobbed)

Or worse: Could they had just uprezed the PAL master?

I'm sure the digital file master is AT LEAST as good as a 1.25k render (670 x 1240 1.85) (which is about the on-screen resolution of a projected film frame on the average theater) as shown in that Bruton pic (cropped to the Projector Aperture dimensions). (Which coincidentally, now shows the same area as the DVD too)*


I can't find the Dinosaur BD in my area to put it on the D-ILA to check for myself, so I'll have to order it.

I'm still hoping for the best...


*(Thanks for my partner, for procuring me with the exact DVD frame )

[BTBuck1]

Based on an old thread when "Dinosaur" the blu ray disc version that I had previewed upon release. I had mentioned in the review of the disc that at the time I just wasn't quite sure why the disc looked so "soft" and that the DVD version had looked almost better upconverted on my HD-A1 than the BD. I didn't own my own blu-ray player at the time so I wanted to reserve judgment before giving final word on it. the original thread can be found here:

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...light=dinosaur

After re-watching it, with my samsung player, firmware NR updated, in my own home with my preffered settings I can now say that Dinosaur is a disc I reccomend. While I think it still is a Mediocre experience for an animated HD release, it is definately sharper than before. yes there are a few sections with posterization, but they don't last long and are only in a few spots for a few seconds through the film. This disc now looks "High Def" it's about on par with MONSTERHOUSE for me maybe a little less. not as sharp and squeeky clean as say Corps Bride BD or The Polar Express HDDVD I own, but still I think an accurate transfer from it's master. I'm really happy that the Sammy player is comming around and improving titles such as this. BTW, HOFD also looks better now...strange, but a welcomed change.

Brian

[Ascended_Saiyan]

Originally Posted by Brian@BBY

Based on an old thread when "Dinosaur" the blu ray disc version that I had previewed upon release. I had mentioned in the review of the disc that at the time I just wasn't quite sure why the disc looked so "soft" and that the DVD version had looked almost better upconverted on my HD-A1 than the BD. I didn't own my own blu-ray player at the time so I wanted to reserve judgment before giving final word on it. the original thread can be found here:

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...light=dinosaur

After re-watching it, with my samsung player, firmware NR updated, in my own home with my preffered settings I can now say that Dinosaur is a disc I reccomend. While I think it still is a Mediocre experience for an animated HD release, it is definately sharper than before. yes there are a few sections with posterization, but they don't last long and are only in a few spots for a few seconds through the film. This disc now looks "High Def" it's about on par with MONSTERHOUSE for me maybe a little less. not as sharp and squeeky clean as say Corps Bride BD or The Polar Express HDDVD I own, but still I think an accurate transfer from it's master. I'm really happy that the Sammy player is comming around and improving titles such as this. BTW, HOFD also looks better now...strange, but a welcomed change.

Brian

When I tried Eight Below on a head to head comparison with the Pioneer Elite , Panasonic, and an updated Samsung Blu-ray players, I found the Panasonic and the Pioneer Elite to be sharper (at Tweeter/Hifi Buys) and didn't notice any posterization. Try it on the Panasonic player in your store. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

[The Big Blue]

Read the whole thread. Interesting read. The DVD Talk guy absolutely killed this disc.

Has everyone re-evaluated yet?

I saw it on Sat. for the first time ever (PS3/1.8) and it looked quite good. I thought the dark scenes especially looked very nice. My guess was that a lot of the inconsistency re: sharpness/softness is inherent in the way the film was made, mixing live action w/animation and the fact that this is Disney/2000 after all, and not Pixar.

[JTK]

Originally Posted by The Big Blue

Read the whole thread. Interesting read. The DVD Talk guy absolutely killed this disc.

Has everyone re-evaluated yet?

I saw it on Sat. for the first time ever (PS3/1.8) and it looked quite good. I thought the dark scenes especially looked very nice. My guess was that a lot of the inconsistency re: sharpness/softness is inherent in the way the film was made, mixing live action w/animation and the fact that this is Disney/2000 after all, and not Pixar.

Exactly.

I never understood some of the Hate-orade that was getting around as far as this disc goes. It's a beautiful job all the way around.

I guess people are used to the uber slick Pixar deals, but this is damned good in its own right.

I like the digital stuff, too, but I for one really miss "real/done by a human being" animation and I'm sorry that it seems to have been needlessly abandoned. They still haven't found a way to put the kind of warmth into the digital stuff that the old ways can do.

Both forms have their place.

[Rob Tomlin]

Originally Posted by JTK

Exactly.

I never understood some of the Hate-orade that was getting around as far as this disc goes. It's a beautiful job all the way around.

I guess people are used to the uber slick Pixar deals, but this is damned good in its own right.

I like the digital stuff, too, but I for one really miss "real/done by a human being" animation and I'm sorry that it seems to have been needlessly abandoned. They still haven't found a way to put the kind of warmth into the digital stuff that the old ways can do.

Both forms have their place.

I agree. I love The Iron Giant. That may be the last good example of the more classic animation that we see for quite a while.

[PeterTHX]

Never forget a client of mine when he saw "Dinosaur" from a Samsung BDP-1000 on a Panasonic 58" 720p plasma "That is the best high definition I've ever seen!"

The only hate comes from HD DVDers.

[Knight-Errant]

Originally Posted by Rob Tomlin

I agree. I love The Iron Giant. That may be the last good example of the more classic animation that we see for quite a while.

Oh I'd love to see that one on BD.