Official Blu-Ray & HD-DVD Thread

**neovsmatrix** · 02-06-2007, 10:52 AM

Re: Official Blu-Ray & HD-DVD Thread

I prefer it if they don't filter out the film grain. If it's in the master, keep it in. I think it's ridiculous that studios try to clean the movie up so it "looks" better.

Film grain is not a bad thing if that's what the film originally looked like in theaters. Artifcats are a bad thing, as is loss of detail.

**rawdog805** · 02-06-2007, 11:17 AM

Re: Official Blu-Ray & HD-DVD Thread

Blu Ray sales surpass HD-DVD sales...?

Blu-ray Software Sales Surpass HD-DVD

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=117

**The Chef** · 02-06-2007, 11:51 PM

Re: Official Blu-Ray & HD-DVD Thread

As much as I enjoy my HD-DVD player, Im really enjoying my Blu-Ray player, ie PS3, even more due to the collection of movies coming out on it recently and in the near future. This week alone we had Young Guns, Reservoir Dogs, American Psycho and First Blood compared to Hollywoodland on HD-DVD. Now when you throw in next week on Blu-Ray, Ladder 49, Reign of Fire, The Sentinel, Planet of the Apes, Usual Suspects, Broken Arrow, Marie Antoinette, Phone Booth among others compared to The Departed on HD-DVD which is also going to be on Blu-Ray anyways its starting to appear like a landslide.

**CaptainZombie** · 02-08-2007, 10:01 PM

Re: Official Blu-Ray & HD-DVD Thread

CNET predicts that HD-DVD will throw in the towel by years end. I doubt that this will happen anytime soon, but anything is possible.

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4. HD DVD surrenders by September

OK, this probably won't happen, but it should. With sales for both HD DVD and Blu-ray stand-alone players remaining tepid throughout the year, the biggest number of players will actually come in the form of game consoles--or in the case of the Xbox 360 and its HD DVD external drive, game console accessories. According to the numbers we're seeing, there are 175,000 HD DVD players out there (with 92,000 of those being Xbox 360 HD DVD players) and around a million Blu-ray players in homes, most of them PS3s. As Sony ramps up PS3 production, we expect that 5:1 ratio to hold, and perhaps even increase. Add to that the fact that sometime very soon the number of available Blu-ray titles will top the number of HD DVD titles, with the gap continuing to widen as the year progresses, and things don't look all that good for Camp HD DVD. Personally, I don't care who wins or loses, and I'm not rooting for either format. But unfortunately, if someone doesn't bow out gracefully, both formats risk going nowhere, especially with various forms of downloadable HD content in the works. (Read Senior Editor John Falcone's "Dispatches from the format war: H-DVD vs. Blu-ray" for a complete rundown.)

**ExtremeGamer** · 02-08-2007, 10:06 PM

Re: Official Blu-Ray & HD-DVD Thread

Those aren't predictions based on anything, they do that article every year.

Neither format is going anywhere this year. If one was to fail this year, both fail, as the consumer becomes worried about the formats at that point.

**Skerik** · 02-13-2007, 03:08 PM

Re: Official Blu-Ray & HD-DVD Thread

"The Departed" released today on BD and HD-DVD. Of note is the fact that this is the first title that allows for a cross-format comparison between BD's Lossless PCM audio and HD-DVD's Dolby TrueHD.

Here's one reviewer's take....

First, the "bad" news. In all honesty, 'The Departed' is not as involving a soundtrack as I expected. The film's sound design is surprisingly front-heavy. I even dropped in the DVD side of the HD DVD/DVD combo version, and sure enough, regardless of format, there just isn't much surround action going on. Aside from a few key sequences, most of the whiz-bang effects are restrained. However, to be fair, when the rears do kick in, the accuracy of directional sounds is superb, and other elements of the mix, particularly Howard Shore's score, can really fill up the full 360-degree soundfield. I also was impressed with how pronounced yet organic low bass sounded. The film is often punctuated by low tones, which have a powerful tightness rare even in the best modern surround tracks. Dialogue reproduction is also first-rate, with every word crystal clear.

Now, how do the PCM and TrueHD tracks compare? Given this historic opportunity, I decided to conduct a little experiment. I invited a friend over, who is a big movie and music buff, but not particularly technical. He knows good audio when he hears it, yet doesn't know a PCM from an RPM from R.E.M. In other words, he's Joe Six-Pack with a great ear. Anyway, together we conducted a "blind" audio test -- we select ten short sequences from the film, and listened to a compare of each. We took turns firing up each scene, and selecting which one sounded better, with no knowledge of which sample was the Blu-ray and which the HD DVD.

After writing down our answers on little scraps of paper (note that we didn't throw them into a hat -- we aren't that dorky), the results were interesting. Out of the twenty comparisons (ten for him, ten for me), we could only detect differences on four scenes total. But of those four, we both always preferred the PCM track, if only a smidgeon. For example, there is a scene in involving an attempted trade bust between the Costello character and a Chinese gang. There is a sound of a gun firing that we went back over a few times, and as silly as it sounds, the force and impact of the sounds was a shade more realistic in PCM. Also a beneficiary of the uncompressed mix is the music, as this is a film brimming with rock songs. The first scene we picked featured the Rolling Stone's "Gimme Shelter," and again the PCM track boasted a slightly more spacious feel to the music in all channels -- as if the very highest end of the frequency range was more palpable.

Granted, these are very slight differences and subjective preferences. Had we not blindfolded each other (figuratively speaking, of course) and been flipping back and forth between discs like one of those old Coke-Pepsi commercials, such deviations likely would have been imperceptible. It is also certain that the average listener wouldn't be able to tell the difference without possessing the ears of a dog. Still, in this case I give a slight edge to the PCM track, though a comparison between a single title hardly qualifies as the final word. If nothing else, it made me realize that if all the studios dumped this dueling audio format business and went all-PCM, I can't say I would be likely to complain...

Not Found

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/departed.html

**ODogg** · 02-13-2007, 07:21 PM

Re: Official Blu-Ray & HD-DVD Thread

fellas - buy.com has the HD-DVD drive for $182.99 today, not sure when it ends, and if you use google checkout for the first time you can save another $10 to make it $172.99. I think it's like $9 for shipping. I may get one Friday depending upon if the sale is still on, my mood and my bills coming due.

**The Chef** · 02-19-2007, 10:52 PM

Re: Official Blu-Ray & HD-DVD Thread

Anyone looking into getting either the Prestige or Babel tomorrow on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray respectively? It seems this thread has rather died off and was wondering if anyone was looking forward to either of these movies tomorrow. On a side note, has anyone seen Reign of Fire, The Sentinel or Planet of the Apes on Blu-ray as of yet? Ive heard nothing but negative reviews in regards to the video quality and wanted to see if anyone else here has seen the same thing.

**CaptainZombie** · 02-19-2007, 11:22 PM