High-Def isnt all that good.

BoomAM

BoomAM

BoomAM

Soldato
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Atlanta, USA
Hi.
Controversial title that should spark some flames. :p

Anyway.
I recently bought the US version of Starship Troopers off a mate in the US. He provided with it a few DVD9 DVDRs with a 1080i/DD 5.1 on it as well.
Which i was pleased about. Original DVD & a HDTV version for under a tenner, bargain!

So i decided to hook my 26" Sammy to my PC, and watch the 1080i version of it.
Im underwealmed. I was expecting some amazingly high detailed picture, instead im treated to something that looks barely different to the DVD version, and the only noticable difference being that 'shiny' things look more shiny, like eye balls, and CGI looks a bit better.

The only conclusions i can come to is that:
-- The 1080i version ive got is actually just the DVD version upscalled. Which is unlikely considering the extra detail on shiny things.
-- The 1080i version ive got is low bit-rate. Being almost 16Gb in size, i wouldnt have thought that was possible.
-- That HDTV isnt all its cracked up to be. Which is the most plausable to me.

Opinions, Comments & Flames welcome. :)
 
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Maybe your just blind or don't have hidef eyeballs! I'm sure some folks on the forum have high definition ears and can hear a pin drop in the next village so not all that inplausable.
 
Starship troopers is quite an old film, one of the first I got on DVD albeit I have only had a DVD player for 6 or so years. DOn't they need to film the movie in HDTV to have the source material to make up the HD DVD? Or do they still use the old style rolling tape stuff and then just scan from that?

Either ways I'm guessing all you have is a DVD that has been upscaled for you to save your DVD player doing it and I personally don't notice much difference with upscaled stuff either. Maybe because the film used a lot of cgi, the cgi bits could be output to HD easier. ie when they remastered it they took the cgi bits straight back from the rendering sources.
 
Or it could be that the difference has been blown out of proportion and its more of a evolution in displays rarther than a revolution?
I see that some of you are coming to some of the conclusions that i have, and are critisising without actually giving a backing as to why that conclusion is correct. ;)
 
well a 26 inch tv aint going to do it any favours.

1080i material would have been downscaled & de-interlaced by the tv (most likely initially to 480p then upscaled to 720p) & probably very badly at that.

If your PC is decent enough to handle it,try using theatertek software (pixel adaptive de-interlace) & FFDshow to rescale it to 720p native res.

on a good setup high def can be stunning, I cant watch normal dvd's any more without noticing how blurry they look.. :(
 
To be honest i agree, HiDef is only really going to be any good if you have a huge screen, say 50" or bigger and your sitting only a few meters away. I would prefer a pure crisp standard picture quality which hopefully will arrive when blu-ray gets here. At the moment DVD picture isnt as good as it could be as a 2 hour film has to be fitted onto a 1 hour disk.

All films are filmed in cinema resolution which is some stupidly high resolution like 3000 x 2000 (approx) and all DVD videos are down scaled to fit normal TV or hi def dvd so starshp troopers is probably proper hi def.
 
First time I saw true HD material was on a 60" 1080p (i think it was p) display in a high street store. It was just rolling landscape demo clip but the detail was quite extraordinary. It was quite obviously filmed specificaly to show off HD and it showed. It really was stunning. I think with HD, you will notice much more difference in the quality of the source material whereas with SD everything looked pretty much similar.
 
well i am about to get a 32" samsung HI-DEF LCD so we need to stop all this HI-DEF is **** or i will be put of parting with £900. :p

But on a serious note I think maybe the DVD was just upscaled and is not a true HD DVD as I don’t think HI-DEF was about when the film in question was made. Go out and bye a proper HI-DEF film and see what you think of that to put your suspicions at rest.

Thanks
XD-3
 
Its doubtful it was upscaled, there is a very high quality HD file doing the rounds, i assume thats what he has.

Its the tv processing thats holding it back
 
mcmad said:
If your PC is decent enough to handle it,try using theatertek software (pixel adaptive de-interlace) & FFDshow to rescale it to 720p native res.
Click to expand...
VLC seems to do the job for me.

Its amusing to see all the excuses your all making really.

There is nothing wrong with the telly. Its a 26" HDTV, designed to handle 1080i.
And considering the scaling is being done by my PC, the TVs scaling engine has nothing to do with it, as its being fed a constant resolution.

I have some 400Mb+ music videos, and they look marginally better, with things seeming slightly sharper, but still not the big jump people claim.
 
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it would be hard to see the difference between a SD and HD DVD on a 26" TV, its like trying to see the difference between a 4mp nad a 10mp camera when the image has been printed out at 6x4 inch.
Whether a film is High deff or not has nothing to do with its age, most films these days are still shot on film, they then scan the film to convert it to a digital format for DVD. It all depends on what equipment is used whether or not they get high deff from it or not.

Andy
 
BoomAM said:
VLC seems to do the job for me.

Its amusing to see all the excuses your all making really.

There is nothing wrong with the telly. Its a 26" HDTV, designed to handle 1080i.
And considering the scaling is being done by my PC, the TVs scaling engine has nothing to do with it, as its being fed a constant resolution.

I have some 400Mb+ music videos, and they look marginally better, with things seeming slightly sharper, but still not the big jump people claim.
Click to expand...

VLC has a pretty poor deinterlacer & your telly may accept a 1080i signal, but its doing horrible things to enable it to display it.

Set up your PC to scale to 720 & output that, if your tv does 1:1 mapping you should see an immediate improvement.

Youre the first person Ive heard of thats tried it that didn't think there was a significant difference so something aint right with your setup
 
Energize said:
The film was probably never shot in high def.
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thats right, it was shot on film which is the highest quality you can get for now. the HD transfer doing the rounds is very good quality which is why i suspect somethings not quite right with BoomAM setup
 
As above films are shot on film not in SD or HD.

VLC is ok but you'll get a better picture from Theatertek.

I agree about a big screen size being needed to really appreciate the difference, at least 32" in my opinion is where the weakness of DVD shows up and HD can be appreciated.

There is a massive variance in the quality of the HD stuff around, some of it is barely any better than the average DVD whilst some of it is fantastic.

Try having a look at some of the manufacturer demos.

I trust you had the resolution on the PC set right?
 
darreny said:
HDTV is only really gonna be noticable on a large display
Click to expand...

Switching from 480i to 1080i on my 28" widescreen is like night and day in terms of the xbox 360. The quality jump is immediatly noticable, so I would say that in this case either the quality of the film isn't great to start with or its not been set up properly.
 
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