HD-DVD/Blu-ray vs. DVD (including Casino Royale)

captainjoe · Post by **captainjoe** » 03 Apr 2007, 22:45

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthre ... ge=6&pp=30

This is highly impressive. Makes me want to get a blu-ray player. Plus the King Kong caps on pg 2 are great.

tom2681 · Post by **tom2681** » 04 Apr 2007, 02:39

Interesting...

Wasn't expecting HD to be THAT much sharper.
I'd go HD right now if Sony players were 80% cheaper.

romerojpg · Post by **romerojpg** » 04 Apr 2007, 15:16

If you read about the upscaling its not as simple as that.
I dont see any HD comparisons, only HD vs DVD.

tom2681 · Post by **tom2681** » 04 Apr 2007, 15:27

@Romero:
Yes, upscaling can greatly improve a picture, but it can't "create" detail.
Native 1080p should be much sharper than upscaled 480 or 576p IMO.

I dont see any HD comparisons

http://xylon.haloapplications.com/formatwar/

It ain't much but it's a start.

romerojpg · Post by **romerojpg** » 04 Apr 2007, 15:38

It is intresting seeing them all side by side so to say. I am getting a 1080 screen very soon, so I need to know what the hell to do. At the moment I will probibly just use my PC, but will start thinking hard about which HD dvd to get when they come down in price a little more, or just get a PS3.

Thet HD comparisons a bit odd, it doesnt look very good either dvd to be honest

not the nbest image to take and compare in my opinion, way to much movement.

saltysam · Post by **saltysam** » 04 Apr 2007, 16:32

I have HD-DVD & Blu-Ray, to my eyes HD-DVD seems a bit better transfer wise.

romerojpg · Post by **romerojpg** » 04 Apr 2007, 16:43

What size screen do you have and I assume its 1080?

saltysam · Post by **saltysam** » 05 Apr 2007, 18:55

It's a 40" LCD 1080 capable

romerojpg · Post by **romerojpg** » 05 Apr 2007, 20:02

saltysam wrote:It's a 40" LCD 1080 capable

Wouldnt be a Sony would it?

Hell 40 inches seem big enuff for me, I will be sitting 6 foota away so I will at least notice the difference in picture quality.

saltysam · Post by **saltysam** » 06 Apr 2007, 18:43

no,it's a samsung. some stuff looks truly stunning,i sit around 6ft away as well

romerojpg · Post by **romerojpg** » 06 Apr 2007, 18:45

Ahh it was a toss up between the Superb Samsung models or the Sony for me

I have went Sony for now, when it comes thats is.

Nice to see someone else sits close to their TV

gojensen · Post by **gojensen** » 06 Apr 2007, 21:26

Well, I sit about 8 feet from my 106 incher

Seriously though, I don't think you should select a HD format based on which is "best"... I my mind there's no real reason why one should be better than the other (if we scrap Blu-Ray's extra disc capacity for now)... I think most of the "HD-DVD is better" is related to the fact that HD-DVD players are more mature than their BRD counterparts... and that the earliest Blu-Ray movies used MPEG2 instead of VC1/AVC...

Further some say that HD is better because it has iHD... well, Blu-Ray has BDJava. And I trust a Java source more than a Microsoft source

(1st gen BRD players didn't support BDJava - thus they lack this "important" feature

)

As it stands now there's a lot more movies coming for Blu-Ray than HD-DVD. I think that should be your major concern right now unless you MUST have support for movies from Universal (the only HD-DVD-only studio right now...)

romerojpg · Post by **romerojpg** » 06 Apr 2007, 23:25

Ohh I wont be going full force into any format for a while yet, just get a few here and there. But BR sems to be winning from everything I see so far. Give it another 2 years and there may be a a winner

Stil frokm the screen caps on the link HD at least seems better by jpegs. I want to run them side by side on my new screen, thats the best way to se the difference for me still

gojensen · Post by **gojensen** » 07 Apr 2007, 23:11

I _really_ doubt that the companies that support both formats would take the time to bother with different encoding jobs for the same movie. I'm guessing they use the same MOVIE.AVC file under different wrappers... (I could be wrong, but then BD would have an edge as the only reason I see them doing two different encodes would be to utilize the extra space BD offers...

)

From the link above that compared MI3 on HD and BRD I really can't say I saw any difference between the two.

romerojpg · Post by **romerojpg** » 08 Apr 2007, 13:27

Thats becasue they picked such a stupid place in the film to compare a frame, a fast moving picture. If it was a close up of a detailed face it would be easier to see, but fast moving things you dont even notice much unless they are very messy.

captainjoe · Post by **captainjoe** » 08 Apr 2007, 22:02

They should've gone with a close-up from the bridge scene or the torture sequence. I noticed hardly that much of a difference but I did see a little mpeg-2 artifact. Still, nothing to get annoyed about.

romerojpg · Post by **romerojpg** » 08 Apr 2007, 23:38

I guess if you have a massive screen you will see some artifacts

going from say a 32 inch screen where you see barley no such things, to a whopping massive screen you see so many more flaws with dvds, HD I am sure it will be the same. I can barley watch a normal DVD on a BIG screen now

most look like crap to me. Unless you sit far away.

gojensen · Post by **gojensen** » 09 Apr 2007, 10:00

Hm, seems like MI:3 was one of the early titles that did have different codecs... I remember reading something about authoring software (that could handle BD-J and VC-1/AVC) not being ready for BluRay launch - I guess that's why the early titles used MPEG2 while the newer ones use mostly AVC/VC-1...

Anyways, High-Def digest had this to say about the BluRay vs HD release of MI:3;

High-Def digest wrote:So, how do the Blu-ray and HD DVD stack up? Perhaps it is the mega-bitrate afforded both transfers -- and I know I might get taken to task by some in the HD DVD camp for even suggesting such a thing -- but this is one comparison that makes a pretty good case for MPEG-2. It seems clear that, with enough bits behind it, the codec isn't ready to be put out to pasture just yet (VC-1 was developed and optimized with low bitrate applications in mind, so is less space-hungry). Compression artifacts, posterization and macroblocking are just not a problem on either version. Black, color reproduction and overall detail are consistently impressive regardless of codec, and of all the dual-format releases I've yet seen, 'M:I III' is probably the best proof that Blu-ray is clearly able to deliver absolutely first-rate video quality when at its best. Yes, I'm sure if there was enough time in the world to go through and compare the entire film frame-by-frame, perhaps there could be some differences noticeable. And there is no telling how 'M:I III' may have looked on Blu-ray had it been encoded with VC-1 (or AVC MPEG-4, for that matter.) But both the Blu-ray and the HD DVD of 'M:I III' packed equal punch for me. If nothing else, 'M:I III' should be great fuel for proponents on both sides as to what their preferred format is capable of.

Full review here...

Oh and we should keep in mind the players used to review aswell... "official" standing is that the Playstation3 beats all previous BluRay players in picture quality (!) so I'd really love to see what a "pure-bred" 2nd or 3rd generation BluRay player would do with these discs

And as we time and time again on the internet, screenshots from movies are not really that good at telling us how it looks...