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First Blu-ray Disc Reviews Posted Online
An anonymous reader writes "With the first Blu-ray player and discs officially making their market debuts tomorrow, High-Def DVD Digest has posted the first reviews of three of the first Blu-ray discs -- The Fifth Element, 50 First Dates, and xXx. So what's the verdict? So far, in terms of video quality, the results seem to be mixed: standard DVD fave 'Fifth Element' underwhelmed ('just
not the best HD I've seen'); likewise, 'xXx,' was a disappointment ('up close just looks like a messed-up bunch of dots'). Somewhat surprisingly, it's '50 First Dates' that ranked highest of the three in video quality ('holds
its own with the best high-definition transfers out there')."
So exactly how are HD videos (blu-ray, or HD) going to capture the hearts and imaginations of the buying public with this kind of debut? Ostensibly (you would think) the best and brightest would be selected for their ability to shine and put the best face on an already murky new format battle.
It's an interesting task, convincing Mom and Dad, friends, etc., this is the latest and greatest thing... "no, no, just wait, you'll SEE the difference in the next scene... just let me pause it on this one frame, THERE!... see how clear the pattern is on Drew Barrymore's shirt!"
I've seen HD from comcast. I've seen HD demo'ed in Circuit City (when they FINALLY got some source). My experience and subjective opinion is that what is being delivered is being delivered with unacceptable compromise, whether it be to rush to market, or just shoddy quality, it doesn't matter. I've seen compression artifacts, I've seen jittery playback. I'm not "getting" it.
This kind of rollout will underwhelm the public, especially at the rollout prices. The only thing keeping this from dying on the vine is the digital mandate to convert to digital, and the tide of HDTVs only requiring customers to buy in.
> http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/xxx.html
you gotta wonder how many porn filters will block that third link...
Nathan Friedly
Seriously, 5th Element was shot on film, and the other two I don't know about, but aren't there any well-known digital productions which would transfer cleanly? How pristine are the masters for 5th Element by now?
And to agree with the earlier poster: Whoever's greenlighting chick films like "50 first dates" and "Phantom of the Opera" for testdriving a new medium needs a new job, preferably selling hot dogs on a street corner, to get an idea of what a market actually asks for.
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
Well... that's sort of what it is, yes? :-\
I didn't see these in the theatre, I didn't rent them when they came out on DVD, and I CERTAINLY don't want them in my permanent collection.
What makes Hollywood think I'm going to want them now, just because they are high def?
Right after I spend around $1000.00 on 50 First Dates. Puh-Leaze!
My humor is probably your flamebait
After comparing two movies that are, by today's youthful standards, quite old, with a movie that was produced less than two years ago, the newest movie has the best picture quality!
Stay tuned for tomorrow, when we'll have the following headline:
"X3 has better picture quality than XMen and XMen2!"
We can expect Blu Ray releases of Istar and Gigli any day now. Actually, a quick Google shows that the real problem may be that the Sony movie catalog is almost completely dreck, Princess Bride excepted. If what Sony owns is crap, crap is what will be released first on Blu Ray.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
The 5th Element review that the news post referenced paints an entirely different picture than "it completely underwhelmed". The review says it was still a damn good picture, it just literally was NOT the best HD could be. That can easily be explained since the original was film, not digital. Other than that? Its still HD, which is a whole lot better than standard definition. I havent read the other two reviews yet, but it doesnt seem like Blu-Ray really flopped like this post makes it sound like it did...
I can't help but hear these words in my head:
"Get it now on DVD and PSP."
And we know how well that turned out (PS What?).
And why did something so lame as XXX make it to Blu Ray? Why not something good, oh, say the first Harry Potter Movie. The Battlestar Galactica Mini-Series (not the tv series). Star Wars? T3?
