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Best (and Worst) High-Def Discs of 2006

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the buyer-beware dept.

An anonymous reader writes "High-Def Digest has released their first annual 'Best (and Worst) of the Year' list of movies released on HD DVD and/or Blu-ray. Not surprisingly, the 'best' list is heavy on superheroes. Superman, Batman, and the Hulk all made the list. Not a bad cheat sheet for those of us with a Blu-ray capable PS3 or an XBox 360 HD DVD add-on on our Christmas lists."

10 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. I know this'll burn karma... by DarkHelmet · · Score: 4, Interesting
    But what would be even nicer than having a list of nice HD movies, how about a nice guide of HD sets that accept 1080p via composite input or VGA input?

    After all, what good is having a 360 HD drive when you're only going to be watching the stuff at 720p or 1080i anyhow?

    Anyone?

    --
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    1. Re:I know this'll burn karma... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      1080p transmission is a farce when you're dealing with movies. There is basically no difference between transmitting in 1080i vs 1080p when viewing content at or below 30 frames/second.

      When talking about high def tv's, you're mostly talking about progressive displays (plasma, lcd, dlp, lcos, etc...) and in the US those displays are running at 60hz or 60 frames per second. Movies on the other hand are shot and encoded at 24fps. Now both an hd-dvd player and a blu-ray player, whether by component, dvi or hdmi are transmitting data to your tv at 60 fps. 1080i sends half the image on cycle 1 and half the image on cycle 2, your tv deinterlaces the image fields and shows you a progressive image for 2 frames. 1080p on the other hand sends the whole image on cycle 1, and nothing on cycle 2, and shows the progressive image for 2 frames as well. When you put down $1000 for a 1080p player, you've just paid $500 extra for a marketing term and the belief that movies will ever be shot at 60fps in the forseeable future.

      Alot of people will probably chime in and start screaming about interlace artifacts right now. The only way you get interlace artifacts on a progressive tv, is if the source material was shot as interlaced, for example http://thewebfairy.com/911/presentation/artifact.h tm, but both hd-dvd and blu-ray, and presumably network tv are all shot in a progressive format, so your deinterlacer is reassembling the same image you'd see over 1080p.

    2. Re:I know this'll burn karma... by The-Bus · · Score: 4, Informative

      I have no mod points, so I can only respond and say you're right. The source material of HD DVDs and Blu-Ray discs is 1080P. If there's an exception, you'd note it on the back of the case. From what I understand, if the source material is 1080P but your TV is 1080i, you most likely won't see any difference unless you have a very poor deinterlacer.

      Even if your TV is 720P, you'll still see a difference between regular broadcast / DVD and HD discs. Some people (myself included) claim to see a difference between HD discs and HD broadcast; for me, this is mostly due to HD DVDs having none of the compression artifacts and color banding you find occasionally on your HD broadcast.

      --

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    3. Re:I know this'll burn karma... by matt328 · · Score: 5, Informative

      It all depends what FPS the content was created at. If you're talking video games, its 'content' is created procedurally by a GPU at as many FPS as it can crank out. If you've got a movie that was shot at 30 FPS, viewing it at 60 FPS will cause each source frame to be displayed on the tv for 2 frames (or cycles, or whatever you want to call it). Even though the FPS on a tv is higher, it depends on the FPS of the content you're displaying.

      An example would be if in one frame of a 30 FPS source, my hand is on the left side of your screen. My hand moves so quickly to the right so that in the next frame it appears on the right side of the screen. So one frame has my hand at the left, then the very next has my hand at the right. Even if you view it at 100000 FPS (impossible, I know, but stay with me) there would be 50000 frames showing my hand at the left, followed by 50000 frames with my hand at the right. Even though you raise the FPS, there are still no frames that exist with my hand anywhere in between left and right. Unless 60 FPS TVs are able to interpolate between the two, there's just nothing available to show during the 'extra' frame so it stays the same.

      When it comes down to it, a movie is still a finite amount of pictures shown in rapid succession (mainly 30 of them per second). Even though a TV can be capable of displaying twice that many in a second, it's not capable of 'making stuff up' to show you every other frame. So I guess I'm trying to say its the content, not the TV that determines the 'smoothness'.

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  2. Re:If that's the best, they're in trouble. by Mark+Maughan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Batman Begins was arguably the best superhero movie ever.

    Hulk was a Shakespearian, father-son conflict, tragedy shot comic book panel style. The only reason people thought it was awful was because they came wanting to see some piece of shit like Fantastic 4 and instead got a more thoughtful, artistic masterpiece. It was a highbrow movie about lowbrow subject matter.

  3. Re:They all look the same... by iainl · · Score: 4, Insightful

    VHS only doesn't have DRM because the D stands for Digital, anyway. The Analogue Rights Management of Macrovision is (if anything) worse, because it's actually affecting picture quality, unlike on a DVD or HD-DVD where it's invisible on a working machine.

    --
    "I Know You Are But What Am I?"
  4. They might be good HD by clickety6 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But most of these aren't good films.

    Sorry, but I'd rather watch a good film with a good plot and good acting on VHS any day over a whizz-bang technical film with crappy pretty-boy/barbie-girl actors and a script written by a committee...

    I'll pass on this one

    --
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  5. What happened to movies? by hsa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What happened to movies themselves. I honestly couldn't care less if I get video commentary with my HD movie or not. I watch movies for movies sake. Extras are something I watch if I liked the movie and have extra time to see how it was made. They are worth nothing if the movie sucks.

    The worst movies in list are lacking in extra HD content. So what? Couldn't care less. The winning movies have all sorts of cool extra content, but it still doesn't make the movie good. I will never buy World Trade Centre, even if had best extras and good transfer.

    Video quality and soundtrack are the only things I care about. Please remove the extras and put these in with higher quality.

  6. HD DVD Advert by dimer0 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Man, that page sure makes it seem that Blu-Ray sucks ass. I'm not sure what they based their selections off of...

    If you want some better lists to work form, the guys over at avsforum are a much better information source, if you ask me:

    HD DVD Picture Quality Tiers List

    Blu-Ray Picture Quality Tiers List

  7. Re:If that's the best, they're in trouble. by clickclickdrone · · Score: 4, Funny
    Hulk was a Shakespearian, father-son conflict
    I tried to get Hulk via P2P to see if it was as bad as everyone said but it turned out to be a renamed porn movie file with some seriously hot action. I was happy.
    --
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