Rubbish Blu-rays

oli collett

oli collett

oli collett

Soldato
Joined
19 Apr 2004
Posts
4,793
Location
London
I'm in a bad mood.

I went and bought some blu-rays the other week and hadn't got round to watching all of them. It's been ages since i've watched "gangs of new york" so I thought it would be a good pick for the first night in for ages.

As many of you will know by the time you reached "york", it's a dreadful excuse for a blu-ray transfer. I mean, really awful. So awful in fact that I want to complain about the whole thing. Seriously - this film is marketed as a high-definition, quality transfer which is supposed to blow you away with the visuals and whatnot. But no, it was diabolical. There were parts of it which were so bad that I actually paused because I thought it was just my screen on the blink. I just wish i'd seen some of the reviews before - but really if it was just above DVD quality I'd be happy, but I think this was much worse, because I can never remember a DVD making me think my screen was broken. There are films 40 years old that look better than this.

A review that I should have read:
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/409/gangsofnewyork.html
 
I thought Gangs Of New York looked really good tbh. If you want to see a **** transfer check out Trainspotting I'm gutted about that, judder Armageddon.
 
^TANK^ said:
I thought Gangs Of New York looked really good tbh.
Click to expand...

Seriously? I can honestly say a lot of TV rips have looked better - at times it was like they had squeezed it through some kind of bizzare compression algorithm. There was one of the scenes in tweed's office that genuinely made me stop the film and check it wasn't my screen playing up and from then on it was spot the problems with the picture. I mean, getting away from the issues just with the actual scratches/issues from the film transfer which are apparent throughout on top of that

Anyway, haven't seen trainspotting on blu-ray but it was one of the films i'm interested in. I'd seriously like to get my money back on gangs of new york and i think i've got good reason to.
 
Layer Cake isn't bad at all. There's a couple of scenes that are lacking, but overall it's a fine transfer. Gangs of New York is indeed poo, though. 28 Days/Weeks later are probably the worst i've seen - they're barely any better than dvd.
 
^TANK^ said:
:confused: Again I thought it looked pretty good mostly in the action scenes though.
Click to expand...

Far too grainy for me. So much that I sold the Blu-Ray and kept the DVD because I found it more watchable.

The transfer of Speed annoyed me as well, they must have used one of the original DVD cuts rather than the Special DVD that was brought out.

Meaning that you get to see such amazing things as the tow rope pulling the exploding bus (outside the coffee shop) and other things that were digitally removed for the Special Edition. :rolleyes:
 
I don't think the grain is the issue per se, rather how the encoder has handled that grain, whether it compresses it correctly or turns it into noise.

Dissapointed to read that the Crow transfer is not up to scratch, it took them ages to release the collectors edition dvd with the new transfer and dts sound to replace the awful VHS like transfer on the original DVD.

As for FMJ, that one is a laugh a minute, appauling detail resolution and an awfully flat colour pallette means it is definately one to avoid.

Parts 1 and 2 of the Underworld trilogy look dreadful on my Sony S550 and Panasonic 46" PZ81 with obvious blocking and noise.
 
Even though it's kinda considered almost a "benchmark" Blu-Ray... I think Planet Earth looks pretty rubbish :/

Haven't sat down and watched all of it, but the bits i DID see, were really unimpressive (after watching Iron Man!)

The scenes where the camera sweeps over the mountains had REALLY bad judder IMO. Overall it doesn't look sharp at all either.

Maybe it's just me though...!
 
Planet Earth contains a mixture of native HD and upscaled SD material.
Check out the desert based episode, there is some excellent HD material taken of animals resting under a tree at high noon in the desert, shot from over a kilometre away from the subjects, very impressive.
 
OCdude said:
Even though it's kinda considered almost a "benchmark" Blu-Ray... I think Planet Earth looks pretty rubbish :/

Haven't sat down and watched all of it, but the bits i DID see, were really unimpressive (after watching Iron Man!)

The scenes where the camera sweeps over the mountains had REALLY bad judder IMO. Overall it doesn't look sharp at all either.

Maybe it's just me though...!
Click to expand...

I would have to agree with you on this, some scenes are very good, whilst a lot are average at best.
 
BloodyL said:
Planet Earth contains a mixture of native HD and upscaled SD material.
Check out the desert based episode, there is some excellent HD material taken of animals resting under a tree at high noon in the desert, shot from over a kilometre away from the subjects, very impressive.
Click to expand...

Ahh cool, i'll take a look.
 
I have found an answer. I stopped buying disks a few months ago as I was watching so many films that I have never had time to go back and re-watch the ones I had. Instead I now rent from Tesco DVD rentals, which includes BD aswell as DVD disks. Even their basic plan means that each rental costs just over £1 per film (assuming you do watch 2 films a week). So if the film is naff, it's no big deal.
 
Warbie said:
28 Days later ... barely any better than dvd.
Click to expand...

28 Days Later was filmed digitally in SD (with the exception of that final aerial shot), so it is really just an upscale. Having actually seen comparisons of the two, the extra bitrate does make the bluray look fractionally better, but it's not worth paying any extra if you had a choice between the two.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom