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Author
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Topic: Your feelings on HD.
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Rob Young.
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1633
From: Cheshire, U.K.
Registered: Dec 2003
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posted July 16, 2008 07:28 AM
At the risk of bringing up video projection again on a primarily film forum, it would be interesting to know what you chaps think of the quality of HD movies on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.
I'm asking because as most of us are used to watching "real" film, I think we really have something to judge HD stuff next to (from looking around the internet, it seems to me that a lot of other video based forums just become obsessed with rather silly debates such as should the image have grain in it or not...groan ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif) )
Personally, I have been using a bargain HD-DVD player with cheap HD discs and have to say that the image on a 6ft wide screen is stunning in terms of definition; granted the player falls short in some areas such as the level of detail in dark areas of the image (my sturdy 6 year old Sony DVD player has no problem in this respect!!!) and it just refuses to output 24 fps to the projector, so the image can judder a bit sometimes.
But hopefully a good Blu-Ray machine will address these issues and provide more solid HD images (gonna wait till next year for the new batch of players).
What suprises me though is just how quickly you get used to the quality of image. Within minutes of watching a film, I just accept it is a really good, filmic image and it's only when you go back to standard DVD that it suddenly strikes me how poor that can be.
Of all the guests I've had round to watch HD their opinion is pretty much the same; not WOW, OOOH, AWESOME! More like, well...it's really great but I just enjoyed the film!
Nothing wrong with that, but it really convinces me that whilst HD is indeed very good, in reality video projection has only just reached the kind of quality we are all used to on the best film prints; which is fantastic, but what would be such a shame is that having reached this point, Blu-Ray doesn't do well (I think marketing has been a disaster and disc prices are just plain silly) and we're all back to standard def. discs.
I could understand this happening since a lot of people claim not to see any real, significant improvement with HD material compared to upscaled DVD on the size of TV screens generally used at home.
What's your experience of using HD?
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Paul Adsett
Film God
Posts: 5003
From: USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted July 16, 2008 09:22 AM
Hi Rob,
I am not jumping on the Blu Ray bandwagon at this point for several reasons. First, there are still problems with the present batch of stand-alone Blu-Ray players, mainly very long load up times of several minutes. I am hoping that this problem will be resolved on the next batch of players. I know I could buy a PS3, which loads up preety fast, but I will not use a gaming system as the basis of my home theater. Second, the very high cost of the players, around $400-$500. You know they are going to be $200 or less in a year from now, and be better players. Third, the lack of good films on Blu-Ray,it seems to be all aimed at the teenage market, just action, gore, and violence films with very few quality films. As for picture quality I do not feel it is a quantum leap from standard DVD. A lot of HD material looks artificial to me, hard to describe, but too smooth and intense with hard edges. On movies I like to see the natural film grain. With Blu Ray they have smoothed all that out, with a resulting loss of detail.
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Rob Young.
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1633
From: Cheshire, U.K.
Registered: Dec 2003
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posted July 16, 2008 10:10 AM
Yes, Paul, I have to agree with you on the Blu-Ray player front; what a mess for a format that should be so well established by now, although reassuring to know that Mark is so pleased with his new player.
I know what you mean about the way that HD can look artificial, some of the demos I saw before I bought my new gear was pretty dire...but I have to say I was really suprised when I saw demos by proper dealers who know their stuff.
Maybe it has also something to do with the way the projector is set up (it took me a couple of months of tweaking to get it just right for me!) but the biggest improvements for me with HD were not just the obvious improvement in definition, but other advantages.
On a big screen, there is a definite lack of "edge enhancment", you know, the faint black lines you can get around objects on bright backgrounds with standard DVD, and this is a huge bonus in making the movie look more like film since edge-enhancement simply isn't necessary with HD.
Also, I find you sometimes get quite noticable "colour banding" on standard def DVD, where shades of colour (blue skies, for example) don't blend smoothly from one shade to the next, but visably change from one shade to the next with an obvious join.
I know this is being picky, but HD removes all these little annoyances and the result is an image much more like film (if the transfer is good and the projector / TV is set up well).
Grain does seem to be the big debate regarding Blu-Ray at the minute. I have an HD-DVD version of "American Werewolf in London" which is VERY grainy. But the definition and colour is so good that I just ignore it and it is certainly less grain than on say a 16mm print. So personally, I'm not the least bit bothered, but a friend of mine watched it recently and seemed obsessed with "all the grain!!!" I'm sure that had I run a 16mm print with even more grain he would have been perfectly happy, it was simply because it was HD and he somehow expected perfection!
I suppose the irony is that we finally have a format that can capture some of the real texture of film (grain included) and yet the attitude from some seems to be to try and remove it!
I read a view recently on another forum that "it's pointless transfering anything to Blu-Ray unless it was actually shot in HD, which limits suitable material to films made in the last few years".
Good grief! Where do you start with a view like that
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Claus Harding
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1149
From: Washington DC
Registered: Oct 2006
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posted July 16, 2008 06:58 PM
Well, to keep beating the drum a bit :-)...a Playstation 3, through an HDMI connection into (in my case) a 58-inch Panasonic Viera 1080 screen looks about as good as home DVDs will look in the forseeable future. The contrast of the Panasonic, the black level, is superb.
I just enjoyed the restored "Searchers" in all its Vistavision re-timed glory, and today "The Road Warrior" came in, and it, too, looks better than it has any right to (with good film grain, thank you.)
"The Searchers", however, is the one that blows me away. The modified 3-strip cameras and their lenses just give most modern optical developments a run for the money, and the 8-perf negative just makes your jaw drop. Sure, there is now finer film grain to be had, but in terms of almost three-dimentional depth and superior color, this film does Warners proud in terms of their Hi-Def restoration.
"The Godfather" is coming back now, on Blu-Ray, personally color-timed by Coppola and Gordon Willis. Now we are getting to the films we have been waiting for, and I also sent an E-mail to Criterion, asking about when they would start releasing their classics in Blu-Ray (still waiting for an answer.)
UPDATE:
I just got this answer from Criterion. This is their initial list of Blu-Ray releases:
"Quote":
May 8, 2008
We’ve got some exciting news for this fall: our first Blu-ray discs are coming! We’ve picked a little over a dozen titles from the collection for Blu-ray treatment, and we’ll begin rolling them out in October. These new editions will feature glorious high-definition picture and sound, all the supplemental content of the DVD releases, and they will be priced to match our standard-def editions.
Here’s what’s in the pipeline:
The Third Man
Bottle Rocket
Chungking Express
The Man Who Fell to Earth
The Last Emperor
El Norte
The 400 Blows
Gimme Shelter
The Complete Monterey Pop
Contempt
Walkabout
For All Mankind
The Wages of Fear
Alongside our DVD and Blu-ray box sets of The Last Emperor, we’ll also be putting out the theatrical version as a stand-alone release in both formats, priced at $39.95. Our Blu-ray release of Walkabout will be an all-new edition, featuring new supplements as well as a new transfer; we will also release an updated anamorphic DVD of Nicolas Roeg’s outback masterpiece at the same time.
"End Quote"
Good news indeed!
Claus.
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"Why are there shots of deserts in a scene that's supposed to take place in Belgium during the winter?" (Review of 'Battle of the Bulge'.)
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![[Frown]](frown.gif)
I expected a lot more titles to be released by now 
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