The New and Improved Blu-Ray Megathread

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > The New and Improved Blu-Ray Megathread

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

Anyone wanting a region free player, do yourself a favour and go straight to one of the Oppo models. And I say that owning a modded Panasonic.

I don't see the point recommending a questionable quality Momitsu or good but soldering-required Panasonic when the modchips for the Oppos plug straight in and you know they're a good choice when it comes quality, customer support / timely firmware updates etc.

The only real thing against the cheaper BDP-80 compared to the comparable Panasonic is that it doesn't do 1080p24 for DVD, only 1080p60.

# ¿ May 5, 2010 00:54

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 05:08

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

Noxville posted:

Sucks that they're still encoding things at 25fps though, I don't understand the point of that since HDTVs can handle 24fps no problem.

It's cheaper for the local distributor to use the 25fps master they already have for DVD and HD-broadcast, rather than obtaining a 24fps version solely for the Blu-Ray.

Which is also why 1080i releases tend to be solely confined to discs that have yet to be released in the US, and/or titles with more complex distribution rights than <local division of Fox/Sony>.

So there can either be an issue with availability of a 1080p24, or it can just be a case of saving money -- look at Village Roadshow making GBS threads out a Region B 1080i Pulp Fiction, as opposed to France, Denmark and Sweden releasing 1080p versions (and they're all PAL markets).

There's nothing stopping them converting a 25fps master back to 24fps, but that still has a cost, and then you end up with weird poo poo like those Studio Canal discs that play at 1080p24 but have stretched audio tracks that somehow have PAL-pitched vocals at NTSC-speed.

frumpsnake fucked around with this message at 07:51 on Jun 9, 2010

# ¿ Jun 9, 2010 07:39

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

doctor thodt posted:

Both of these releases will be region B-locked

It's, what, 25 bucks for a plug-in modchip for a $289 Oppo BDP-80?

# ¿ Jun 17, 2010 01:26

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

Some more Predator screens if you hate yourself.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=18800239#post18800239

# ¿ Jun 20, 2010 09:51

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

What the hell is with the US cover???

# ¿ Jul 4, 2010 01:17

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

According to The Digital Bits, Paramount have announced an exchange program for Gladiator, complete with a contradictory PR-speak bullshit response:

quote:

"We are implementing a limited exchange program. This program is only for those consumers that may have preferential issues with some of the technical DVNR (digital video noise reduction) and EE (edge enhancement) choices made in the original source transfer, and so would prefer to exchange it for one that addresses those preferences in a different manner.

While the version that we originally distributed was of the highest quality, some enthusiasts may prefer to view it without the Edge Enhancement and DVNR implemented as standard process in bringing the film to hi-def. This new master resolves those issues."

Can't they just admit it was a loving piece of poo poo?

# ¿ Jul 21, 2010 02:59

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

City of God? Oh gently caress yes.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2010 00:16

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

US release is region free. Just get it on Amazon.
http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/Details.php?ifb=Memento_43396154162

Not a great disc. Decent DVD upgrade though.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2010 01:09

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

Egbert Souse posted:

Storaro apparently shot The Last Emperor with cropping in mind, unlike Apocalypse Now. The BluRay looks amazing and the framing never looked "off", but I might be wrong.

The 2.35 Gaumont shots on DVDBeaver look a lot better to me in terms of shot composition. It's a pity, because the Blu-Ray is quite an improvement in all other areas.
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompare/lastemperor.htm

frumpsnake fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Jul 29, 2010

# ¿ Jul 29, 2010 02:16

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

A few f-bombs can't save it from the lovely plot full of every Hollywood computer cliche and horrible villain. It can also get rather distracting when 90% of the swearing happens when there are no lips visible.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2010 05:34

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

gently caress me. Aliens looks amazing.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2010 15:10

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

I think Spider-Man's disc size was about 32GB, so there's probably enough room to include the extras and just recycle the transfer...

# ¿ Sep 12, 2010 16:44

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

In surprising news, Amazon UK cancelled my �8.49 order for "Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series [Blu-ray] [2009]"

# ¿ Sep 13, 2010 14:16

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

doctor thodt posted:

It's pretty crazy that they managed to squeeze over 5 hours of 1080p video onto a single BD-50 and still have it look as good as it does. Bravo, Criterion.

The main feature takes up 37GB of the disc. Remember the days of HD-DVD when many people would argue 30GB was plenty?

# ¿ Sep 13, 2010 21:30

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

To clarify, I agree with you -- I was referring to a number of people sperging on other forums and arguing that Criterion should have added a second disc because the bitrate is just too low. Bullshit.

