Shoot 'Em Up - New Line delivers a great high bitrate VC-1 encode

[AlexanderG]

Just finished watching Shoot 'Em Up on Blu Ray, as my local Wal Mart decided to sell it early along with War and Resident Evil 3.

Note: I'm using a Playstation 3 2.10 firmware with a calibrated Samsung LNT-4066F 40" 1080p HDTV with a viewing distance of about 5-6 feet.

The movie looks fantastic. Apparently New Line Cinema is doing different encodes for each format or doesn't intend on releasing this title on HD-DVD anytime soon, as frequent checks to the PS3 bitrate meter revealed that New Line didn't skimp on the bit budget whatsoever. I constantly saw Bitrates in the upper 20 mbps region, with it going to 35 frequently and even over 40 mbps on occassion.

The result is an extremely sharp transfer. The movie is VERY stylized with strong, bold colors that some may not really care for. Lots of greens/yellows/reds. Regardless, the colors pop like crazy, and for those of you that are familiar with the movie Clive's carrot is a strong vivid eye popping orange and the "Fuk u/Fuk u Too" scene at the beginning of the movie provides some nice strong reds. There is a light veil of grain that is revealed in shadows or areas with low light, but the grain is preserved VERY well with no banding or macroblocking.

As far as sound quality is concerned, New Line provided a DTS-MA track, which unfortunately my PS3 is unable to decode. But based off of the the 1.5 mbps DTS core track, it sounds great and it felt really nice to hear Nirvana's Breed through my system. Gunshots sound really full and deep as well.

Haven't had a chance to check the bonus features, but according to the back of the box, they are encoded in 1080p/1080i, so I can't wait to sit down and watch them too.

If there are any other questions, feel free to ask.