Anyone else underwhelmed by BluRay?

[ptran]

How much better HD looks depends entirely on the size and resolution of your display. TV CRT's don't have very good resolution, even those advertised as "1080i", which would just be their scan rate and not their resolving power. And from normal (~8-ft) viewing distances, you'll want at least a 46" 16:9 diagonal screen (52" diagonal for 4:3).

Generally, if your screen is so large that DVD looks blurry on it, then HD will look great.

Phat

 

[Audioholics]

Fifth Element looks almost identical to the Superbit version I have. Color is still improved noticably on the BD versions though.

You should watch them side by side or using two inputs on your TV - the BD version is filled with grain and film damage while the Superbit is a pristine transfer. That is one of the worst BD discs ever produced - if only because the Superbit is known as such a reference piece. They should really be ashamed over that disc.

 

[Seth=L]

You should watch them side by side or using two inputs on your TV - the BD version is filled with grain and film damage while the Superbit is a pristine transfer. That is one of the worst BD discs ever produced - if only because the Superbit is known as such a reference piece. They should really be ashamed over that disc.

I love Fifth Element on Superbit, that is one good reason why I was so dissapointed with the Blu-ray release.

 

[j_garcia]

I did notice the grain in the BD version. Same thing with Sleepy Hollow, which we did check some scenes side by side. I actually prefer the SD version of Sleepy Hollow...except that the BD has a full bitrate DTS track.

 

[darien87]

So besides, The Prestige and Kindgom of Heaven, which Blu-Ray discs have good picture quality?

It sounds like I need to wait a while before buying any discs to make sure they're mastered correctly.

 

[j_garcia]

OK, so I threw all of my BDs in and watched their bitrates and found something that likely relates to why some of the films aren't as good looking, and it wasn't simply MPEG2 that is to blame. I noticed that on promo material, they were using MPEG2, but at high bitrates and it looks quite impressive, for the movies that don't look quite as good, the bitrates are lower for video. For the ones that look good, they are pretty much up there at 30+Mbps while the less good looking ones average 20Mbps or less.

Grain was mentioned and I think that is more an artifact of the transfer as much as anything, who knows. These were some of the first films they did this with, so who knows what exactly the problems may have been. Now, with Sleepy Hollow, I see a LOT of grain also, though only in certain scenes, and I was wondering if this was some kind of artifacting from something that was done during the transfer or the processing that brought this out, because it seemed mainly on clearly digitally enhanced background scenes only. I also thought that maybe this is really just the fact that BD is actually a bit too good at showing the flaws of the film, sort of like when you have a great audio recording, you the flaws are far more glaring than if you didn't have such good recording/mastering. Just my .02

 

[darien87]

I bought Superman Returns, (even though I didn't really like the movie), and the picture looks good on that one. I'll have to check out what the bit rate is on that one and compare it to Ultraviolet and House of flying daggers.

 

[j_garcia]

I liked Superman Returns, but not enough to buy it. HOFD looks soft, but so does the SD DVD. The color was the main thing, and the lossless track (that I can't hear yet...) So far the best looking BD I have is Nine Inch Nails Beside You In Time it is AVC though, not Mpeg2 or VC-1.

 

[darien87]

OK, so I threw all of my BDs in and watched their bitrates and found something that likely relates to why some of the films aren't as good looking, and it wasn't simply MPEG2 that is to blame. I noticed that on promo material, they were using MPEG2, but at high bitrates and it looks quite impressive, for the movies that don't look quite as good, the bitrates are lower for video. For the ones that look good, they are pretty much up there at 30+Mbps while the less good looking ones average 20Mbps or less.

I rented Kingdom of Heaven last night, and my PS3 was telling me that it was in the 20Mbps range, even dropping down into the teens at times. Isn't Kingdom of Heaven supposed to be one of the best discs for picture? My copy of Ultraviolet was reading pretty much the same.

For the hell of it, I put in a standard DVD and that one said about 6Mbps.

 

[j_garcia]

The bitrate depends on what is being displayed really, but I noticed with the Mpeg 2 movies, it was dropping down to the teens regularly, never getting above the low 20s generally or so like the better titles I've seen (didn't check the whole duration of each of the movies). I just picked up Corpse Bride and Casino Royale so I will check those two out tonight.

