Is blu-ray all you expected it to be?
- Thread starter Sefirosu
- Start date
As someone who works in a business doing DVD/Bluray distribution, I can tell you we still ship out 4/5 times more DVD's per title than we do on the BR versions.
It appears to me that people haven't adopted it in the same way they did with DVD, maybe too soon for another medium update.
It appears to me that people haven't adopted it in the same way they did with DVD, maybe too soon for another medium update.
Soldato
I think the answer will depend on two factors, the quality of TV owned and the eyesight of the poster 
I think there's a pretty massive difference between DVD and 1080p (47" 1080p LED TV), I watched Avatar the other day and the added detail is just awesome. It's obviously going to be less of a transition than VHS->DVD which truly was a huge leap but still a very noticeable increase in definition.
Plus prices are coming down too now both on media and you can get a Bluray player for dirt cheap now - I also don't think that bandwidth/connection speeds are going to catch up quick enough to supplant Bluray with streaming media - DVDs on the other hand though..
*edit*
To clarify the above - yes it does depend on the film/source material and postprocessing of course.
I think there's a pretty massive difference between DVD and 1080p (47" 1080p LED TV), I watched Avatar the other day and the added detail is just awesome. It's obviously going to be less of a transition than VHS->DVD which truly was a huge leap but still a very noticeable increase in definition.
Plus prices are coming down too now both on media and you can get a Bluray player for dirt cheap now - I also don't think that bandwidth/connection speeds are going to catch up quick enough to supplant Bluray with streaming media - DVDs on the other hand though..
*edit*
To clarify the above - yes it does depend on the film/source material and postprocessing of course.
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Associate
I found it a bit difficult to see any major difference as I haven't really watched the same movie on either format to compare. Blu-Ray does seem a bit more crisp but I only had a LoveFilm sub before I had a PS3 so the number of Blu-Rays I've seen is limited.
Man of Honour
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Soldato
I can believe that, the other day I was searching for the annual football season reviews and Man Utd's one for this season is still only being released on DVD, likewise I got an email through informing me The Ricky Gervais Show series 2 was up for pre-order again only on DVD
Soldato
Remember minidisks or super-cd's? Nah me neither.
Miniaturization or improvements in barely-discernable quality is redundant to the average consumer.
Miniaturization or improvements in barely-discernable quality is redundant to the average consumer.
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Associate
I only buy blu-rays now, but I think you need to sit close to the TV or have a massive TV to notice the difference (except maybe you could notice the deeper colours, not sure, since I don't watch DVDs). I sit about about 6ft away from my 40" Sony and I can only spot the detail in rocks and stuff if I stand in front of the TV. When I go sit down I lose that wow factor. Like in the beginning of The Dark Knight, it looks awesome when it shows the buildings and those stones on top of the roof, but when I go sit down I can't see the detail anymore. Next TV will be 52".
Soldato
As hard as it is to believe, most people, regular viewers and such - are detail blind. True story. Most people don't see obvious things, like wrong aspect ratios, low bandwidth issues and pixelisation of terrestrial digital channels let alone more "settle" problems like bad standards conversions, ghosting, dropouts etc which drive a lot of us literally nuts. Most of those people watch Freeview ITV pixelotto most of the day, and when they finally switch channels to a very average, rather badly converted Sky movie channel they think it's as good as it gets. And in all honesty, on a rerun channel, going through cheapest Sky box to a budget line, few years old korean laggy LCD set to incorrectly letterbox and stretch 16:9 content on a "HD ready" screen, it probably actually is. As good as it gets for them.
I personally hate the old, interlaced world of SD TV and DVD. It took about 3 years for DVD standards to drop like a brick through surface of the water and as the prices plummeted any good quality film to DVD conversions became simply too expensive. And quality dropped so much that sometimes you can still find better VHS tape transfers than DVDs. Especially the "repackaged" kind - n-th grade "masters" on betacams converted from film to NTSC, to PAL, to NTSC again then mastered in china for 3in1 Lidl release.
