Iron Man comparison *PIX* - Page 3

Nobody is debating the PQ and AQ jump between SD-DVD and Blu-ray. It just seems strange that, with the advent of HDM, the PQ of SD-DVD seems to have taken a back seat (relative to what the SD PQ might have been had HDM never come to fruition).

Quoted for truth, love me some red-head Paltrow

Someone should just re-compress a clip out the blu-ray version into DVD and compare with the retail DVD screen-capture. We will be able to tell if they dumb down the DVD video quality on purpose. Or, at least we can see how good DVD can get as we have a good source (blu-ray).

While I certainly see a difference between DVD and Blu Ray on projectors, plasmas etc, at the same time the Iron Man DVD screen captures in this thread do look significantly blurrier than I see watching DVD on my plasma or projector.


Screen shots from regular ol' SD DVD on my plasma:

Good idea.

perhaps due to the fact that you aren't running a display with the blu ray next to your plasma? Without the HD comparison right there, and with the DVD upscaled and in motion i would expect the standard definition version to seem better than what we see in these screenshots. But I doubt it actually IS better. Why would Xylon of all people rig the comparison?

Bingo.

In the past SD DVD held up but today with bigger displays and closer viewing distances they just fall apart, especially when you compare it to HD. There are some incredible DVDs out there that use most of the resolution (Blade, Star Wars, etc) but 99.9% don't and are filtered, DNRed, EEed, and/or horribly compressed.

no, it wouldn't. we would have no more information about the intentions of the people in charge of the Iron Man DVD than we do now. all we would know is how a SD clip would look when taken from the blu ray. Which gets us no closer at all to figuring out the intentions of the people behind the DVD encode.

I disagree, you could show how they should have authored it!

First...who removed my screen shots and why?

Second:


Nope. I am very, very familiar with how Blu Ray/HD DVD AND SD DVD looks on every type of display, from small flat panel to a large variety of projectors.

And it often looks significantly better than the Iron Man caps in this thread.
I certainly am not insinuating ANYTHING about xylon. That would be ridiculous and he has no reason to "cook" the results in these comparisons.

Still, the fact of what I see on lots of displays vs the SD screen caps here...well...there's a difference. SD can often look excellent.

Aside from what I see at home, recently I auditioned the Mitsubishi HC 6000 projector on a 94" diag screen. I auditioned BOTH Blu Ray and SD DVD content. I was simply blown away by how good SD DVD looked on that projector - super clear and detailed with an almost "HD" like vibe.

OF COURSE Blu Ray is even better. I can see it at smaller sizes as well, and it is even more prominent a difference at the screen sizes I'm looking at in my room (up to 10 feet wide).

But the general assertions that "SD is crap" that float around really don't do justice to how good SD can look, not only on smaller displays but even on projectors.

Also...the assertions made here that DVD is being "dumbed down," intentionally made to look bad are, to say the least, unfounded and unsupported (at least in this thread).

The flourishing of conspiracy theories in modern culture is moving from annoying to outright dispiriting...

Maybe because some folks may decide to pickup a dvd copy along with the BR for various reasons; such as for the kids, a portable player, or rip it to their laptop/PC.

Just because some have decided to no longer purchase DVD doesn't change or reduce the need for quality control of that format.

If studios are getting lazy with one format, could this mentality also migrate to the new format?
I'd say it is very possible, much like the substandard audio engineering in the music industry. Use to be the singles or the radio mix would get cooked, now everything is, give an inch, etc.

Aside from that, thankfully Paramount did not decide to nerf the BR authoring.

Best Regards
KvE

PS Just because something is disregarded as 'conspiracy theory' does not automatically dismiss the possibility of an issue or problem.
Perhaps studios are not intentionally making less stellar SD releases for the sake to make BR look even better but they very could be, as someone else mentioned, not taking the time and effort of doing a proper SD encode.

Again properly done HD will trump SD any day, no question or debate there.

I've grown tired myself of the various "conspiracies" brought up about dvd being dumbed down to help sell people on the difference between it and Blu-ray. There is no conspiracy. Dvd is just an inferior format for picture quality and transparency to the source that many became accustomed to over the years. Now that we have access to higher resolution sources the limitations of dvd become all the more apparent.

