Just glanced at their review. They gave the PQ and AQ pretty bad marks, which goes against most reviews I have seen and my own personal experience.

Disappointing, noisy transfer with soft detail and sunburned skin tones that would only be above-average in standard-def.

Personally I thought the transfer was very good and even identical to the BD. Thoughts?

EDIT - Can't link due to posting limits.

deception``

Who the hell is IGN?

They must have watched the SD DVD side, because there is no way this transfer is an 'above average' SD equivalent.

Who the hell is IGN?

Sorry for not specifying. IGN is a gaming/entertainment/movie website, mostly known for it's gaming reviews. Here's the link:

dvd(dot)ign(dot)com/articles/779/779807p1

deception``

http://dvd.ign.com/articles/779/779807p1.html

...and they're morons... :)

http://corp.ign.com/

IGN Entertainment, a unit of Fox Interactive Media, Inc.

You think a company owned by Fox (Blu-Ray supporter) is going to give favorable reviews of HD DVD?

http://corp.ign.com/



You think a company owned by Fox (Blu-Ray supporter) is going to give favorable reviews of HD DVD?

I don't think it's impossible. For the record, Rottentomatoes.com (also owned by Fox) has an HD DVD Movie Lovers guide on their front page.

deception``

I bet IGN watched the SD side.

http://corp.ign.com/



You think a company owned by Fox (Blu-Ray supporter) is going to give favorable reviews of HD DVD?

About time Fox even released something....

I bet IGN watched the SD side.

I'm just very confused as to how they arrived to this conclusion. Specifically, I wonder what their A/V setup was, and why the Blu-Ray version was not reviewed given that it uses the same master and encode as the HD DVD copy.

deception``

LOL, IGN watched the dvd side of the movie. Thats pretty damn stupid.

ya know....I always check out IGN for their gaming reviews.....I am disappointed at their ignorance and i am going to post on their forums and call them out.

I feel the same way about the picture quality. The movie looked nice but lacked detail. Then again the reason I watch anything in HD is for the detail so I'm not one to judge this film's quality.

Well, they gave Children of Men a 10, so atleast they got that right.

the blu-ray wasn't the best HD i'd ever seen. i kept wishing it looked a bit more defined. no idea how much of the softness was intentional or not though. glad to see someone's picked up on this. it really surprises me the transfers (or the look of some films) that get passed of as the next best thing in HD.

[120 inch projection screen BTW]

In places the HD-DVD did look quite bad. I'd give only 3.5 for quality. A lot scenes were very inconsistant.

Who the hell is IGN?

Who the hell are most reviews sites? A lot of freebies are offered if you pull in enough views. I use these sites as guide only.

There is no Bluray version of this movie guys just HD-DVD version. And the movie looks good but no great. IGN is nothing more than Blu-ray fanboys since they are owned by Fox.

Sorry guys I was thinking of Children of Men.

As for the difference between the two there is none.

I bet IGN watched the SD side.
LOL :D

I guess HighDefDigest needs their eyes testing :rolleyes:

http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/departed.html

And what rating did they give the BR version? Warner used the same encode so that would be a clear indicator if they are BR fanboys or not.

IGN?? Maybe they were trying to play it on their PS3?

Wow to funny, you'd think the younger generation could properly hook up and play a HDDVD but I guess not.
I played this for 7 of my buddies on a 8ft screen using a SXRD projector and of course a Toshiba HDDVD player and we were just stunned at the picture quality that was in front of us. My friends all said it looked leaps and bounds better than any theatre they would pay to see the movie.
If your going to professionally review a movie you should at least have hi end equipment, properly calibrated and hooked up.

what are you talking about? that link you posted shows HDdigest giving the departed 4.5/5 for video quality and 4 overall. They gave the Blu-Ray version the same scores...

I'd have to agree with IGN, The Departed was inconsistent. Personally I think the PQ was ok. Nowhere in the league as King Kong or Chronicles of Riddick. To each his own I guess.

I'd have to agree with IGN, The Departed was inconsistent. Personally I think the PQ was ok. Nowhere in the league as King Kong or Chronicles of Riddick. To each his own I guess.