Rented it where? Netflix?

 

[BMXTRIX]

A good idea is to check out websites that specifically review HD discs. www.highdefdigest.com has a lot of very serious reviews for both formats and offers up forums specifically to discuss the discs from either camp. No BS or favoritism really present on the site so if you are a fanboy for one side or the other you aren't going to be happy with how even handed they are with both formats. But, their forums offer a fun 'smackdown' area designed pretty much for the fanboy in all of us.

If you really want to get the most out of your Blu-ray player then it is vital that you hook it up properly and ensure that you set your video output properly. With the PS3 this means using 1080p with a 10880p display, or setting the video output to 1080i. The PS3 has a few 'bugs' that forces it to downcovert HD video to 480p if you don't set the video output to 1080i or 1080p.

Recommended viewing: Tears of the Sun, World Trade Center, Mission Impossible III, Happy Feet.

It is important to NOT use many of the early releases, most notably HOFD or TFE as these are very well known to be poorly mastered discs and not reflective of what the format can deliver.

It is important, IMO, to view some of the animated flicks because it is a much better representation of what HD formats will truly be delivering as they mature more fully. Both sides really have nearly identical video playback capabilities so quality you see is more a limit of how well the encoding is done these days. I suspect that as HD digital movie cameras improve that we will see many more grain-free transfers made to video and the qualiity of live action match up to animation in short order.

I personally can't wait to see Cars. Or more honestly, someday to see The Incredibles or Nemo. Those should just be phenomenal!

EDIT: I have now read in S&V Magazine that THE Blu-ray player to buy is the PS3. It has since been repeated by Home Theater Magazine which says the PS3 looks identical in quality to the Pioneer Elite player... I have also heard from a couple of reputable sources the exact same thing: PS3 matches the highest quality sources out there for Blu-ray playback.

 

[j_garcia]

OK, checked out The Corpse Bride and Casino Royale last night (both bought based on high def digest reviews for video quality). Corpse Bride uses a limited pallet for much of the movie, so the bitrate is relatively low at times somewhere in the teens, but any time there is a lot of activity on screen, it was spiking up to 25-30Mbps. Casino Royale had the highest rates I've seen so far, with it up at 39Mbps and an average of about 25Mbps, and that was just in the opening scene.

Cars is definitely on my wish list, June isn't that far off.... But I really can't wait for them to put out Finding Nemo and The Incredibles.

 

[darien87]

The bitrate depends on what is being displayed really, but I noticed with the Mpeg 2 movies, it was dropping down to the teens regularly, never getting above the low 20s generally or so like the better titles I've seen (didn't check the whole duration of each of the movies). I just picked up Corpse Bride and Casino Royale so I will check those two out tonight.

Rented it where? Netflix?

I used to do Netflix, but now I do Blockbuster.

 

[darien87]

OK, checked out The Corpse Bride and Casino Royale last night (both bought based on high def digest reviews for video quality). Corpse Bride uses a limited pallet for much of the movie, so the bitrate is relatively low at times somewhere in the teens, but any time there is a lot of activity on screen, it was spiking up to 25-30Mbps. Casino Royale had the highest rates I've seen so far, with it up at 39Mbps and an average of about 25Mbps, and that was just in the opening scene.

Cars is definitely on my wish list, June isn't that far off.... But I really can't wait for them to put out Finding Nemo and The Incredibles.

Cool. Just yesterday I received Kingdom of Heaven, Stealth, X-Men 3, Tears of the Sun and Blackhawk Down based on the HiDef Digest reviews. I haven't watched them yet.

Casino Royale was a decent flick. I don't know if I liked it enough to buy the BD. But based on your bitrate J, I just might have to give it a buy.

Yeah, I can't wait for The Incredibles and Nemo either. What the hell's taking Disney so long?!?!?

 

[darien87]

If you really want to get the most out of your Blu-ray player then it is vital that you hook it up properly and ensure that you set your video output properly. With the PS3 this means using 1080p with a 10880p display, or setting the video output to 1080i. The PS3 has a few 'bugs' that forces it to downcovert HD video to 480p if you don't set the video output to 1080i or 1080p.

