Blu-Ray disappointment

Planet Earth isn't really a good BD to show off what HD can do. Some of the shots on the BD are in SD. Get IMAX Bears, that documentary looks stunning.
 
For me, the sound makes more of an impact than the picture. When the film is on, I sort of 'forget' about the detail, but the sound is amazing.
 
SoapSurgeon said:
Yes, this is something we spoke about yesterday and he conceded the TV speakers were poor. He probably doesn't want to spend a fortune though. If anyone can pick out a nice system from RS - he is going there on Tuesday so I may be able to persuade him to pickup a 2.0 or 2.1 system then.
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you can get the Yamaha 5.1 amp and speaker package (great starter kit) for <£200.

And whilst not amazing difference in PQ i do feel i enjoy watching a HD film a lot more than an SD film - seems more "real". Batman: Dark Knight was one of the best things i have ever put through my HD system.
 
I found the same with Planet Earth. It does look great, but the close up shots really are the best. I found the panning shots high up to be the worst looking.

Jungles in particula is great. Close ups on bugs looking amazing.
 
I agree planet earth is not the best example, the best wow factor will be found on things like wall-e, ratatouille, dark knight, iron man and pans labyrinth.
 
The link above shows that yes there is a detail improvement, it;s really not THAT great. if you weren't looking for HD and were uneducated on exactly what it was, a person could easily miss the fact that it was hd or that the DVD wasn't HD tbh.

I too have found this, at my normal viewing distance of 4m or so HD content doesn't look that much better than lower res stuff in terms of detail, but in terms of smearing/blocking/colour there is a definite improvement. I find I get best results when I set 1.5-2m max from my 42 screen when watching HD content. But I know my eyes aren't the best - got an eye test on the 31st huzzah!
 
If you are watching Planet Earth in HD and not feeling "blown away" then you are doing something wrong. Either your TV isn't up to the job, isn't configured correctly, or you're expecting a Star Trek holodeck-style experience... which sadly isn't available yet.
 
Robert1986 said:
Have you even calibrated your tv set? The amount of improvement in picture quality you can get but just changing a few settings is huge.
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^^^^^ THIS

Firstly, get the menu screen open and put it in movie/cinema, turn off all DNE, DNR and all other noise reduction, put sharpness down towards the lowest settings, those should help a little.

Also may I suggest an eye test, because even 10ft from my old 42 with my back agasint the wall, planet earth looked sensational. Especially shallow seas, that is the best one by far !!!!!!!

Nothing wrong with the PZ70 except that it doesn't support 24fps, but that shouldn't screw up the picture, just make it a little juddery.

Now has someone got that 'You're doing it wrong' picture :D
 
I personally think blu-ray is a leap. The Dark Knight is a fine example!
I watched The Kingdom of Heaven the other day and that blew me away!
I think you need to sort the settings out on your TV mate
 
One + point for BluRay over DVD, is DVD is stored as a monochrome/brightness (luma) image in 1 channel, and chroma (colour) in another. The luma images are full pal resolution (720x576), the colour channel is then mapped over it, but its at half resolution (360 x 288). The idea is our eyes are more accurate on shape definition than colour.

However im pretty sure that bluray is encoded so that both luma and chroma are full 720 or 1080 resolution. So colour definition should be better on blu ray even when if played on a standard def TV.

Bluray also has better sound, and this applies even with older AV sound systems. Most region 2 DVD's are only encoded with Dolby Digital, and a handfull with half bitrate (768kbps) DTS. Bluray disks are generaly encoded with higher quality sound, and even if you have an older hifi, the players will downmix to full bit rate (1536kbps) DTS, and/or 640kbps dolby digital (dvd's only get at best 448kbps dolby digital. So even if you dont have a "HD" theatre sound system, it will sound a lot better than the majority of DVD's. (A small number of Region 2 dvd's do contain a full bit rate DTS soundtrack, but in my collection of 200+ popular movies and a whole bunch of TV shows, I have about 10 DTS disks, and none are full bitrate. The rest are Dolby digital.

Blurays sound great even when played on DTS level gear.
 
Thanks for all your opinions.

I'm not sure how having an eye test would improve the visual experience for my whole family though :p

Also I would like to state I am not saying Planet Earth doesn't look sensational, it clearly does. What I am saying is the leap from PE on DVD to BD wasn't as great as I was expecting. I have only watched the first episode, so perhaps this wasn't a great test, but as this was the first HD content we viewed, I used it as an example in this thread.

As for tv settings. I looked at them quickly before I left my parents house and switched it to cinema mode. I don't know if that made a difference as I didn't test it afterwards. I will look at DNR/DNE and sharpness to see if I can get some more improvement.
 
To me DVD to BR is almost night to day.
I'm using a Samsung LE40F86 40" 1080p LCD.
To play movies I'm using a PS3 - obviously connected via HDMI.

We sit approx. 7ft away from the TV.
Everytime we watch BR everything is just so much more vibrant.
Since a couple of weeks before Christmas we've watched Blade Runner, Matrix Trilogy, Dogma, Ironman, Batman Begins, Dark Knight all on BR and each time the image quality was so much better than our old DVD versions of the films.

I've always been "picky" about which films I buy anyway, even on DVD - I certainly don't buy everything, only those films I feel are good enough to warrant more than one viewing.
Since I first moved to BR the only things I've bought on DVD are things you cannot get on BR - TV Series etc.
I certainly don't plan on extending my DVD library any further.
 
I think perhaps I was expecting too much then. I can see a difference between the two, I was just expecting it to be more. Now my expectations have lowered, maybe I can go and enjoy the experience now!
 
For me, its not just the picture quality, its the fact that its technically so much closer to being 'correct' than DVDs. Saying that, the picture quality is also outstanding, watching SD after HD is almost like someone applied a blur filter to the image. Give it a few more films in HD and then try going back to SD, you'll think your eyes have stopped working.

Other reasons for BD.
1. True 16:9 square pixel images. DVDs were often widescreen pictures in a 4:3 image, that your TV used to stretch. Nasty.

2. Correct frame rate. BDs are 24 fps as they were recorded. DVDs were either 29.97 adding some random frames, or speeded up to 25 fps (check the run time difference between NTSC and PAL DVDs). Nasty.
 
SoapSurgeon said:
I think perhaps I was expecting too much then. I can see a difference between the two, I was just expecting it to be more. Now my expectations have lowered, maybe I can go and enjoy the experience now!
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What on earth were you expecting... images to reach out from the screen and throttle you? Maybe your issues are based on lack of technical understanding about what HD content actually is.
 
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