Starship Troopers

[sirk]

I am really looking forward to this on BD. Does anyone know of a release date?

[Zvi]

No, but I am looking forward to it too

[Dave Mack]

Exactly. It's been released on SD so many times now that I thought it would already be out on BD. At least the a film only version by now...

[dialog_gvf]

paidgeek (paraphrased) said (with respect to Starship Troopers):

"You better like grain. I mean REALLY love it."

So, this is why the issue of grain supression versus adherence to the purity of the source comes into play. And Sony themselves is currently unsure how to go.

People see grain as noise, and an indication of a lack of quality. But, in fact is shows how good the BD can be, in that it is able to maintain the grain without the encoder having to smooth out the image to get the bitrate down.

What is becoming clear is that VC-1 is very good at smoothing while maintaining detail. Although I notice some people complaining about EE in some HD DVD transfers, which would seem to indicate the smoothing is going too far and must be compensated for by edge enhancement.

Gary

[Deciazulado]

To me many VC-1 transfers look soft. I need to push the sharpness up on those.

The thing I don't understand is, why aren't people complaining that the theaters have grain while they go ballistic if they see the same grain on their High Definitiion disky? What is it? Do the theaters they go to are so out of focus they blur the grain away? And/or people seat so far back on them that they can't see the grain anymore? And when they see the image razorsharp on their LCDs for the first time they scream "Foul!" ?

As I said on another post, if people got used to seeing 300% size reductions on DVD where all the film grain was blended into nothingness, maybe High Definition is gonna be a big surprise! If seeing too much of the original image is too much, they can get a similar effect by turning the sharpness down, looking at small monitors, or *gasp, looking at the 16mm quality of DVDs!

I remember Starship Trooper's image being very good and I wouldn't like any of that detail be blurred away in the quest of erasing every spec of grain out of the negative.

[KenThompson]

This movie was suppose to be released a couple months ago, obviously it was delayed or plain cancelled. It was on my radar so Sony should just hurry up and release it

[Dave Mack]

exactly. I'd rather have detail with some grain than that super smoothed over video look like Talladega Nights on BD sports.
We went and saw "Casino Royale" at a normally decent AMC multiplex here in Emeryville, CA and gotta be honest, the focus wasn't razor sharp. The credits at the end definitely were noticeably blurred. I was surprised. After watching a few pristine BD releases like "KOH", my home settup looked better.

d

[Deciazulado]

Here's the link of a place that had it for pre-order with a date, last year. Says "ships as soon as it becomes available" and "coming soon" now

Starship Troopers

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by Dave Mack

exactly. I'd rather have detail with some grain than that super smoothed over video look like Talladega Nights on BD sports.
We went and saw "Casino Royale" at a normally decent AMC multiplex here in Emeryville, CA and gotta be honest, the focus wasn't razor sharp. The credits at the end definitely were noticeably blurred. I was surprised. After watching a few pristine BD releases like "KOH", my home settup looked better.

d

Well, "Casino Royale" is the first Bond shot in the much hated (by me) Super35 format. Remember film prints are optically made from the negatives because of the anamorphic conversion. The BD version should look much better.

[GTP]

Originally Posted by Dave Mack

exactly. I'd rather have detail with some grain than that super smoothed over video look like Talladega Nights on BD sports.

Superman Returns is an even better example ... as T/N has a better picture than the overly soft and 2-d looking S/R....at least on the 50gb BD.

[blitz6speed]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

The thing I don't understand is, why aren't people complaining that the theaters have grain while they go ballistic if they see the same grain on their High Definitiion disky? What is it?

I think its due to so many of dont go to theaters anymore. I used to go WAY more often, in the past 2-3 years, ive gone maybe 5 or 6 times. So i dont see the grain till i watch it at home. I know a lot of people like myself who just watch movies at home from now on.