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First HD-DVD Disc Reviews - Mixed Marks
An anonymous reader writes "As the first HD-DVD players and discs hit store shelves nationwide today, the new site High-Def DVD Digest has posted extraordinarily detailed reviews of the HD-DVD disc releases of 'Serenity' and 'The Last Samurai,' with more reviews to come later today. The site gives both discs mixed marks, with the Tom Cruise flick edging out the Whedon-fest for demonstrating more pure high-def eye-candy appeal. Also worth a look-see: a detailed account of their 'review reference system' (ie: their gear)."
The more I read and hear about this stuff, the less interested I become. If it were just about the difference in quality and that difference were BIG, I'd be thinking about going for some equipment, and some new DVDs. But, toss in all the other BS, this one's going nowhere. I'll wait until there's one format, or both play compatibility everywhere, DRM goes away, and a player costs less than $150.
The differences in quality as described aren't blowing me away, and I love upgrades in technology. The improvements I'm reading sound much like some digital camera reviews where they describe the difference between 8 megapixel and 3 megapixel, which unless you're blowing up to side-of-a-building size, or doing mega-cropping isn't noticeable to the casual consumer.
I posted on this yesterday. I guess I haven't changed my mind, I'll go and look for a demo somewhere where they've got it set up correctly (heh, good luck with that!), but this is going to be a non-starter for a while.
In the meantime, to the industry, please:
- TrueHD
- HDTV
- HD-DVD
- 720i/720p/1080i/1080p
- Do
l by/Dolby
Digital 5.1/7.1 Surround - DD+
- VHS
- HD-A1/(and it's
snazzier cousin HD-XA1)
- D-VHS HD
- HDMI
- ICT
- Component
outs
For the record, I thought I was up to speed and I had to look up a couple of these. Sigh.You make a most excellent point. I find it more likely than not when I'm at someone's house, they have a first-generation HDTV (720p), and they have it all out of whack in how it's set up. Typically (and this is where it really gets weird) they have become SO adapted to the distortion that if and when I correct it for them, they are uncomfortable with the undistorted pictures, and want it switched back! OMG!
And this is all further compounded by the mostly inferior quality of anything claiming to be "high-def" for the sake of selling product, for example, Dish, Echo, Comcast, etc., all boast some flavor of "digital", with hints and sometimes outright bogus claims of HD too. But in the final anaylsis, lots of it looks not so great, and when the consumers starts stretching it and skewing it trying to get the "HD" out their no-bang-for-the-buck investment, it is most surreal.
Just shoot me now.
I bought a DVD player early on, partly because I knew it was standard mpeg2, and there were DVD-ROMS becoming available (but I didn't know about DRM then). I suspect there are many other early tech. adopters here. I will not be buying HD-DVD until the DRM is overcome. I wonder where the rest of slashdot is on this.
Perhaps a slashdot poll is needed.
I will buy HD-DVD/Bluray:
1) As soon as one of them is sold.
2) When one of these formats wins
3) When the DRM is removed or overcome
4) When the price drops
5) When the HDDVD-ROM/RW is available.
6) 1-5
7) When Hell exists and is frozen
This XMas, Niner Domestic and I treated ourselves to a Samsung DLP 50" 720p rear-projection TV.
This replaced the 27" JVC CRT we'd had for well on 13 years.
We have a JVC DVD player that will output 480p (aka "progressive scan") and we updated our digital cable box to the HD-capable + built in DVR box provided by the cable company (Cogeco) with an upgrade to HD service.
And for grins, I picked up a calibration DVD (Digital Video Essentials) to set the screen settings on the TV. I wasn't able to get them reference-perfect, but got pretty close.
The old CRT TV had a really good tube for its size, so the primary benefits would be the bigger screen size, the increased resolution on DVDs (480p vs 480i) and the occasional HD broadcast (720p vs 480i).
We're running component inputs switched through the sound system, but I hooked up the SVideo cables in parallel for debugging and comparison purposes.
My take on it is this:
1) DVDs are much nicer in 480p full widescreen than in 480i over SVideo. An SVideo signal blown up that big starts to show pixelization and other scaling artifacts. 480p adds enough extra information to eliminate most artifacts and lets you concentrate on the movie. Superbit transfers that increase picture bitrate at the expense of extra fluff are the best.
2) Standard TV depends a lot on the quality of the source material. Stuff filmed with a 480i NTSC camera is a little blocky, and sometimes (like on animated shows like the Simpsons) you can see visible ringing. It's not horrible, but it is there.
3) HD TV also depends a lot on the source material, and a LOT of "HD" is really upconverted NTSC stuff; most network TV in particular. Quality is a little bit better than standard TV (I assume the networks have better upconverters than I do) but you can still tell that you're looking at an upconverted NTSC signal. Sometimes, I'm pretty sure that "HD" movies, as shown on "Movie Network HD" are 480p DVD signals upconverted.
4) But real HD, shot with a real HD signal, is INCREDIBLE. Like, WOW, is that ever pretty. Amazingly, PBS-HD usually has the best/most real HD content, with the sports networks coming in second. Watching the Super Bowl in HD was just amazing, and to my mind, justified the purchase.
Summing up, on my system, I rate standard TV as "acceptable" (the increased picture size is slightly offset by reduced quality, with the size increase winning out by a noze) DVD is "good" to "very good" depending on the bitrate of the transfer (the big win is getting a good quality picture all the way out to the borders of the screen) and real HD signals are "outstanding".
Now, assume that somebody dropped a free HD-DVD player on me. Would I go out and re-purchase all my current flicks in HD?
I suspect not - there's a real step up in quality on a real HD signal when compared to a 480p signal; it's totally there. But that's not enough for me to go out and re-spend all that money. But I *would* get all my new purchases in HD, for sure.
How about early adopting? No bloody way - not until the industry sorts out which format is the standard, and until DRM is eliminated. The pain of choosing the wrong standard and having to deal with brain-dead DRM greatly exceeds the happiness of getting real HD content.
DG
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