My point was that you can get a full "HD-DVD quailty" 30GB feature on a BD-50 and still have 2/3rds of that left over for the extras. Lower the quality on the extras and you can go further. It shouldn't be that much of a surprise that you can fit 5 of HD video that looks good, especially with ever-improving encoders.

frumpsnake fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Sep 13, 2010

# ¿ Sep 13, 2010 21:38

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

RichterIX posted:

I've been thinking about importing, but I'm having a hard time finding reliable info on which countries have region-free releases and how they compare to the US in picture quality.

Get the UK copy. Picture quality is largely the same between versions (~20mbps H.264 on the UK+Sweden, 22mbps VC-1 on the US) but the UK has 24-bit DTS-HD MA and commentary.

frumpsnake fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Sep 15, 2010

# ¿ Sep 15, 2010 22:06

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

Discount Viscount posted:

Looking forward to popping in Disc 2 and seeing the Intermission 5 minutes in again

Looks like it's a 1-disc Blu-Ray. Knowing Warner, it wouldn't surprise me if its 4 hours of movie fit into an old 30GB HD-DVD encode.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2010 15:09

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

The discs are indeed identical.

Amazon UK is the series runtime. Amazon US is the series + two featurettes runtime.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2010 20:38

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

To be honest, I'd look at purchasing a region modded Panasonic. I think a BD60 goes for about 250 on eBay, and since its a hardware mod they can't patch it out with firmware updates. The Oppo BDP-80 was a good choice for modding since it was cheap and you could just buy a plugin mod and do it yourself, but right now Oppo aren't selling any BDP-80 or BDP-83s.

The no-name region free out of the box players get the job done, but if the Momitsu (and its clones) have apparently blocked region changing in latest firmwares, then yes, you would be s.o.l. if you needed to update.

When it comes to Region B units, it IS possible that it'll output a 50Hz signal by default during setup menus, etc, even though 99.9% of Blu-Rays will be 60Hz. My Samsung did, my Panasonic didn't.

Unlike most UK Blu-Rays, UK DVDs will all be 50Hz. Whether or not the player converts this to 60Hz depends on the model, but they usually have PAL/NTSC options for DVD at least, but I'm not sure how it'd handle a 1080i50 Blu-Ray when set to NTSC mode.

frumpsnake fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Oct 3, 2010

# ¿ Oct 3, 2010 01:23

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

There was bad language in Avatar? :confused:

Is there a "family video track" where they resolve their differences with a hug?

# ¿ Oct 5, 2010 18:00

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

Joe Der Maus posted:

Is anyone else bothered by the fact that Criterion cropped the image on Paths of Glory? I admit that is still looks good, but I expected them to keep it in the original aspect ratio.

1.66:1 is the original aspect ratio. It was opened to 1.33:1 for home video.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2010 03:24

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

Yeah, it's kinda obviously just an old master with a bunch of DNR and sharpening in places

# ¿ Oct 15, 2010 19:42

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

Sporadic posted:

Now is that the transfer or the way it was shot? Alot of 80s movies were shot very soft.

- edit The review touches on it.

I'm not buying it when I see examples like this.
http://comparescreenshots.slicx.com/comparison/85377/picture:7

# ¿ Oct 15, 2010 23:40

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

I like it, but not enough to pay $40 more than the UK copy.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2010 21:53

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

Alien Anthology is region free, yes. Basically it comes down to paying $95 for better packaging vs. $55 for the UK release.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2010 02:29

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

I think there's a big, big difference between AVSForum sperging that sparks/arrows/whatever have disappeared from a screenshot, and multiple screenshots demonstrating , at least at certain times, DNR and/or excessive sharpening.

I don't know where the Canal+ screenshots have disappeared to but you could basically just mimic the Blu-Ray by adding Remove Scratches/Gaussian Blur and Unsharp Mask filters in Photoshop.

It's not a disaster, it even looks good at times. But it could have been much, much better.

GonSmithe posted:

This was the first screenshot I looked at, and I said "How can anyone NOT think this is wrong?"

I think both the clothing and the face in this one demonstrate the problems pretty well.

http://www.imagebam.com/image/5bee0a103448938
http://www.imagebam.com/image/5bb05c103448535

frumpsnake fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Oct 23, 2010

# ¿ Oct 23, 2010 23:12

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

For those on the fence about the much cheaper UK Alien Anthology:

# ¿ Oct 24, 2010 17:20

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

Red posted:

Why wouldn't they offer a single Blu-Ray with both versions... ?

The European release has both versions (not seamlessly branched, the whole film is colour timed differently) with VC1/TrueHD on a BD-50. It's region free and pretty cheap.

The US disc was single layered MPEG-2 with lossy audio. Be glad they didn't try to fit both cuts on.

Red posted:

The only film I can think of off the top of my head that has a better Extended Cut than Theatrical is The Abyss, which isn't exactly a great movie anyway.

