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Topic: My Blu-Ray Experience
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Paul Adsett
Film God
Posts: 5003
From: USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted July 21, 2009 06:46 PM
Hi Rob,
I can't honestly say that I have been unduly distracted by motion judder on Blu-ray, but I have only viewed a handful of films so far. I can't remember seeing any motion judder on South Pacific , but I did notice it on some scenes in Pinnochio and yes, I would agree that it was much more apparent than on super 8 film. I have read that some of the latest video projectors can do 'frame interpolation' where the on board computer looks at the last and next frame and fills in an extra interpolated frame to smooth out the panning motion.
The more objectionable Blu -ray problem for me right now, is the really terrible catalog of available Blu-Ray films, which seem to be mainly adolescent junk - certainly not worth buying. So few really great titles - where is ' Singin in the Rain' or ' Meet Me in St. Louis'.?
I have a feeling my Blu-Ray library is going to be pretty thin. ![[Frown]](frown.gif)
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The best of all worlds- 8mm, super 8mm, 9.5mm, and HD Digital Projection,
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Paul Adsett
Film God
Posts: 5003
From: USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted July 24, 2009 06:40 PM
Yes, the Ealing classics would be great Chris, but as you say, don't hold your breath. Right now, Blu-Ray is no threat at all to DVD in terms of classic film collecting. If anything, Blu-rays presence in stores around here seems to be decreasing, and you have to conclude that it will never get close to the market sales occupied by DVD. Except for a sprinkling of a few good titles, Blu-ray seems destined to just be a source for the latest movies showing at the theaters. I think this is a really bad marketing philosophy by the studios, because most serious film collectors will chose to just stay with DVD. Fortunately, there is some good news in terms of the Disney releases and some of the Fox musicals, but I doubt that we will ever see a whole lot of films from Hollywood's golden age getting to BD.
Don't get me wrong, I love the quality of blu-ray discs, but BD is a bit of a wasteland after the abundance of great film titles on DVD.
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The best of all worlds- 8mm, super 8mm, 9.5mm, and HD Digital Projection,
Elmo GS1200 f1.0 2-blade
Eumig S938 Stereo f1.0 Ektar
Panasonic PT-AE4000U digital pj
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Rob Young.
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1633
From: Cheshire, U.K.
Registered: Dec 2003
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posted July 27, 2009 10:27 AM
Interesting article / discussion here on frame interpolation;
http://www.projectorcentral.com/frame_interpolation.htm
A recent article in UK publication Home Cinema Choice also discusses a new projector from Optoma which uses their new frame interpolation; the author's opinion is that it suffers the same fate, making films look more like video and less natural.
Interesting, as there clearly is an issue with motion judder at 24Hz, else why bother trying to "fix" it. However, seems that unless your wallet is bottomless the new technology used to address it in domestic video projectors isn't quite right yet, certainly for movies.
Paul, I agree with you on classic titles not appearing fast enough. Whilst it is good to have all new releases on BD, there is a real shortage of back catalogue films. I wonder if distributors are wary of realeasing older films on BD as so much work is required to get them right and when they aren't right the critiscism can be so scathing that it leaves a release dead in the water. Especially in the present economic climate, maybe they just think it better to stick with the DVD release and not invest in work / time to produce a good BD version.
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Paul Adsett
Film God
Posts: 5003
From: USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted August 10, 2009 04:34 PM
Steve, that's great news about The Wizard of Oz and North by Northwest'. I have not seen them yet in any stores here in Orlando, but those are exactly the kind of films which may give Blu-ray sales a much needed boost, and I shall certainly purchase both of them.