I'm sure you are, but I'm constantly amazed at how my mind tricks me into thinking the difference between DVD and BD is less than it is when I don't have both versions in front of me at the same time.
I didn't mean that post as a slight at your ability to perceive quality. Sorry if it seemed like i was!

i completely agree. it's really disturbing how readily people accept the craziest things . . . .

right, using a lossy-compressed source rather than the actual master is the right way to do it. hoo boy.

I think when people say "dumbed down" they mean filtered and/or overcompressed. There's no question that is going on but it's been happening for the past 10+ years. DVDs that use all of the format's resolution are rare.

Yeah like how some folks think Patton and Dark City have not had any DNR/EE applied to them then hide behind the lame argument, "How do you know it isn't suppose to look like that, we don't have the original film negative to compare so there is no way to know..."

Various folks in essence said those who saw DNR on those titles were conspiracy nuts because the studio would never intentionally screw up. I guess it is a matter of perspective.
I apologize if I misinterpreted you post incorrectly but that was the vibe I was getting.

Also do check out some of Sony's old Superbit DVD vs the regular DVD such as Spiderman 2, in that case they really did dumb the regular version down to make the Superbit look far better.

Best Regards
KvE

Laters gotta flirt with some ladies, muyaahha
OOpps I've helped continue the derailment, >:}~

Not worth the upgrade.

I'll stick with my digital copy.

If we sat 7.5 feet away from the set our couch would be in the center of the family room and this would not work out. We find 12' a very comfortable distance away from the set.

Here is a test I did to show how crippled most dvds are. I downconverted the original 1080p capture to 720x480p then "upconverted"
the dvd-sized image to 1080p. Even though it lacks the mpeg-2 compression step the result is far better than the filtered and
overcompressed mess on the retail dvd.

Mouseover with DVD

Mouseover with Blu-ray

In most households, because of room layout constraints, most people can't sit within 1.5 X screensize and may even prefer to sit the normal 9-12' from the set. At that distance upscaled DVDs on a 1080p set looks fantastic on 99.9% of the DVDs out there. No doubt, this is why DVDs remain so popular.

You think too much. Just go with the flow. If the PQ is appealing why should the source matter so much???

In the dvd/scaling mouseover, is the aspect getting stretched in one of the states? There's no doubt that the br scaledown is superior, but I just wanted to make note of the slight horizontal scaling difference.

Nice job Kram.

Except a DVD loses much more than just overall resolution when you've got an image with that much detail. You're experiment doesn't really answer any questions.

Studios and transfer houses don't apply DNR/EE in an effort to make the end product look bad. They do it in order for the intended audience to think it looks good!

They think people like a sharp image, so they sharpen it up with EE. They think that a lot of people will be put off by excessive grain, or expect pure looking images, so they apply DNR. A lot of us purists may not like the results, and for good reasons. But the reasons DNR/EE are applied certainly isn't, as some seem to be imagining, a cabal of people rubbing their hands saying "Now let's make this really look AWFUL."

(And, besides, the outrage over Patton was over the Blu Ray!).

The nutty conspiracy theory "They are trying to make DVDs look bad now" is...well...nutty and without any good logic or evidence.

Kram, that's not even remotely a fair test unless you take an entire video clip from the Blu-Ray, resize and then do an mpeg encode with a realistic bit budget. Also you have to take into account what a studio production house would consider acceptable amounts of compression artifacts, moire and aliasing.

I'm not saying the DVD couldn't be better, but there is no way you can simply resize a Blu-Ray image and try to make a claim that it's a realistic representation of what the DVD should look like. For instance, if you look at the metal grates on the floor, you can see what would probably be considered an unacceptable amount of aliasing.

True! Someone did a test similar to this in the past (with HD Battle Star Galactica I believe) only to come to the realization that you run into the max bitrate of DVD and the space on the disc waaaay to soon. (Not to mention the additional space needed for any extras they might want to throw on there...)

You're right that's it not totally realistic. Mpeg-2 compression further degrades the picture and I didn't take into account the loss of color resolution when downconverting. That being said the dvd should look significantly better than the filtered garbage we got, even with a low bitrate.

Here's a comparison between a homemade dvd from a HD source(BD most likely) and the retail dvd of Iron Man. The total lack of filtering to accommodate low bitrates makes a big difference:

http://comparescreenshots.slicx.com/...1210/picture:0