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Noiretirc wrote:At the risk of infuriating some of you, I clicked on those grabs, looked very carefully, and saw no "massive" increase in resolution anywhere. The lines and clicks were still there, the "fuzziness" was still there.

Well it would help if you knew what the term resolution meant.

A stupid example, but compare higher and lower resolution for images of the same size. The second one is 50% less resolution.

To illustrate my point, I have blown up the SD to BD size and taken just a portion of the frame for each of them. This is roughly the difference you would see between SD and BD on a 30" widescreen television screen:




Note the level of detail and range of color in her hair, as well as the compression artifacts (i.e. scattered blockiness) in the SD image.

Hmmmm....

Thanks folks. I'm really not trying to be a dick.

You really do need to see the Blu-ray in motion, though - frame grabs don't do it justice. Because you get a much clearer idea of the original grain structure, it "feels" like film in a way that the DVD doesn't (and can't) come near. It really is a very significantly different viewing experience.

Well, I've been prodding and probing you good folks here, and I've now become convinced. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Don't forget: for a lot of people the audio is the biggest change when moving from DVD to Blu-ray.

TMDaines wrote:

Noiretirc wrote:At the risk of infuriating some of you, I clicked on those grabs, looked very carefully, and saw no "massive" increase in resolution anywhere. The lines and clicks were still there, the "fuzziness" was still there.

Well it would help if you knew what the term resolution meant.

How can you expect him to, he hasn't got 'University' in his location.

TMDaines wrote:Don't forget: for a lot of people the audio is the biggest change when moving from DVD to Blu-ray.

I've never understood this, especially for from the perspective of the masses who don't have audio systems good enough to really take advantage of the upgrade. Don't get me wrong, I like uncompressed audio, I just think the PQ is the bigger deal

Wasn't sure where to post this, this seemed like as good a place as any: A delightful rant against, uh, teal and orange.

mfunk9786 wrote:Wasn't sure where to post this, this seemed like as good a place as any: A delightful rant against, uh, teal and orange.

Very timely, as it's something that has become really ubiquitous these days in particularly large budget features, but you see it a lot on microbudget web stuff, too (which is of course often aspiring to get that big budget Michael Bay look). It doesn't help that there's now a plugin that largely automates achieving the look! I use some of the company's other software, so I'm not attacking them, and actually the designer of Colorista & Mojo also linked to the teal and orange blog post approvingly.

I actually received a baby announcement yesterday from a friend, featuring (I wish I were making this up) a glowy orange baby on a teal blanket. It's even infecting our young!

TMDaines wrote:Looks like a great Baader Meinhof release:

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDRevie ... lu-ray.htm

My only question: English (SDH) subs only? The screenshots show no evidence of them being hard of hearing subs, but if they are, why?! I hope this is just a mistake from Beaver as it looks like an otherwise great release.

There are onlly English subs, and they aren't hard of hearing subs....just the dialog.

But the release is incredible, and so far top release of the year for me. the film looks amazing and there seems to be close to 3 hours of extras. My only quibble is what i've watched so far of the supplements there isn't enough historical background for my liking. Such a fascinating story, it would have been good to get more context, particularly the aftermath - what happens after the film ends?

But it is otherwise exhaustive, and is a first rate treatment for an incredible film. I saw this at a festival last summer, and it was just as good as I recalled from that experience. It doesn't seek to glorify them in any way, shape or form, nor does it fall prey to the simplistic American tendencies towards blanket moralism....it was refreshingly unromantic and straightforward in simply rehashing the terror and chaos of the period. though it clocks in at 2 1/2 hours already, some recognition of the Stasi connections we now know exist would have made it even better.

It would make a great double bill with Barbet Schroeder's Terror's Advocate, which traces the history of European terrorism from its Algerian roots (where the terrorists were widely seen as fighting for a noble cause, albeit somewhat mythologised by the likes of The Battle of Algiers) to the far murkier activities of Baader-Meinhof and the Red Brigades.

Great. I'll import it as soon as I see a price drop.

TMDaines wrote:Great. I'll import it as soon as I see a price drop.

The price dropped on Amazon.com. O:)

Psycho now has a Blu-ray page with pricing on Amazon. Which... might not mean anything, considering Taxi Driver has had one since last fall.

Glad you pointed that out, I also see that SHOWGIRLS will be coming next month.

Flike wrote:Psycho now has a Blu-ray page with pricing on Amazon. Which... might not mean anything, considering Taxi Driver has had one since last fall.

50th Anniversary is coming and Universal hinted for a Blu-ray release quite a long time ago actually.

A bit surprised that they're prepping this for 1080p so soon after the Legacy disc which was my third purchase of Psycho on DVD (first the UK disc, then the R1). Unlike Vertigo, this won't be an instant buy but on the other hand, if B&N were to include it in their 2011 autumn sale... What concerns me more immediately is whether Universal have made Carlito's Way look as good as it can on Blu for the release later this month [-o<

Does anyone have any information on the Australian Blu-Ray release of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly? It seems like it was released last month, but I can't find any reviews or region coding information.

Doesn't sound too promising (blu-ray.com thread):

"This is one of the worst Blu-ray discs I ever bought. It's just an upconvert from a standard definition source. It doesn't look any better than my German DVD. "

Mr Finch wrote:What concerns me more immediately is whether Universal have made Carlito's Way look as good as it can on Blu for the release later this month [-o<

I would expect it to be an identical HD-DVD port at best, or a extra-DNR-ed version of the HD-DVD transfer as worst. That seems to be what Universal is doing with most of their catch-up titles.

fdm wrote:Doesn't sound too promising (blu-ray.com thread):

"This is one of the worst Blu-ray discs I ever bought. It's just an upconvert from a standard definition source. It doesn't look any better than my German DVD. "

Thanks for finding that! I'm still oh so curious about it, the Amelie and Hard Candy BDs look so good - I don't know how this of all films could go so wrong.