That said however, the standard of HD was absolutely flawed from the very start and I think everyone knew this was going to end badly. For starters, colour space in HD and mastering codecs that became standard were just wrong, plenty of issues there - ProRes and DNxHD are prone to colour banding/posterisation, majority of material in my industry comes from SLRs and cheap cameras recording in mpeg2, colour grading and black levels are generally just wrong in most cases, all the rest of intermediate codecs in use tend to be just glorified 30-50Mbps intra mpeg2. At consumer level h264 doesn't react very well to fast scene changes and grain, which is kind of ironic for a codec specifically chosen for fast footage with added grain.
But I suppose the worst of it all, was disconnection of broadcast HD vs consumer HD. Every error in a book was done at that point. While most production houses and film footage was being converted to HD in 23.98 and 24fps for cinematic feel and compliancy, broadcast world just found it too hard to drop the old habits and gone completely off the script - yanks picked up mpeg2 based HD, so they found interlaced 59.94 field standard to be the most suitable. We, in Europe picked h264 based HD, but while initially progressive 25 fps was favoured, with time more and more TVs on the continent started requesting 50 field interlaced HD stuff, which is just heart braking. In the end we all returned to the old facepalm worthy world where directors shoot in frame rates that aren't native to anything and everyone else just converts it, screwing up quality in the process.
And once again, as more and more amateurs get contracts for HD content, the more corners are cut and worse and worse the source material available to you - the viewer - becomes. On TV it's already everywhere - bad upscaling, badly deinterlaced then upscaled footage, repeated frames, judder, aliasing, a lot of standard converted stuff has crazy morphing in fast scenes (as if no one bothers to customise default settings on Snell & Willcox Alchemist anymore). BluRays, for the time being, are still relatively immune to that. There is still high production value in them. Standards to keep. Quality control is being made. But with prices going down and tempo rising, it slowly goes into speed vs quality trap. It starts, as always, with music videos and concerts. More and more releases are juddery, slightly less sharp. Overblown colours. Crazy amount of grain added to cover for poor quality footage. Then older movies. Conversions not as well done as the first big titles, colour grading shot, blue hair, olive skin tones etc. In few years it will just slip back into the usual messy, ugly malarky.
I personally hate the old, interlaced world of SD TV and DVD. It took about 3 years for DVD standards to drop like a brick through surface of the water and as the prices plummeted any good quality film to DVD conversions became simply too expensive. And quality dropped so much that sometimes you can still find better VHS tape transfers than DVDs. Especially the "repackaged" kind - n-th grade "masters" on betacams converted from film to NTSC, to PAL, to NTSC again then mastered in china for 3in1 Lidl release.
That said however, the standard of HD was absolutely flawed from the very start and I think everyone knew this was going to end badly. For starters, colour space in HD and mastering codecs that became standard were just wrong, plenty of issues there - ProRes and DNxHD are prone to colour banding/posterisation, majority of material in my industry comes from SLRs and cheap cameras recording in mpeg2, colour grading and black levels are generally just wrong in most cases, all the rest of intermediate codecs in use tend to be just glorified 30-50Mbps intra mpeg2. At consumer level h264 doesn't react very well to fast scene changes and grain, which is kind of ironic for a codec specifically chosen for fast footage with added grain.
But I suppose the worst of it all, was disconnection of broadcast HD vs consumer HD. Every error in a book was done at that point. While most production houses and film footage was being converted to HD in 23.98 and 24fps for cinematic feel and compliancy, broadcast world just found it too hard to drop the old habits and gone completely off the script - yanks picked up mpeg2 based HD, so they found interlaced 59.94 field standard to be the most suitable. We, in Europe picked h264 based HD, but while initially progressive 25 fps was favoured, with time more and more TVs on the continent started requesting 50 field interlaced HD stuff, which is just heart braking. In the end we all returned to the old facepalm worthy world where directors shoot in frame rates that aren't native to anything and everyone else just converts it, screwing up quality in the process.
