Band of Brothers DVD, HBO MPEG-2, HD DVD & Blu-ray comparison *PIX* - Page 5

what is your point exactly?, all those titles I listed have very fine film grain visible that cannot survive any level of DNR, Every Which Way is the best example, that is all that matters

-Gary

You're confusing things here. First of all, on a properly calibrated monitor, most of the time Sharpness will actually be set to 0. The effect that sharpness can simulate (when cranked up) is edge enhancement.

However, many monitors actually have built-in noise reduction that you can turn on, which really makes DNR completely pointless, except as a way to piss off purists.

As for the Band of Brothers transfer - I've seen nothing in these images that goes beyond what's done in the vast majority of Warner's titles - in other words, every single Warner title I've seen with the exception of Speed Racer, which already had airbrushing on the actors and was otherwise mostly CG.

Could Band of Brothers look better? Sure. And I'm pissed that it doesn't. But people are making this out to be much more than it is. It'd be nice if someone could convince Warner that they shouldn't filter all of their titles but they've already shown time and time again that they really don't give a **** about what we think - all they do is feed us the same old crap, again and again and again.

Good thinking. I'll keep holding off for now and see if a better version is released somewhere for a decent price..

The use of DNR is disappointing, but I'm curious, how apparent would it be on a 42 inch 768p set?

probably not bad at all.

I still think it's the way Warner uses the VC-1 codec and not DNR. If any of the other studios that still use VC-1 were to encode it like .... weinstein(?). Weinsten and Warner are the only VC-1 studios left?? at least Uni got it right with Doomsday when they used it.

It would probably look completely identical to the HD-DVD. Now if Warner would have just used the same AVC encode, well then they would have to look the same. Stupid studio/codec exclusivity. Switch teams Warner, everyones doing it.

Yes, clearly it's the fault of that horrible VC1 codec. After all, look how bad HOW THE WEST WAS WON turned out...

In case you missed it, the above is sarcasm. Damn, I thought this codec vs. codec crap died with the format war. Guess not...

Vincent

No, no, no. I'm criticizing warner(and the way they do their encodes, Doomsday is 5 star quality). If they were open to more codecs they could have simply done what they love to do - port encodes. Same goes for Sony and Starship Troopers.

I'm ordering How the West Was Won now.
I bet if you guys had a version of that from another studio, you wouldn't think the Warner version looked that good after all.

There's an emoticon that makes it easy.
The codec vs codec crap has died.... for every studio but Warner. Sorry, I had to.

Does anyone one have HBO HD caps for Generation Kill? If Warner 'DNR's that, there's nothing left to watch.

Showgate released BoB in Japan and they used to be Toshiba Entertainment before Toshiba sold that subcompany to another Japanese company.

Showgate actually announced their first Blu-ray for 17th of December, it's Resident Evil (Biohazard) which they released earlier on HD DVD in Japan as well (just about 1 year before the BD release).

There haven't been any other BD announcements from them yet but it's possible that they would release BoB on BD in Japan at some point as well. I think the price would be about the same as the HD DVD set had though.

I have the HD DVD set (got it on release day) and haven't planned on buying the BD set at all in this case.

Warner's smoothed over grain has never looked like classic DNR to me.. perhaps it's just the noise reduction pre-processing of the VC-1 encoder that they use.

The claim that the difference will only be visible in still shots, though.. I have both the HD DVDs and the Blu-ray set and the difference is enormous in motion IMO. Band of Brothers is supposed to have very heavy grain and the HD DVDs reproduce that beautifully, but the grain in the BDs looks much finer in motion which badly ruins the mood of the series for me.

Warner has certainly been guilty of filtering before. Anyone who saw EYES WIDE SHUT theatrically will remember it as one of the grainiest films released in the 90s. The BD removed virtually every bit of that grain and a ton of detail along with it.

Having said that, other Warner titles like HTWWW or DIRTY HARRY look tremendous. I'm not voicing an opinion on BOB one way or the other, but to say Warner doesn't do filtering on some titles is just plain wrong.

For the record i am one of the few who said Batman Begins looked great and nominated it for my thread in the signature link.

I have responded in a private message to you rather than derail the thread.



Thanks for that but unfortunately someone has seen fit to remove my post.