I dunno, I'd argue that Aliens*, T2 and The Abyss all play better in their long form. Kingdom of Heaven, Blade Runner, and Brazil are obvious choices, and I'd throw in Leon, Amadeus and Almost Famous.

*The colonist scenes at the beginning aren't the best introduction, but the rest of the extensions make it worth it.

frumpsnake fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Oct 25, 2010

# ¿ Oct 25, 2010 19:08

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

No major studio Region B Blu-Rays use PAL, especially simultaneous global releases.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2010 01:35

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

I never saw the film theatrically but...

Click here for the full 960x1080 image.

frumpsnake fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Oct 31, 2010

# ¿ Oct 31, 2010 22:15

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

Blu-Ray shot from DVDTalk vs Apple trailer.

I initially didn't see any differences until I saw that shot, some of the others seem about the same, so who knows if the Apple trailer reflects the theatrical presentation or not.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2010 22:58

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

Neo_Reloaded posted:

Trailers are not representative of the final film. Regardless of whether or not there is a problem with the BD, the iTunes trailer is not going to be the smoking gun that lets us know.

Of course. Trailers can be unfinished, different takes, non-final, whatever. It could even be the trailer that the reviewer was "remembering" as being brighter and more vibrant. I haven't seen the Blu-Ray nor the film at all, but I presume it's what the reviewer was bitching about. I don't see anything "wrong", just different.

Trailer:

Click here for the full 1920x1080 image.

Blu-Ray:

Click here for the full 1920x1080 image.

frumpsnake fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Nov 1, 2010

# ¿ Nov 1, 2010 00:02

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

Lethal Weapon Old vs. New.
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/2439/picture:0

One step forward, two steps back...

# ¿ Nov 8, 2010 16:17

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

Ur Getting Fatter posted:

So are the cases for the Amazon UK Alien Ahtnology just universally lovely or did I get a bad batch? 3 out of the 6 discs were completely loose, the plastic thingies that hold the discs had snapped.

Mine were fine.

Amazon are usually fantastic with their customer service even for international orderers, so I hope your replacement goes well.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2010 00:41

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

Bambi posted:

Gary at DVDBeaver recommends the Sherwood BDP-5004, which is a clone of the Momitsu BDP-899 he uses for his reviews. While I've never personally used one (I have an Oppo which costs quite a bit more), I've heard great things from people who own them, and they are very affordable.

Didn't either the Sherwood or the Momitsu kill region-free playback with a firmware update? That could be a problem when you run into a disc which requires a newer firmware.

It's a bit more expensive, but I had a region-modded Panasonic back home.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2010 03:26

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

doctor thodt posted:

I've heard that the Polish and Danish releases of Pulp Fiction are the best available (progressive, dual layered and region free) but I haven't seen either one.

I have the Danish. It's good quality and cheap and 1080p24. (the Australian is 25p@1080i50). "Only" thing wrong with the French is forced French subtitles.

frumpsnake fucked around with this message at 16:03 on Nov 18, 2010

# ¿ Nov 18, 2010 15:55

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

Bambi posted:

Haven't heard about this, but that's a risk with any player that isn't hardware-modded to be region free (hence why I got the Oppo). But yeah definitely don't update the firmware until you get an answer on this.

Yeah, looks like it was the Sherwood:

http://forum.blu-ray.com/blu-ray-players-recorders/133684-sherwood-bdp-5004-a-2.html

quote:

If you buy the Sherwood BDP-5004 ... you could easily return it if it has the new firmware that does not allow BD region switching. Otherwise you could order a Momitsu BDP-799

# ¿ Nov 18, 2010 16:01

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

E.J.Olmos posted:

Battlestar Galactica Complete Series is �69.97 on Amazon.co.uk

Dunno if that is a recent price drop but it's �20 cheaper than the same set on .com ($150)

They remove VAT for non-UK residents, so its about $97 shipped to the US/Canada.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2010 23:22

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

Wow, the Fox version of The Leopard absolutely obliterates the Criterion release. (which of course got full marks for video quality from many 'reviewers' because it's an old film AND a Criterion)

http://blubrew.com/2010/12/04/the-leopard-blu-ray-comparison/

Thank Mr. Scorsese for this one.

frumpsnake fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Dec 4, 2010

# ¿ Dec 4, 2010 20:52

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 05:08

frumpsnake: Jan 30, 2001; The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

Modian posted:

Granted the colors are definitely better but in most of the pictures the Criterion looks more detailed, especially in the shots with people in the distance. In the new ones a lot of the faces of faraway people are a blurry mess compared to the old version.

You really think that the blurry, haloey mess that is the guy on the right:

Is better than the new one?

Or that this

is better than this, where you can clearly discern individual fingers and facial features?

frumpsnake fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Dec 5, 2010

# ¿ Dec 5, 2010 01:57

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