Unfortunately, the presence of Blu-ray discs in stores here in Orlando continues to decline while DVD is thriving. Blockbuster have now cut back their BD display to a meagre 8 rows of shelves with a total of about 40 titles only, and Target have relegated their remaining BD's to a lonely corner section. Borders book store no longer stocks BD's except for a handful of the very latest releases. You have to get the impression that BD is really not doing very well, and I hate to say it, but my feeling now is that BD will never become truly mainstream like DVD, and will be relegated to a niche market like laserdiscs were. This is probably not suprising, since it seems most people cannot see any difference between DVD and Blu-ray on their TV's, unless they are using video projectors on screens above 100 inches (many BD's I have viewed on my VP don't seem to be any improvement over DVD'S!) So the masses are perfectly happy with DVD and have zero motivation to spend a couple of hundred dollars on a BD player and $35.00 a pop for BD movies, when the same movie can be got at half the price or less on DVD. I think things could have been different if Blu-ray had been launched with inexpensive players and a mouth watering catalogue of restored Classic movies, worthy of 1080p, instead of the forgettable titles that they started out with.
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The best of all worlds- 8mm, super 8mm, 9.5mm, and HD Digital Projection,
Elmo GS1200 f1.0 2-blade
Eumig S938 Stereo f1.0 Ektar
Panasonic PT-AE4000U digital pj
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Rob Young.
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1633
From: Cheshire, U.K.
Registered: Dec 2003
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posted August 25, 2009 06:01 AM
Paul, I think there are two ways of looking at this.
Do you remember in the early days of DVD when certain titles were released with elaborate special features (the Matrix springs to mind which included a feature that would take you off into behind the scenes sections as the film was playing). Certain DVD players just refused to play these discs correctly and created quite a wave of bad feeling amongst early adopters of the format.
I remember My £400 Panasonic at the time would totally lock-up when ever I tried to play Pink Floyd's The Wall!!
Personally, I'm not fussed about the features really, but they prevented proper playback of the movie itself.
Point is, there was nothing you could do except buy a new player . At least now, if and when we experience play back issues with Blu-ray, hopefully a firmware upgrade will fix it.
Out of my 20 or so Blu-ray discs I've experienced one so far (Wall-E) where the DTS soundtrack would just disapper half way through. Pioneer's advice was a firmware upgrade. If you visit the manufacturer's web site, you should find a list of recent upgrades available and what they do.
You can burn a CD of the upgrades yourself if you have the right software or, certainly in my case, Pioneer were very helpful and sent out a free CD with upgrades the next day. All you do is pop it in and let it do it's stuff for half an hour or so; so no need to be a computer geek!
But, a word of warning! You have to make VERY sure that the upgrade process isn't interupted (heaven forbid a power cut half way through it) or you can "brick" the player...in other words literally turn it into a useless brick!
If you have a profile 2.0 player, you should be able to connect it directly to the internet and do the upgrade that way. HD-DVD was the same, however, I had a Toshiba that needed upgrading (wouldn't run at 24fps) and plugged it into the internet as instructed by Toshiba. The upgrade all seemed to go well, but when I plugged it back into the projector it had yellow lines all over the image. I rang Toshiba and they were very helpful, calmly told me I had done nothing wrong but that the player was "bricked"...broken and that they would send me a new one!!!
I asked whether or not there was some way to restore it to it's factory settings and they told me no way...it was now useless ![[Confused]](confused.gif)
Two days later a courier arrived and swapped it for a brand new one together with a CD to upgrade it!
So on the one hand, I think the ability to upgrade the firmware is really future proofing your machine, but on the other hand just be careful when you do it ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
On a different note, I have just seen my first real "duffer" Blu-ray. I bought my better half Dirty Dancing and the picture is a mess of jaggy edges...one of the very things HD is supposed to be devoid of...it's rubbish and obviously a problem in the master source .
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It is just not possible to get the same look, especially when watching classic B&W films. You can of course make adjustments that give a more sympathetic look, but it's never the same. So a compromise has to be made and I take solace that i simply would not be able to or afford to see these films at home on the big screen otherwise. The look of video projection is still light years better than what you would get on a large screen LCD/Plasma, and does give you the same feeling of being at a cinema at home, even without the whirling sound of a projector, which lets face it, you never hear at the cinema. 
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
and replace our present camcorder with a Panasonic HD version. I now own a few Blu-ray discs "How The West Was One" is the latest so will make a move hopefully soon. ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
You have to conclude that this kind of thing is going to turn off a lot of people from BD.
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