I recorded Wintalkers on DVHS a while back on Showtime HD shown on Dish. I compared the tape to BluRay and the Showtime is both sharper and has very very little edge enhancement. The Blu-Ray shows considerable edge enhancement that is very bothersome. It is most visible on text. I can't believe that my Showtime HD recording looks better than this title on Blu-Ray. :( I am viewing on a 92" screen by the way. Fox has their nerve charging such a high price this title.

Tom

I was about to disagree but I am watching it on a 40 inch screen.

I still think BD over all is a notch below what I get on OTA and Dish HD. That is my opinion anyways/ Flame away. :)

I still think BD over all is a notch below what I get on OTA and Dish HD. That is my opinion anyways/ Flame away. :)

Is that because of the black bars above and below on the BD titles that are gone on the full 16:9 Dish HD presentations? ;)

I did see a lot of earlier HD mpeg2 from satellite and cable at full 19Mbps CBR that were pretty good with a few macroblocks on heavy movement, but recent ones are pretty bad with much lower bitrates.
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Desperate Housewives and CSI:Miami in the earlier days are also very clear in details probably because they are shot direct to HD digital and doesn't involve an extra scan from film to digital like most movies have to do. Recently, they seem to also lower the bitrates of these programming as well.

I just received my copy and I will put it in ASAP... I hope it is not dissapointing! :eek:

I still think BD over all is a notch below what I get on OTA and Dish HD. That is my opinion anyways/ Flame away. :)

I won't flame, but if that is the case you truly have something wrong with your setup.

I still think BD over all is a notch below what I get on OTA and Dish HD. That is my opinion anyways/ Flame away. :)

I couldn't disagree with you more. After watching over 10 movies on my Panasonic BD, it has become very easy for me to see how Dish has severely degraded HD PQ from HDNet Movies, HBO, etc. And this is on a 50" Fujitsu plasma. I'd imagine the Dish degradation is even more apparent on a larger display.

You don't know what you don't know.....

You don't know what you don't know.....

That sounds like somethin' Confucius would say.... ;)

That sounds like somethin' Confucius would say.... ;)

And it's completely confusing.

The sony, mgm titles have been running 18 mbps mpeg-2 while dish hd is running at least 19.3+ mbps. Higher bitrate better picture.

Dish at 19mbs? Yeah right. 15 is pretty much the peak. Plus its one pass encoded, how can that compete with a professional encode job.

Windtalkers is "mediocre" on BD.After seeing it earlier on cable I also expected better.

After doung a bunch of a/b testing today, I found both versions to look almost the same. EE is a little less on the DVHS. I noticed today that the DVHS had higher light output so I turned the contrast up on the Panny a little to match the DVHS. After doing this, the disc's detail was at least as detailed as the tape if not slightly better. The lower light output had hidden some detail. Once this was corrected, details in the disc became visible.

It is depressing, however, that we even have to compare a $30 HD Disc to showtime HD :eek:

The sony, mgm titles have been running 18 mbps mpeg-2 while dish hd is running at least 19.3+ mbps. Higher bitrate better picture.


Huh?????? Dish at 19.3????? Where you been? Dish has cut rez to 1440 on most, if not all HD channels. They've cut bit rate. They're trying to degrade to the same degree that DirecTV is degrading. The more degradation, the fewer birds Dish needs to put up. It's all about the money. Do you really think Dish is sending you a full rez, full bitrate, HD signal?

well it was recorded "a while back", so maybe it was higher at that time?

That sounds like somethin' Confucius would say.... ;)Or Donald Rumsfeld.

I watched it tonight and was thoroughly pleased with it's overall presentation. I can't say anything for the Hi-def cable version but I thought this was one of the more striking Blu-ray discs I have watched. I'ts not perfect by any means...the dark scenes which thankfully are very few... are alive with crawlies, noise, and severe grain. It's almost like they just dropped the bit rate in those scenes intentionally to save room for the more important daytime scenes. I was not able to check the bit-rate during the night sequences as I had guests over...I will check and post any indifferences later.
Thankfully the overwhelming majority of the movie takes place in the daylight. This is where this disc shines and delivers. There is a tremendous amount of depth to the picture especially in the wide sweeping battle scenes. Details are great as well as color and contrast. There are some really, really good looking sequences in this movie and they definitely outweigh the negatives. I give a 4 out of 5 just because when they get it right they hit it out of the park.
Audio was also a REALLY big treat. Typical of big action war movies the soundtrack gives your surrounds a real workout. Explosions are crisp and have lots of little details with debris falling from explosions and the whizzing of bullets goin all around you. My only complaint was the lack of ooompph from the sub channel. I like my action movies with a lil more work from that area but once again the overall package delivers the goods on this one. Audio gets a 4 out of 5.

Viewed with Playstation 3 via HDMI with my new Sammy 61" DLP. :D

Or Donald Rumsfeld.
Ya, that's more like it. lol

Huh?????? Dish at 19.3????? Where you been? Dish has cut rez to 1440 on most, if not all HD channels.

Showtime is still 1920x1080 but as noted not 19.3 Mbps. The network feed from Showtime is not even near 19 Mbps.

