Top: 2001 R1 Special Limited Edition DVD Bottom: Studio Canal HD-DVD
The North American Blu-ray disc is mastered in 1080p from the same source as the 2001 DVD compared here. I have never seen the HD-DVD in person but from the screen captures here it looks amazing. The Blu-ray, which I own, does not reach these
levels of perfection. It is very noisy, dirty and quite faded looking. The HD-DVD is quite excellent with perfect colours, grain structure and the faded appearance is gone.
It would be really interesting if you could add BD captures too.
The BD only uses MPEG2 compared with the HD-DVD which is VC1. I'm not sure what the BD is but the HD-DVDs are Dual Layer. The BD is also Region Free too.
Audio is about equal:
DTS-HD HR on the USA BD and UK HD-DVD
DTS-HD MA on the French HD-DVD and Australian HD-DVD
The extras are also basically equal (HD-DVD barebones, BD 5 minute featurette).
Last edited by bradavon on 18 Feb 2008, 03:33, edited 1 time in total.
FYI the UK HD-DVD is in stock here and ships to America. They can be recommended, it's a bit cheaper (only buy a few pounds) elsewhere but is out of stock:
For some reason the Studio Canal HD-DVDs (except for Terminator 2 and Mulholland Drive) in the UK are really hard to get hold of. It took me a month for my Graduate HD-DVD to arrive from BlahDVD and Basic Instinct for Saltysam the same amount of time.
Not in HD as far as I know (i.e - some review sites use the S-Video port to capture SD captures). I've presumed those who can capture BD/HD-DVD screenshots must have on (or a Video Capture card).
Thanks anyway. It's interesting you reckon the HD-DVD will look better though, that said with the recent (likely) drop of HD-DVD by Toshiba I'd definitely pick up the BD regardless.
I never said the DVD looks bad Brad, I have the UK R2 now (SE 2 disc) and it's fine (if dirty), just saying how good the HD-DVD looks (and I'm sure would look much better).
Firstly I wasn't being patronising. Secondly I mentioned it in case Grim didn't realise. Fair enough if he did. Grim has said a few times he's not got into HD yet.
Thirdly you're a fine one to talk about being patronising!
The UK Blu Ray is superb, may well be the same transfer as the HD DVD or even better, cannot remember what I read now but compared to my dvd, it shit on it from miles above I got it cheap, so I dont care about the extras, just copied my dvd before I flogged it.
romerojpg wrote: so I dont care about the extras, just copied my dvd before I flogged it.
why bother copying the dvd if you don't care about extras i wouldn't be arsed,the dvd is worth pennies anyway. The uk BD is excellent and cheap at hmv last time i looked.
My dvd I sold for more than the Blu Ray cost, so it was worth selling.
I never meant I did not want the extras, I meant for the price I got the Blu Ray for I dont care if it had extras or not, it was pretty much free. I keep extras, you never know when you need them, the commentary alone is worth owning.
For those who unaware, it's very rare for a studio that has already released a HD-DVD to Remaster the BD any further. Usually they just bump the bitrate. Meaning technically it's better but by how much? Not a lot. Most of the time the BD is the HD-DVD technical aspects of the discs aside. You can get a good idea by reading HD-DVD reviews/looking at HD-DVD captures.
Obviously if it's a different studio, this doesn't count.
thanks CJ, i haven't watched my hd-dvd yet but i won't be replacing it with the allegedly inferior BD.