Recommended viewing: Tears of the Sun, World Trade Center, Mission Impossible III, Happy Feet.

EDIT: I have now read in S&V Magazine that THE Blu-ray player to buy is the PS3. It has since been repeated by Home Theater Magazine which says the PS3 looks identical in quality to the Pioneer Elite player... I have also heard from a couple of reputable sources the exact same thing: PS3 matches the highest quality sources out there for Blu-ray playback.

Speaking of the video connection; that's another thing about Sony that pisses me off. I had a perfectly good Acoustic Research component video cable laying around that I had planned to use. But NNNOOOO you have to use their specific cable because of the funky HDMI-like connection on the PS3 side. I just ended up buying the Sony cable, for $15 or so bucks, but the individual cables are pretty thin. I've seen that Monster makes their own cable, but Monster sucks and the cable doesn't look any thicker than the Sony one.

Does anyone know of a better video cable for the PS3 than the Sony one, that isn't TOTALLY overpriced like the Monster one?

At least I did end up getting a good Blu-ray player according to the reviews you mentioned above.

 

[j_garcia]

I haven't seen Casino Royale; bought it blind based on the HDD review. My only nit pick is that the DD track is a standard 448K track, not even 640K, since I can't listen to the lossless with no HDMI on my receiver... Going to pick up the M:I set also, since I don't own any of them.

There is nothing wrong with the Sony component cable. I used the one from my PS2 and it worked quite well at 720p/1080i. I wouldn't spend any serious money on cables, I'd just save for a new display that has HDMI. I got my HDMI -> DVI cable for $21 shipped from BlueJeans. On my set, the main difference with HDMI was probably color depth.

Blockbuster online or in store? Hollywood said they would start having BD rentals in store soon, but haven't checked in a few weeks.

 

[darien87]

I haven't seen Casino Royale; bought it blind based on the HDD review. My only nit pick is that the DD track is a standard 448K track, not even 640K, since I can't listen to the lossless with no HDMI on my receiver... Going to pick up the M:I set also, since I don't own any of them.

There is nothing wrong with the Sony component cable. I used the one from my PS2 and it worked quite well at 720p/1080i. I wouldn't spend any serious money on cables, I'd just save for a new display that has HDMI. I got my HDMI -> DVI cable for $21 shipped from BlueJeans. On my set, the main difference with HDMI was probably color depth.

Blockbuster online or in store? Hollywood said they would start having BD rentals in store soon, but haven't checked in a few weeks.

I do the Blockbuster online thing. I like it better than Netflix because I can return in-store. Plus I have the freedom of using the in-store returns to rent PS 3 games. My only complaint is that once in a while it takes a movie more than 1 day to get to me. Netflix is literally down the street from me.

My TV has 1 DVI input. Which is what my Panasonic S77 is hooked up to, (HDMI to DVI cable from Radio Shack). If Sony hadn't have been ***** and made their own stupid cable, I would have just switched out the cable from my S77. Man I hate Sony. What's funny is that I work at a label company, and Sony is one of my clients. I print their damn labels all day long.

 

[j_garcia]

I think the main reason why they did a proprietary connector is more to save space than anything, since that one connection has both audio and video on it. There is no way they would ever have fit a component connection on the slim PS2

 

[BMXTRIX]

Does anyone know of a better video cable for the PS3 than the Sony one, that isn't TOTALLY overpriced like the Monster one?

I'm not sure, but you can pick up the Monster one on eBay shipped to your door for 25 bucks which isn't horrendous...

http://cgi.ebay.com/Monster-Cable-G...092360593QQcategoryZ21187QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Keep in mind that Monser Cables usually are very good cables - just overpriced for the most part. Yet, if I was going with some proprietary connection like this and wanted a very good cable I would trust them to deliver more than Sony or most other brands.

FYI: I use a generic cable that I picked up at Circuit City for my PS3... it seems to work fine even though I had to extend it to about 50 feet.

 

[darien87]

Oh man, I'm a shmuck. Duh, I can still use the HDMI out on the PS3. I'll just use that HDMI-to-DVI cable I already have and just switch my S77 to component video.