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
I find it very hard to stomach these reviewers who are trying to compare the 'picture quality' of Blu-Ray to HD-DVD when the codecs used are exactly the same. Blu-Ray offers the edge on size and maximum bitrate, but it's doubtful that the early titles are going to be taking advantage of it. Any title that did take advantage of the extra space would very logically look better (if the compressionist is not an idiot, anyway). Whether or not anyone would really notice is another debate. You could make a comparison to the acutal players ability to decode and post process the footage as well, but this would require identical MPEG2 or H.264 content to be fed through both format players -- which has not been done either.
So anyway, I guess the gauntlet is down and the proverbial "masses" will decide. Unfortunately they will probably end up doing it based on title availability, brand loyalty, price, and "picture quality" instead of technical merit. All it really means to me is that I have to wait to buy a player until: a) one camp gives in, b) someone makes a dual format player or c) companies start releasing *everything* in both formats.
Somewhat surprisingly, it's '50 First Dates' that ranked highest of the three in video quality
Not surprising, there's no action to speak of, not a lot of motion, etc.. Less movement means less to encode, which means less work to decode.
The Matrix was always the DVD stress-tester of choice, specifically the kung fu scene, because you would really notice the quality of the decoder during the more intense scenes, where every pixel on screen is changing with every frame.
So my question is, is this an issue with the encoding of the discs or an inherent design problem with the discs themselves, perhaps too low a bitrate, or just a cheap shit decoder in the playback device? My money is on the latter.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
First for the VHS. Then the DVD, then the Directors cut. Now the Blu-Ray version?
At least most of hollywood's current movies don't outlast the media that they're released on. Gigli Blu-ray? I don't think so.
I agree, both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are severely underwhelming, for some reason.
...)
... "It's not any faster!".
This is quite surprising to me - I was one of the first people to buy an Apple II+, bought one of the first RCA VCR models (all my friends said buy Beta, but I was working shift
It's just that, as my son showed me this past week, the only thing that really seems to matter is Net speed. To explain, he had an iMac that I gave him when he was 7 - he's now 15 - and we had crammed RAM in but we finally couldn't upgrade any more, and things weren't working. So, we went and bought him a Mac mini.
First thing he said, after a friend helped him set up Firefox and Adblock and NoScript was
I said, look all the images resolve faster, the graphics on your new flatscreen Samsung panel are at higher res, but in the end, we're still using the same speed of cable modem, and the only thing that would change that would be if we went to Gigapop Internet.
Same thing with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD - just no need for them. Most people don't have 1080p HDTVs that are 50 inches or bigger. Most games won't need them. None of the fun ones that he wants to play will.
So, the revolution in data storage (Blu-Ray or HD-DVD) dies with a whimper, because there's nothing behind the Mask.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
There may be a big problem looming for Hollywood. If you transfer 35MM film to 1080p, the film grain often shows up. Compressing all that useless film grain noise, which has no frame to frame coherence, will use up a big fraction of the data capacity. It will also mess up the motion compression, which usually results in annoying jaggies. So it's probably necessary to filter out at least some of the film grain. But if you filter out the film grain, you lose resolution.
The reviews of the new Blu-ray disks ("the picture looks too soft and flat") indicates that there's probably too much filtering.
Somewhere in LA, there are probably members of SMTPE struggling with this, trying to figure out the right tradeoffs between resolution loss and compression overload when converting existing films.
In a period of 2 years DVD went from geek toy(97) to mass market adoption(99). Fueled by the features, quality, price, and convenience of the discs. The falling prices of the hardware players helped a lot too.
I'm a early adopter with an HD setup, but I have no interest in Blue-Ray or HD-DVD at the moment. I'm sure in a couple years I will pick one (probably when Netflix chooses a technology), but right now regular DVD's using an upconverting 1080i DVD player and an HDMI cable look and sound great for me. The upconverting setup was only $250 a year ago, and it makes my existing DVD's look great.
What is the motivation for these HD formats from a user perspective? Higher priced players, high priced discs, and limited selection. What is the consumer paying for? A little bit better pictured quality is not going to motivate people to switch.