And once again, as more and more amateurs get contracts for HD content, the more corners are cut and worse and worse the source material available to you - the viewer - becomes. On TV it's already everywhere - bad upscaling, badly deinterlaced then upscaled footage, repeated frames, judder, aliasing, a lot of standard converted stuff has crazy morphing in fast scenes (as if no one bothers to customise default settings on Snell & Willcox Alchemist anymore). BluRays, for the time being, are still relatively immune to that. There is still high production value in them. Standards to keep. Quality control is being made. But with prices going down and tempo rising, it slowly goes into speed vs quality trap. It starts, as always, with music videos and concerts. More and more releases are juddery, slightly less sharp. Overblown colours. Crazy amount of grain added to cover for poor quality footage. Then older movies. Conversions not as well done as the first big titles, colour grading shot, blue hair, olive skin tones etc. In few years it will just slip back into the usual messy, ugly malarky.
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Associate
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Like others have said the quality can be jaw dropping or nothing special depending on the movie/ transfer. I have overcome the problem of wasting money on blurays I already owned or could buy on dvd that portray the same quality for cheaper by checking first hand on this site.
http://www.blu-ray.com/
If you are thinking of buying say Dark Knight, go search it on here and see that they gave the title 5 stars for video quality (don't just look at movie rating) meaning its amongst the best transfers. I could also search Silent Hill on there and see that it only gets about 2/3 stars for video so really if I have it on dvd already then why bother.
http://www.blu-ray.com/
If you are thinking of buying say Dark Knight, go search it on here and see that they gave the title 5 stars for video quality (don't just look at movie rating) meaning its amongst the best transfers. I could also search Silent Hill on there and see that it only gets about 2/3 stars for video so really if I have it on dvd already then why bother.
Associate
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Thanks to those retarded yankees and their stupid 23.976fps framerate, a frame has to be repeated every 41.67 seconds.
A sane framerate would be 30fps or 60fps. In short blu-ray is not good enough.
A sane framerate would be 30fps or 60fps. In short blu-ray is not good enough.
Soldato
Are there any advantages to shooting live action at 60fps? Because i can think of quite a few disadvantages...
Don
Great post v0n,
I know what you mean about poor quality dvds, one that springs to mind is Unforgiven, has to be the worst transfer ever.
Every blu ray I own is a marked improvement over previous releases, even films like Tremors; whilst being a poor quality br compared to other releases, it's still leaps and bounds ahead of the dvd/tv release.
BR is awesome in my book.
I know what you mean about poor quality dvds, one that springs to mind is Unforgiven, has to be the worst transfer ever.
Every blu ray I own is a marked improvement over previous releases, even films like Tremors; whilst being a poor quality br compared to other releases, it's still leaps and bounds ahead of the dvd/tv release.
BR is awesome in my book.
I've been pretty underwhelmed by BR discs, Our new player does such a good job of up-scaling DVDs onto our HD TV (always had CRT's until 18 months ago) its difficult to see the difference.
Plus we have a 2.1 sound system, not 5.1 so we don't get to appreciate the extra sound so much, so on the whole.
I can totally understand the lower sales of BR discs right now. All the BR discs I buy are older films on special offer / cheap box sets etc...
Plus we have a 2.1 sound system, not 5.1 so we don't get to appreciate the extra sound so much, so on the whole.
I can totally understand the lower sales of BR discs right now. All the BR discs I buy are older films on special offer / cheap box sets etc...
Permabanned
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- 5,798
Well everyone seems to have a HDTV nowadays, I see the massive things on everyones walls driving past houses. If these people are still watching dvds then more fool them.
Yes theres a very noticeable difference if you have a 46"+ tv and don't sit 2miles away from your tv. It's all about size and viewing difference.
Yes theres a very noticeable difference if you have a 46"+ tv and don't sit 2miles away from your tv. It's all about size and viewing difference.