I'd give the transfer a 4 - pretty solid but not spectacular. Then again, I am not using a very large screen so maybe inconsistencies are more difficult for me to identify.

deception``

I agree with there review. I would give it a 7/10 maybe, not very sharp with a ton of detail but still very good looking.

In IGN's defence, they gave the HD DVD review for Children of Men and Pulse a 10 out of 10 for PQ.

No, The Departed is not all that sharp, but that's how I remember it in the theater. I only have the BluRay version but I'm sure the same applies to the HD-DVD version. There don't seem to be any compression problems and the softness should be attributed to the cinematography, not the transfer.

There is no Bluray version of this movie guys just HD-DVD version

try again.

About time Fox even released something....Yeah, you have to love Fox using their media outlets to berate Warner's releases while they themselves have done nothing but sit on their @$$es.

Im curious why IGN is even reviewing HD-DVD's considering they claimed HD-DVD to be dead back in their March 7th article.
I bet IGN watched the SD side.As mentioned in another thread, maybe so.... the reviewer did mention that he was watching a 2.40:1 anamorphic transfer?

The reviews at IGN seem to fall in line with the Tier Threads here, which imo are very narrow minded and virtually worthless in regard to assessing the faithfulness of the disc to the film.
I thought The Departed was a bit uneven. Sometimes it looked fantastic and other times not so much but still a very worthwhile disc.
I wouldn't be surprised if the lack of a dynamic soundtrack didn't color the review.

Sorry for not specifying. IGN is a gaming/entertainment/movie website, mostly known for it's gaming reviews. Here's the link:

dvd(dot)ign(dot)com/articles/779/779807p1

deception`` Yeah...you forgot to say that IGN is majority owned by SONY....hmmm, go figure.

The reviews at IGN seem to fall in line with the Tier Threads here, which imo are very narrow minded and virtually worthless in regard to assessing the faithfulness of the disc to the film.

Honestly, it seems like no one cares at all about whether the film was preserved faithfully. If you can't see every tiny pore and detail from 5 inches to 5 miles in the shot, there must be something wrong with the transfer.

If it's not a catalog title, I think reviewers should be required to have seen the movie in the theater before they discuss picture quality on the optical release. Aside from pointing out compression problems (mosquito noise, banding, EE, etc.), they should make no comment on how good the picture looks.

Wow! I know when I glanced at the review a day ago I was in shock. I am an audio/video idiot and even I was blown away by how good the departed looked. I wasn't expecting much but but did I get a shocker when I watched the film. Sure it's no Kong but at least a 7 or 8.

The reviews at IGN seem to fall in line with the Tier Threads here, which imo are very narrow minded and virtually worthless in regard to assessing the faithfulness of the disc to the film.
Yup, as I pointed out on page 1. The tier system is good for what it is, doesn't pretend to be anything else, but "reviewers" need to take a different approach.

Maybe what IGN is trying to say is that an "ugly" girl looks just as sharp as a "beautiful" girl, but the "ugly" girl just isn't as much of a feast for the eyes as the "beautiful" girl.

The Departed on HD DVD is clearly in HD for me, but in eyes of IGN it's just an "ugly" girl.

Yeah...you forgot to say that IGN is majority owned by SONY....hmmm, go figure.

IGN is part of FOX Interactive Media, which includes Myspace, Rottentomatoes and TeamXbox.com

Contrary to popular belief, Sony doesn't own everything!

deception``

There is no Bluray version of this movie guys just HD-DVD version.

ARE YOU HIGH?!?! The Blu-Ray version (http://www.amazon.com/Departed-Blu-ray-Leonardo-DiCaprio/dp/B000M5AJQI******pd_bbs_sr_7/104-3127924-1099963?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1176486242&sr=8-7) has been slightly outselling the HD DVD version since release, likely due to the HD DVD combo's higher price.

Poor idiotic review.

The Departed isn't King Kong in the PQ department. But it is definetly much better than their review states. A movie doesn't have to be reference quality to kick the @#$% out of the DVD version.