Blu-ray's to miss thread

[Lyris]

DNR in a nutshell:

1. It's a process designed primarily for removing noise (electrical interference) from old VIDEO sources.

2. High Definition video has a high enough resolution to reproduce the grain crystals on a scanned Film. Film grain isn't electrical interference, it's different from noise but is often considered to be the same. It looks similar but occurs for a different reason.

3. Most people (through no fault of their own) are watching on uncalibrated TVs with high Sharpness and probably some Automatic noise reduction. This molotov cocktail of video crap processes the moving grain structure and changes it from a naturally occuring background effect into an annoyance.

4. Studios use noise reduction processes to reduce the film grain, often turning an otherwise nice-looking film into something resembling wax figures at Madame Tussaud's in the process. It looks ugly enough on a TV, but is just plain distracting to look at on a projector.

[dvdmike]

Now, I'm not a Blue ray owner but have thought about getting one but what's the point when they don't do the format justice? By the way, what does DNR mean? and why are some Blu-ray shipped with no extras? i mean, isn't that one of the main selling points? Better image and sound with more extras than you could shake a stick at?

Yakumo

The studios think that people want a grain free smooth HD video look, and 16mm-70mm film has natural grain that is inherent to the format.
They make the film look more like video to placate the masses that know no better, that are more than likely watching it thro scart anyway.

As for no extras, sometimes its a good thing as it can give the video room to breathe, other times its so you will buy your fave film twice when they re-release it with extra content

[JP]

I found Highlander to be good quality overall.

It's certainly not perfect and the audio mix terrible in places but one of the issues Mulcahy's work is that it's not unusual for him to film a shot and then crop the negative so that he may only have 50% or less of the original frame being shown.

Some of the optical affects in the film stand up very well to what I was expecting them to be but the combination of optical effects, night shots & cropped frames can result in an image that people aren't going to be happy with.

The transfer does an Ok job but the film itself, although enjoyable, is still a 5 minute '80s MTV video that is almost 2 hours longer than Mulcahy's directorial ability could handle.

[Yakumo]

Thanks for all the info on DNR processing, guys. Hmm. I'd love the idea of buying Blu-ray but I'm not keen on the way some studios/companies are using the DNR to make the image look more video like. Hmmmm......... Is there a whopping difference in the image quality compared to a quality upscale DVD? My Pioneer DVD player can upscale to 1080i which looks very nice on some movies. I know Blu-Ray can be 1080p but does it really make a great deal of difference?

Yakumo

[cutmymilk]

It depends on your TV and whether you care tbh. I buy blu rays but still watch xvids and normal DVDs. For me the extra detail is nice but not essential, yet.

As you seem content with wii graphics and old school stuff anyway maybe you fall into the couldn't care category as well.

[Lyris]

Thanks for all the info on DNR processing, guys. Hmm. I'd love the idea of buying Blu-ray but I'm not keen on the way some studios/companies are using the DNR to make the image look more video like. Hmmmm......... Is there a whopping difference in the image quality compared to a quality upscale DVD?

Yes, a huge difference. DVDs are low-pass filtered so are effectively BELOW standard definition resolution.

A real BD is much better than even the best scaling job.

[anephric]

I promised myself I wouldn't start rebuying everything on blu and that I'd be happy with upscaled DVD, but I find myself even rebuying schlock like Constantine because it looks like poop upscaled compared to the blu.

You might argue it looks like poop at any resolution, but hey.

[Leon Retro]

FWIW, I agree with DVDmike. Although none of those discs are unwatchably bad, there should be no concessions on this format. The Dark Knight is especially bizarre, given that there is (or was) a QuickTime HD trailer on the web that has more vertical detail.

With that said, I don't think there are any Blu-ray Discs that I would miss entirely, if I wanted to see a film. There's no better format.

There can be problems with Blu-ray discs, away from just being dodgy transfers. Robocop on blu-ray, is taken from an old dvd version that makes Robocop look blue instead of silver/grey. If you want to see Robocop looking silver/grey, you have to buy the Director's Edition DVD, which looks great.

I bet there are other films on blu-ray that have similar issues. Sometimes the DVD version is the one to go for and as much as some people now "Hate" DVD, the format can actually look good enough.

For people that aren't obsessive about technical details, I'd say the best DVDs can still be enjoyable on big screen lcds. I have blu-rays, but still buy DVDs of older films from the 80s, and I'm often impressed with DVD quality. I buy some that are crap, but.. they are rare and not a fault of the format, but down to a blatantly poor transfer from vhs.

When a blu-ray is done well, it destroys DVD, but.. quite a few blu-ray discs aren't great, and a few are actually worse than dvd for a variety of reasons. I will continue to buy and enjoy DVDs. Only films that I love and are said to be excellent on BD, will be joining my film collection.

Everyone should make sure they have a good dvd player. You'd be surprised at how crap a lot of players are. I have an Oppo that I bought at xmas, and it shows the best dvds in a very good light.