With regard to Band Of Brothers it's simple....Xylon is showing us that the Blu Ray edition has undergone grain reduction and lost detail in the process....His remarks state this to be the case....I can see no reason to defend the release so won't bother trying and i won't bother attacking the use of DNR for this release either since apparently this gets your posts deleted.

Finished with this thread and will think carefully before bothering to post in any more like this since it appears thoughtful posts which denounce DNR and the apologists of DNR on here always get deleted.....Have a great day everyone.

Just wondering

Is it Warner or HBO that handles this movie.

While they certainly is connected, how much does HBO operate themself?

Let's not forget Universal's King Kong. I'm not sure what the avg bit-rate was for it, but it looked extremely good, and was really sharp. Perhaps the blu-ray version may outdo it.

I think Lionsgate uses VC-1 on some titles and AVC on others.

My *guess* (and it really is nothing more than a guess) is that Warner may apply their filtering/DNR in their master that they use to encode the DVD and just use the same exact master for their HD titles. I think Universal does the dnr/filtering on a case by case basis which is why Mummy, and some of the other titles have more DNR on blu than HD DVD and some vice versa (Miami Vice)

If you look at the DVD pics for BoB on the first page, the grain level looks about on par with the blu-ray. It's there, but it's not as grainy as you would expect it to be.

I dunno...

Good question. My guess is that it's Warner, but one thing led me to believe it wasn't: I was watching Sopranos on blu-ray and noticed the bit rate hit into the 30s a few times. I doubt the HD DVD did the same, but it could have been an error in reporting on the PS3s part. Only rented the Sopranos so I couldnt say when it hit > 30, or anything.

I finally had a chance to do an on-the-fly A-B comparison between my HD-DVD and BD sets. In many scenes, they look identical. In some scenes I can see the difference ever so slightly. And in some scenes the difference is very definite. It's no surprise that the scenes with the most grain are the ones that are easiest to discern the difference. Bottom line is that they both look terrific but the BD is a bit softer.

I don't think WB wants to have the BD version looking even grainier than the DVD. The higher the resolution, the more inherent grain that is visible, so I think they use DNR to tone down the grain to DVD levels since they don't want consumers thinking that Blu-ray is a grainier format than DVD.

which is just plain stupidity

Based on Stacey Spears' comment that HBO has been anti-grain (with particular regard to this BD set), I would think that the people who usually handle Warner's titles didn't handle this release. He has insider knowledge, so that's what I made of it.

What it is, is a view that consumers are stupid. Which is not altogether inaccurate.

I'm convinced this is being done, so a better release can be put out 3-5 years from now, and reviews will say it's that much better than the original release, therefore causing us all to go out and buy it again.

Future Release sample review: "The grain in this release is superb, and clearly blows the original release of the water. So if you love the series, and care about grain, it is definitly worth the upgrade." Cha-ching!! $$$$$

The problem, I suspect, is if you did an informal poll at Walmart or Best Buy and had BoB playing with grain intact on HDM and another one playing with slight DNR on HDM next to it, there are many people that would tell you the one with less grain looked "more HD like" and better to them.

I mentioned this in the James Bond review thread but one of the very first Blu-Ray movies we (the wife and I) watched was Rocky Balboa. Now that movie has a very gritty grainy look per the directors intent. About 15 minutes into the movie my wife wondered why it had so much "noise". She was expecting it to look like network television (HD). My wife is no idiot, but she is not a film buff nor did she understand grain structure and detail. She expected HD to equal a very polished look. I expect many other people feel the exact same way. I can't tell you how many comments I saw regarding 300 on Blu-Ray/HD DVD where people thought there was something wrong with either their copy or their equipment because of all the "noise", err, I mean "grain"...

I much prefer that the studio left the grain intact. I definitely prefer the HD DVD encode vs the Blu-Ray, but the Blu-Ray still looks pretty good to me, and there is no way I could justify paying the price difference to get a slightly better looking encode for the HD DVD at this time (plus I stopped buying HD DVD's since the Warner announcement). That said, I am still disappointed slightly with Warner's decision to apply DNR to this Blu-Ray release. But I bought it on Blu-Ray, so I am not that disappointed

Me too

I believe this title was filtered with the Digi Vision box. HBO strongly dislikes grain.

Unfortunately true.

Here's the first review I've seen of BoB on BD from a reviews/news website: DVDTOWN.com

Here's the part you guys are probably interested in: