>>The inexorable forward march of consumerism doesn’t perforce mean it’s a good thing, and should not be resisted, does it?<<
True, but I won’t complain when that technology brings us closer and closer to theatrical quality. Not that Blu-Ray is the savior of mankind or anything, but I’ll gladly take the 400 Blows in beautiful 1080p if I’m able. The problem is not with the technology, they just need to work harder on getting better films released for it.
@ Cinematic Cteve :
A great comparison of all the releases of North By Northwest:
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompare5/northbynorthwest.htm
@Ari They can be cool. The Dark Knight and Watchmen both had community screenings planned, where Nolan and Snyder (respectively) hosted the screening, and you could join in at any time. You could ask questions beforehand or during the screening, and they would answer them through text onscreen. I thoroughly enjoyed both.
I’m a huge fan of Blu-ray in general, and have a pretty decent collection building up (about 80 releases). This thread is pretty stupid though, as Jasper obviously doesn’t know what the hell he is talking about.
David is right.
BD is B.S.
35mm film is NOT made up of dots. The image covers all of the 35mm of film. If projected correctly on an appropriate scree, a 35mm film wil best ANY AND ALL dvds or B.S. bds.
As for the bd of “GWTW,” it doesn’t approach what “GWTW” looked like when it was released. How do I know. Because in the 1970s I saw at the FILMEX the first reel Selznick’s pristine personal print. I was stunned. The colors were yes, bright and clear, but not overly glossy, just natural. It had an illusion of depth. When the highly touted new “good as the original” was released some 15 years ago, I couldn’t wait to see the whole as pristine as Selznick’s print.
Need I say this restoration wasn’t even close. Too dark, where it should have been bright. Too bright, where should have been muted. Major disappointment.
“The Searchers—Why an at least passable dvd of this doesn’t exist is beyond me. I’ve heard something about problems getting the Vista Vision format on dvd. I don’t buy it.
When I lived in L.A. I saw “The Searchers” several times at LACMA. Always great prints, well projected. The first I saw it there Winton Hoch was present and Hank Worden. Then ads proclaimed a “restored” 35-mm print. Went. MERDE. Way too dark. How in the hell could it look so bad. Restoration?
Surely we owe it to an artist like Hoch a truly fine restoration of this—his greatest cinematography not the inept, tawdry current dvd and bd versions. This really is akin to mutilating the “Mona Lisa.”
I’m going to post more on “The Searchers” and a screening of it I saw as part of Warner-Bros. 75th Anniversary celebration at Manns Chinese.
Contrary:
The resolution of 35mm film IS higher than blu-ray. But it’s a little difficult for most people to install 35 mm projectors in their homes. A good friend of mine has one though and we’ve done many comparisons. In most cases, the blu-rays win, hands down. Unless you have a pristine print of the film, it’s an unfair fight between the two. Now, a blu-ray is only going to look good if it’s from a good print of film. If you say that restorations of films aren’t as good as the originals, then you can’t blame that on blu-rays.
It’s interesting that you mention The Searchers because you won’t find a better way to seee this film than blu-ray. It may not match the original 35mm film when it came out, but no other format has come as close. Please don’t forget that we are talking about watching these movies AT HOME not in a theatre.
“Please don’t forget that we are talking about watching these movies AT HOME not in a theatre.”
Perhaps this is the problem. Blu-Ray with surround sound and huge flatscreens invite the illusion of being a substitute for film. The extreme technophiles I know who have invested heavily in their home theater setups are also people who don’t go to actual movies anymore because they believe they have invested in a reasonable facsimile of the experience. This is sad.
My first double-post!
I originally read this topic as a rather ignorant abbreviation of “Blu-Ray is kinda bullshit … as an alternative to DVD.” I think this has been successfully refuted. BY SCIENCE.
So now is this thread now about comparing Blu-Ray viewing to theater viewing? Like, “Blu-Ray is kinda bullshit… as an alternative to seeing the movie in a theater”? If so, let’s read it this way, and be as specific as possible: “Watching movies at home, or anywhere besides at a cinema with a classic 35mm film projector, is kinda bullshit.”
I think that topic is actually better-served by other threads, like this one:
Should films only be watched from a large screen in a theatre?
Which I’ve bumped.
35mm film emulsion is indeed made up of dots, the are called grains, and depending on how fine these grains are determines the resolution of the film. They are irregularly sized, and irregularly spaced, but film does indeed have a resolution. Stop mouthing off if you don’t know squat, please.
I’d love it if this forum could refrain from technical discussion. The vast majority of posters here are incredibly misinformed on the subject of blu-ray, particularly the OP.
Blu is better than DVD in every way, except for the cost of admission.
Blu/HD doesn’t make things look glossy, contrasty, or over-saturated - over-processing in post production and bad restoration does that. Choose your studios wisely.
Blu doesn’t create that gooey motion — 240 Hz TVs do. Turn off the setting, or buy the right TV.
1920×1080 still doesn’t come close to the resolution of film. 2k? 4k? Closer.
If you have the right equipment and calibrate it properly, your experience will be much more film-like than DVD.
Can we just talk about films, please?
Come to think of it, I don’t even know if Blu-Ray is compatible with the 20" Zenith wooden console TV I’ve been operating with for the last 4 or 5 years.
-
I do have a 42" HD 1080P which I recenly got hooked up to a “beginner” all-in-one surround sound. I don’t have blu-ray nor do I expect to get one soon. A main reason is definitely price. First I’d have to invest in a blu-ray player which, I know, I can get for cheap now but would rather not deal with. Second, I would have to invest in restarting my DVD collection. And how I don’t want to do that. Both my TV and DVD player upconvert and so far they look great. I have watched a bunch of movies on IFC HD and TCM HD as well, last night being treated to The Last Metro. The quality of the HD programs are superb and I know, only 1080i, but I really don’t see a big difference. Also, for me Blu-Ray is great for say The Dark Knight or a newer digitally shot film, but for La Dolce Vita or Wild Strawberries I’m completely content with my DVDs.
I do agree Blu-Ray offers better quality but like everything else there are many factors. First the print, then the restoration, then your system set up. However at it’s peak it is by far better than DVD. That doesn’t mean we should all replace our DVDs with Blu-Ray. Another point to consider is that we are all moving digitally. Already iTunes is offering downloads in HD. I think it’s safe to say that Blu-Ray isn’t the future, but digital definitely is. Something like Apple TV hasn’t taken off because it was introduced to early. We are all still caught up in the physical product. While I will lament the loss of a physical disc as a collector and supporter of local indie shops, like the music industry, film is moving towards this medium.
Just look at Rhino Records, what is basically a Criterion-like label for music. They recently opened a digital shop where you can download records in the highest quality MP3 or uncompressed FLAC. I think it’s safe to say Criterion will eventually offer films to download in HD quality in the not too distant future.
So as for Blu-Ray being bullshit. It’s not. It’s great quality, but in my opinion it isn’t a million light years ahead of the DVD, especially with all the upscaling capabilities we have and I don’t think it’s a great investment to replace your entire library because once you do digital will be taking over from Blu Ray. Just my 2 cents…
I dont understand why people seem to think they need to replace their entire DVD collection when they buy a blu-ray player. I simply see my blu-ray collection as a subsidiary of sorts to my regular DVD collection, and complimentary rather than superceding the collection I already own.
Martin:
A couple points I’d like to make.The HD you are downloading and watching on tv is nowhere near the resolution of a blu-ray disc. There is so much compression on those digital files that they don’t look much better than standard def dvds. The average blu-ray disc has up to 50GB of information stored on it for a movie. How long would it take to stream or download that? Over the air live television has much less compression and looks a hell of a lot better, but still not as sharp as hi-def from a disc. You may be right in that Criterion will offer HD films to download, but you can’t compare music files to movie files. Even FLAC files are tiny compared to a decent hi-def movie. Until the infrastructure of the internet changes, movies will be highly compressed and look no better than regular dvds, IF they look that good. Bandwidth availability is the internet’s enemy and it’s getting eaten up by every type of business online, not just the movie and tv business. Whoever figures out a way to get that kind of information into people’s homes as fast as you would need to watch anything of blu-ray quality is going to be a very rich person.
Strawdawg you definitely make some good points. I agree with the bandwith issues and that Blu-Ray trumps downloadable HD movies at the moment, but I do think that the future of media is digital files. Maybe it’s streaming or maybe itll be a downloadable file onto a device. I don’t know. However I did just read an article (forgive me I forget where) that detailed how movie studios are in the process of creating a one-size-fits-all digital file for movies. They want to be able to have one digital file instead of one for iTunes, one for Amazon, etc. As behind as the industry is, they understand the future is in digital. Am I happy with this? I don’t know, but my bookshelfs will be.
There is a dichotomy in the moving towards digital and the internet companies tightening the squeeze on our bandwith. However, I do see the future in digital, even if it is 10 years away before we can have blu-ray quality in that realm. I’m just saying Blu-Ray is not th end all be all. There will always be something else and it sucks for us collectors. I may upgrade to Blu-Ray and while that doesn’t necessitate me having to repurchase all my DVDs, it kinda makes sense doesn’t it? Otherwise what’s the point.
On another note, how much I wished i did have a BR yesterday when Amazon accidentally sent me the (more expensive) Moon BR instead of DVD. How sad that I have 1080p and having to tell Amazon I needed the more inferior and cheaper version…Still my DVDs look fantastic compared to my CRT TV. Even watching BBC’s Black Books, I saw too many pores…
It will be quite some time before the quality of any streaming video catches up to the data rate of BD.
i just feel that there are some movies that blu-ray ruins, whether it be seeing actors make-up or poor special effects looking even worse. I just dont feel like every movie you watch should be as realistic looking as possible.
I’m sorry I’m not very well educated when it comes to the the technicality of film. But I have watched a lot of movies and I know what I like. I’ve seen a few films on blu-ray and all I can say is that it shows too much of the film. There’s too much clarity. I find it very distracting when I am trying to watch a meaningful part of a film and all I can focus on is how I can count every single hair on brad pitts beard!
I guess I dont see moving from dvd to blu-ray as drastic as a step as it was from vhs to dvd. dvd was a necessary step beacuse with vhs almost every release was full screen and dvd started preserving the original aspect ratio of the films.
I guess it just comes down to me being destracted by the quality of blu-ray. And I don’t like being destracted during a film or going into a film focusing too much on how the picture looks or the audio is. I just want to sit down and enjoy myself without all the style being shoved in my face.
Jasper, please stop posting just any old nonsense that comes to mind. You are either Trolling or have lost your mind, or both.
Alright, just a few thoughts…
First, I want to congratulate Claus Harding, Zot!, and Strawdawg. All three of you have hit points that needed to be made in this thread.
This is not at all to be condescending, but there is some obvious misinformation in film as technology progresses, and this seems to be the point of contention in this thread.
First, let’s talk about the theater and 35mm film. The vast majority of theatrical films shown in the United States have been shot on 35mm film. Claus and Zot! are right, 35mm film is indeed more resolution than Blu-Ray and DVD. This is not really indicative of the theatrical experience, though. Depending on the film stock, grain, and even exposure of a scene, the average range of “resolution” for 35mm film is about 3k-3.5k resolution. When research first began on digital conversion of 35mm film, Kodak (obviously one of the main film stock companies for feature filmmaking) decided that in order to preserve the full quality of 35mm film, you would need to scan 35mm film in at least 4k. This doesn’t mean 35mm film is in fact 4k, but you will be safe capturing the 3k-3.5k of normal 35mm film in an uncompressed 4k DPX file. So yes, the original production stock will be over the 1080p resolution of Blu-Ray. However, after color grading, film manipulation, and the most compromising stage of all (the multitudes of theatrical film prints), what you are ACTUALLY seeing (depending on the care and time period of the film) on the big screen when you are munching on your popcorn is much lower: EVEN AS LOW AS LESS THAN 1080 LINES OF RESOLUTION (1080p, for those who do not know). So if you are watching a film print in a theater, YOU ARE NOT WATCHING a 3k-3.5k 35mm print!
Studios and distribution companies have known about this issue for decades, so when the digital age of filmmaking began, there were some new standards. When features first started doing DIs (Digital Intermediates: The process of scanning 35mm film in order to manipulate the feature electronically, with the intent to either print back out to film, edit digitally and conform the EDL to the film stock, or to export as DPX files for digital theatrical distribution), formats and resolutions had to be decided upon at this point. Since 4K digital scans were taxing (i.e. not really technologically feasible or economical), and the final film print for theatrical distribution contained resolutions around or lower than a 1080p equivalent, the 2K DI standard was applied. When scanning in the original 35mm film (the 3k-3.5k kind), though you lose some resolution in that process (3k-3.5k down to 2k), they knew the end result of theatrical film prints were less than 1080p in the first place, so a 2k scan doesn’t really change the end result. Just so you have an example, Lord of the Rings was shot on 35mm film, and the entire trilogy was scanned in AT 2k RESOLUTION, and printed BACK OUT TO FILM. WHEN YOU SAW LotR IN THEATERS, YOU WERE SEEING A FILM PRINT OFF A 2k SCAN, THEREFORE YOU WERE SEEING LESS THAN 2k WORTH OF RESOLUTION IN THE THEATERS.
I need to pause for a moment to comment on Joseph Lutz’s post: “1920×1080 still doesn’t come close to the resolution of film. 2k? 4k? Closer.”
I think you are misunderstanding your resolutions. Television resolutions measure the vertical height of an image, film standards measure in horizontal resolutions.
1080p: 1920 × 1080
2k: 2048 × 1080
2k has the exact same height as 1080p, it is just a few pixelss squared longer. As for 4k, I have already explained above what resolutions you are actually seeing in theaters.
After talking about theatrical showings of film prints, we can now talk about theatrical showings of digital films. With digital projection, instead of taking in the scanned in 2k DI of 35mm film (or 4k, 2k, 1080p digital prints from films shot digitally) and printing this feature on 35mm film (which will give you a loss of quality), ditigal projectors can display these 2k DPX files natively (i.e. no loss of quality). The 2k digital projection of a scanned in 2k DI is EXACTLY what the studios have. If you are watching a 2k digital projection, you are seeing the film as it was intended for films that go through a DI process. W00t!
So where does this leave Blu-ray? Blu-Ray has a maximum resolution of 1920 × 1080 (1080p). Though this resolution is less than 2k, it is only 7% less resolution than what you would see in theaters IF YOU WERE WATCHING A DIGITAL PROJECTION OF A 2K FILM. The resolution is VERY close to that of a 2k DPX file, and in some clases, may be more resoltution than 35mm prints. In short, Blu-Ray provides an experience VERY CLOSE to what you would see in theaters on a RESOLUTION level if all things (and equipment to present it) are equal. The real differences between the Blu-Ray format and what you see in theaters is compression. The compression of Blu-Rays, though it is absolutely amazing, is still not uncompressed video. This is why in my opinion, though you cannot get a visually equitable or superior image from Blu-Ray versus the theater, what you are getting is VERY DAMN CLOSE.
This leads me to my next point that hasn’t been hit on at all here: audio. Since Blu-Ray discs have so much storage, though they cannot store uncompressed video, they CAN store lossless audio. That’s right, you can get REFERENCE QUALITY AUDIO from Blu-Rays: the same quality you get in theaters. This feature alone gives the end user an experience similar to the thaters.
So what’s the verdict? Blu-Rays give you very close to reference quality video, and definitely provide reference quality audio, the problem is that the format is slightly ahead of it’s hardware counterparts. In my opinion, if you were to play a Blu-Ray disc on the same equipment that you have in the theater (including $30,000 2k Christie digital projectors), you would have an experience VERY CLOSE to what you would expect to see in theaters…so close you may not notice the difference.
Some words of advice and further comments….
Not all Blu-Rays are created equal. Some Blu-Ray transfers are poorly done (or even worse, some just use the same master they used for the DVD which could be good or bad depending on when and hwo itwas done), so you need to look at reviews of the Blu-Ray discs before buying. If not, you could get a Blu-Ray that looks like a DVD. Also, if you aren’t noticing the difference, you probably don’t have the correct equipment or incorrect placement in respect to the image. HDTV’s that are less than 50 inches will not give you the full effect of 1080p. Also, if you are sitting too far away, you will not notice the difference. Most people are watching Blu-Rays on HDTVs that are 32 inches, and sitting 10 ft away (I am even guilty of this, but it is all I have right now. At least I have the 7.2 surround sound setup that will play the lossless audio…makes all the difference in the world).
Until 4k digital projection and beyond is commonplace…
Is Blu-Ray worth the price and is it important to everyone? That just depends on the person. Is Blu-Ray bullshit? I think not, Jasper.
Until 4k digital projection and beyond is commonplace…
For whom?
For theater goers. There are a handful of 4K projectors in theaters right now, and is the direction I think theaters will go.
For theaters, yes. And the small minority of hedge fund managers who will think it’s just a blast, dude, getting a hook up of their own.
Hey, if everyone were a hedge fund manager, everyone would have 4k digital projection – that’s all I’m sayin
just lit up a ’gansett !
That’s just technological development. Its stupid to call it unnecessary – it’s beyond that. Just a new definition…
and after that long, complex, technical, yet wonderful exposition on the beauties of technology, i still learned that often enough, blu-ray is no better than a regular old dvd.
lol
Yes, Bobby for you it is.
hey, you can argue against my opinion all you want. the point of the matter is, i know blu-ray. ive seen it with my own two eyes on a superb home system, projected on a screen and projected through a monitor. ive done side by side comparisons with dvd. at the end of the day, my own two eyes told me “its not that impressive, and often strange-looking.” all the compression/ratio/filter/resolution/referent numbers in the world wont change what my eyes are showing me. maybe the argument should be moved to the level of the quality of my prescription glasses.
Ari
Does anyone actually use those “interactive” features on Blu-Ray? Seems like a total joke to me. And, yes, I can maybe detect a marginal improvement in quality with blu-ray but, quite frankly, I am not such a technological obsessive to care that much.