There needs to be something more for the average consumer to consider using any of these formats. Looking at the audio world, there have been hi-def audio formats out for quite some time with little success. There needs to be something more besides a quality increase to get people to jump ship.
Most people don't know this but the quality of current Blu-ray titles does not match the quality offered by HD-DVD's for a very simple reason. The couple of Blu-ray titles that have been released so far are all encoded using MPEG-2, while HD-DVD titles are using the more advanced MPEG-4 based VC1 codec.
What is even more frustrating is that Blu-ray titles could have been VC1 encoded. The Blu-ray and HD-DVD standards both support the same set of video codecs. But for some reason the Blu-ray camp decided to encode the first titles using MPEG-2. I don't follow closely enough the format war to know why such a decision has been taken, but I know this is a stupid decision because most non-technical people will have a bad first impression of Blu-ray. It is even more frustrating knowing that Blu-ray titles have the technical potential to look at least as good as HD-DVD titles.
Quality 35mm shot on a good lense, as you get with hollywood movies, is good to somewhere in the realm of 2000-6000 lines of resolution each direction. That's a ball park, of course, since there's no direct correlation to pixels on analogue film, but still. A good negative can resolve about 6000 lines of resolution, the positive shown in theatres is good for about 2000.
35mm has plenty of resolution for a good HD, it just takes doing a good digital transfer. If you want to see an example, get the T2 Extreme Edition DVD and watch it on a modern computer running Windows. The 2nd disc has a HD transfer in WMV9 (VC1) format. They chose an intermediary resolution that's not part of the ATSC spec, 1440 horizontal (the verticle is cropped to fit the aspect ratio of the film). Because the bitrate is only that of DVD, it gets a bit blocky during action sequences but for all that the detail is superb. It is clearly head and shoulders about the DVD version, despite being sourced from film, and an old one at that.
While pure digital movies certianly are easier to get good copies of, since there's no transfer just resampling, it's not that film lacks the rez, it is just that they don't want to invest the time and money in to a good transfer.
I don't think ET sold that many VCRs. The poor little guy had a slow distribution system (kids and their bikes--granted they could fly, but still, those bike baskets don't hold many VCRs, plus ET could have stayed on the office and have left more space for the VCRs, BUT then the bikes couldn't fly then could they?). Anyway, he also was more concerned with constantly trying to report into his home sales office rather than focusing on customer satisfaction. Why the "competition" was so concerned with catching him is beyond me. The only thing he had was the "light finger promotion" deal and the claims that his prices didn't "Ouch".
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
Slow down, I haven't even purchased my HD television yet.
While watching a hockey playoff game a month ago, my buddy paid extra to have HD broadcast straight from the Cable provider (Charter charges for this) and was all proud of his Samsung wide screen LCD/hybrid TV.
To be honest with you, it didn't change the game experience for me that much. Wide screen was nice (got to see a few more dirty hits off the "regular" camera angle)and it wasn't enough for me to justify paying an extra 100-200 dollars for HD capability.
I don't honestly see the reason for the hype. Blu-Ray---Schmoo-Ray. Not worth my money for at least the next 5 years. Talk to me then (if they still make Blu-Ray disks).
I won't be the guy caught with the Hi-Fi system and laserdisc system...again...
--I'd be more interested in smellivision.--
Another reivew, from a Mr. Sony McSonyson, informed me that Blu-Ray provides not only a superior picture quality, but also interfaces directly with my brain to extract my personal preferences. For example, in Star Wars, regardless of which version, Han would always shoot first. In every scene. Also, "Into the Blue" would focus on Jessica Alba not in the ocean, but a kiddie pool filled with baby oil. Also, it was revealed that HD-DVD would kill my dog, leave me sterile, and emit cancer-inducing radiation if viewed for more than 0.18 seconds at a time.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
My experience and subjective opinion is that what is being delivered is being delivered with unacceptable compromise, whether it be to rush to market, or just shoddy quality, it doesn't matter. I've seen compression artifacts, I've seen jittery playback. I'm not "getting" it.