The sony, mgm titles have been running 18 mbps mpeg-2 while dish hd is running at least 19.3+ mbps. Higher bitrate better picture.
The dish hd like all broadcast HD is CBR (constant bitrate, the 19.3 is both average and peak). Here in canada the bitrates for movies have definitely gone down way below 19 compared to say 3 yrs ago. There's also a lot more 1440x1080 now.

The highdef disks are VBR and the bitrates quoted are average. Take Superman Returns (not even one of the best VC-1 transfers), low of 200kbps, typically most scenes at 14Mbps, and then wham, you get 28Mbps peaks in quite a few places.

Went to the store to get this one yesterday since Amazon doesnt list this one, the store didnt have any either...

Well, that is my opion.... HD-DVD seems a notch above. I am making changes ot my system to be able to experiement a little more with it on my own system though.


I take my titles over to other owners homes and play them on their Panasonic and the other owner's PS3 and still see the same level of PQ. You know I should not include dish pe se, as what I use to compare is HD NFL over OTA. :) But HD-DVD still seems a notch above that to me on my sytstem.

as what I use to compare is HD NFL over OTA. :) But HD-DVD still seems a notch above that to me on my sytstem.

Are you comparing HD Video (sports, news, etc) versus film based HD transfers? If so, I don't see how you can come up with any valid conclusions.

Went to the store to get this one yesterday since Amazon doesnt list this one, the store didnt have any either...

I ordered a copy from DVD Empire last week. It should be here soon in an armored hum-vee..... ;)

Are you comparing HD Video (sports, news, etc) versus film based HD transfers? If so, I don't see how you can come up with any valid conclusions.


Well the valid conclusion is that HD-DVD is a notch above NFL HD on my system in my opinion and Bluray is a notch below once again in my opinion.

I understand the differences of Video -vs- Film I can assure you.

Watching this right now. I agree with the original poster it looked much better on showtime. Sound is awesome though. Good thing I couldn't find this at the store, thanks Netflix!!!

I compared Gone in 60 seconds on BD to a Comcast TNT-HD broadcast of it and it wasn't even close: BD wins by a long shot.

I would be really surprised if an HD broadcast is superior to BDs...

Me to. I will be doing an A/B comparison this weekend... Should be fun...

Showtime on Dish has never got more than 12 to 13 Mbps mpeg2, not in the same league as the 3 pre-recorded HD formats

Showtime HD on Dish is running around 9.5 to 10 Mbps mpeg2 average nowdays, it originates at around 14 Mbps mpeg2 from Showtime on C-Band

Fox's titles are way overpriced for what we are getting, mpeg2 at 18 Mbps for 1.85:1 flicks is not gonna cut it and Omen shows it pretty bad :(, 2.40:1 is better but not where it should be in bitrate at 18 Mbps, especially for 40$ films :mad:

-Gary

Fox's titles are way overpriced for what we are getting, mpeg2 at 18 Mbps for 1.85:1 flicks is not gonna cut it and Omen shows it pretty bad :(, 2.40:1 is better but not where it should be in bitrate at 18 Mbps, especially for 40$ films :mad:

I've thought just the same thing. Fox is taking their crummy little MPEG2 stuff for TV & DVD and shinning it up, a bit, for Blu-way. Does Fox think we're all gonna throw money at 'em? ...for mediocre product? :rolleyes:

I watched Windtalkers night before last and it didn't look remarkably better than how it looked on HD Net Movies. BTW, The Omen on BD had blurry backgrounds and looked bit-starved to me. Only the close-up's looked relatively good.

I'd heard Fox was gonna be this season's singing saviour and they'd come to the rescue with an all AVC. It looks like they've joined the let's cheap out and use MPEG2 crowd. I'm ready to just boycott MPEG2 myself......

Well Tears of the Sun looked great on MPEG2, I think its just the space that is wasted by it that makes it inefficient. It looks like the BR titles on VC-1 that are on BD25 have movies that are running a half hour longer then MPEG2 movies

Finally got to watch this one last night (110" screen) and I'd have to say I enjoyed it alot.

The color and detail in the battle scenes really stood out. The different shades of color in the fire balls when the bombs were dropped were excellent.

The sound (I had the volume very high) was also excellent, the first fighting scene opened up with machine gun fire that ricocheted all around the rooms surround sound system. It litterally had my son jumping out of his chair with his hands over his head which was only surpassed my myself who also jumped but I have p.t.s.d...

I'm sure reviewers/critics might have picked this one apart, it did have some occasional bad pq scenes but besides that I thought the overall picture was impressive.

Oh well I guess my taste differs then alot here because I definetly prefered this ones quality over Crank which everyone else seems to be raving about and although I thought it was a good clean transfer I didnt find it impressive.

I don't know about WT, but I can tell you I was very dissappointed that House of Flying Daggers trailer looked like crap and many confirmed the BD looked the same. It looked incredible when I HD DVRed it off Starz. The colors and detail were stunning, especially the opening scene with the drums. They must have really screwed the transfer.

I watched Windtalkers last nigtht on BD and thought it looked great. It's been way too long since I've seen it on cable to remember anything.

larry

Me to. I will be doing an A/B comparison this weekend... Should be fun...

Joe did you get a chance to make the comparison? I'm on the fence with this one and all input will be valid.

Thanks