The title of this reply, for those who may have skipped over it, is "Why Digital Isn't Better Than Analog".
Usually that starts into a discussion about how much better analog is at reproduction and why vinyl rocks. That's not where I'm going with this; personally I'll take a CD any day.
The problem is that with digital, you can compress the signal lossfully. This theoretically is an advantage, allowing you to fit, say, 3 TV high-quality TV channels in the bandwidth of 1 old-style SD analog channel.
However, given the choice, everybody seems to prefer to fit in 8 low-quality TV channels instead. Satellite radio, rather than have 50 high-quality stations at 128 or 192 Kbps, would rather have 150 barely-tolerable stations at 64 Kbps.
The reason they think they can do this is that most people can not articulate the difference between the old analog signal and the new, way-over-compressed digital signal. If you ask them with just a couple of minutes exposure, they'll say they are the same. Only people who are very familiar with the technology can say "It's overcompressed".
But I think that even if most people can't articulate why the digital experience is worse than the analog experience, they do have a different experience with this over-compressed content that results in lower immersion, lower enjoyment, and in the long run, less inclination to pay for the experience. In the end they see no reason to jump or even want to go back to analog.
I've done the latter. I took the digital TV deal from Comcast a while back that gave me the basic digital package for just over their analog rates. But a combination of leisurely channel changing (since it has to re-sync with the rarely-sent I frames), visible artefacts even on my bog-standard low-def 28 inch TV, and incredibly sluggish set-top box made go back to analog, and I'm exactly the kind of person who "should" be drooling for digital. I hear they've since fixed the last problem, though I have no evidence of this.
I'd love a good digital experiece. I'd love a digital radio that's actually an improvement over analog radio instead of (to my ears) a slight downgrade since they only use 96Kbps. I'd love good digital TV, but they always jam too many channels down the line. I'd love satellite radio, but again, to my ears they are quite obviously right on the edge of unlistenability. And to those non-techies I've asked, when they wonder what I mean by "isn't this TV/radio just sort of missing some life?", I always get nodding heads, not arguments.
Until the digital entertainment purveyers are willing to actually live up to their quality claims, where digital becomes a consistently superior experience, instead of something that is inferior to analog in inexpressable-but-important ways, digital stuff just isn't going to take off. Digital ought to be better than analog. The potential is there. But it's not being realized.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
In one of his articles he notes that they're still only using MPEG-2, not the other, better codecs. This could easily account for the lack of quality.
Better in comparison to what? MPEG2 4:4:4 and 4:2:2 is still used for studio and satellite. The shows you see on HD sets were high data rate MPEG2 4:2:2 coming over the satellite and later downconverted to 4:2:0 for 8VSB transmission. HBO-HD is MPEG2 on C-Band. It seems to me given a high enough bitrate, MPEG2 will look the same, if not better, as MPEG4 AVC. MPEG4 AVC is "better" because good quality video can be had at a lower bitrate.
I would imaging that since broadcast TV is all MPEG2 based, studios will be using MPEG2 for some time to come. Only consumer satellite companies like DirecTV and Dishnet are using MPEG4 for broadcasting HD. The reason is they want to maximize their bandwidth and still get a decent picture. If you want the "best" picture a person would want to get the network MPEG2 feeds off C-Band.
Therefore, there can not be any quality difference inherent to the formats
Well, maybe not in the formats, but there is a quality difference in the current players. The first Bluray players are supposed to be able to output the disc's native 1080p at 24fps (film is natively 24fps), while the HD-DVD players released so will show a picture converted to 1080i at 30fps. If you had a reallly good TV, you could theoretically get a better result with BluRay, at least until HD-DVD starts releasing 1080p players.
Are we suppose to judge the quality from his words and 200x150 pixel thumbnails?
Right...
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
3 of the worst movies ever made?