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

if it had been the other way round with the dnr, the hddvd version would have had its balls in a sling by now. amazing really how people can justify the bluray version isnt "that bad" when compared to an old obsolete format called hddvd...

simply put the hddvd version retains much more of the original and the bluray encoders should be ashamed of themselves for letting it out like that... and they had 2x more space to play with to at least equal the hddvd.

The grain was ****ing INTENTIONAL! DAMMIT!!!!!

WTF?!?! :md

This thread has now officially made it: Stevens overdramatic outburst.

The DNR is definitely there, and it's unfortunate.

I never got around to buying the HD-DVD set. Too damn expensive.

But I guess unless you have a high-end set-up (which I don't) you might not notice.

Several insiders on other forums have stated Warner uses filtering on all of their masters. It's standard practice for them.

Mine just shipped. Had I known of this, I would not have paid the money. This is infuriating.

just return it then

how does that explain the hddvd version then??? it used the same master....

Very happy to still have the HD DVDs. I was tempted to sell them and get the BD version because the japanese menus can be a bit annoying to navigate with, but I'd rather have the extra quality than english menus.

I guess this puts to rest the hope that "remastered" was a marketing gimmick.

I have the Blu set, have seen 4 episodes, and DNR is indeed visible on my 92 in. front projector set-up. This is not Patton, but this is not what it could have been. It's not even the HD-DVD.

Extremely frustrating knowing HBO had a wonderful master they decided to improve down a few notches on the quality scale...

Are you serious or joking?

Brandon

whats to joke about, the bluray version is inferior to the hddvd version. that is not funny at all is it...

plenty of grain in this set. I just went through all of them. I find it hard to believe how people can let a few minor issues of waxiness spoil this excellent series.

why do you take a handful of still shots to convince you that the entire 700 minutes are going to be crap?

actually, this is one of the grainiest BD sets I've seen.

Matt, I hear ya and get ready. I watched "Saving Private Ryan" in HD on TNT (or TBS) last week, (genuine HD, not that 4:3 stretch-o-vision thing they sometimes do) and it was WAY worse. Looks like they TOTALLY smoothed ALL the purposeful grain out. Like vaseline was smeared over it. VERY disappointing. I guess HD MUST equal "pretty pictures" to many still. Hopefully that will just be a broadcast master and not the sign of things to come. With Spielberg's input we SHOULD be ok...

well, you would think Hanks and Spielberg would have as much input with BoB as you'd expect them to have with SPR, so why should it be any different?

still don't see what all the grief is about. This isn't Patton, and fleeting instances of detail loss throughout the entire set seems (to me) a very petty reason to brush off such an excellent, and important piece of film.

Well, guess I'm glad to have my HD DVD version after all (given what I paid for them!) but I do wish I had the better audio... hrm, maybe a home project

Looks like a typical Warner encode to me.

I haven't seen the BD, just saw it on HBO but do know that in this miniseries like SPR, the grainy look was part of the style. What I saw of SPR in HD on TNT just looked wrong....

DNR seems to be on the level of Sixth Sense and Walk the Line. Just canceled my order. Thanks Xylon and others for saving my $$$.

any more shots Xylon?

thanks

-Gary

You should send an email to HBO/Warner telling them you'vre cancelled your order, and how you're not happy with the DNR trend.

The only thing studios care about are our wallets. So if they get enough messages like this they'll have to think again about how they do things.

It is true that the grain reduction comes and goes and appears to have been applied with some discretion. Doesn't mean I like it.

For example, the Crossroads episode appears to have most of its grain intact.

Overall, I'm still pleased with the set, but frustrated they couldn't leave well enough alone.

I have done that in the past but do you think they would really care after years of money sucking since the DVD era ? It's only getting worse. I don't think the NR on the BD is terrible but I do feel the Studios often fail to forget how efficient the NR function has become in modern HDTVs.

exactly, so best not to rashly judge the quality of it if you haven't seen it with your own eyes. The pics posted so far are minor moments in the ~600 total minutes of this series.

The BD does retain TONS of grain. the good far outweighs the bad, imo.

I was talking about SPR to Matt. I said nothing about this release.


see?

To me, the DNR is slight but the Blu-ray seems to have better contrast than the HD DVD version. Look at the eyes of the soldier walking. To me, it's a tossup.

Then why did they go out of their way to apply DNR on these few scenes that Xylon has captured? They don't seem to have a greater level of grain than say other scenes.
I think they just applied a level of DNR on everything and perhaps some stuff had a 'grainer' structure to them than these particular scenes and that is why some claim the rest is fine.
I see no logical reason why these particular scenes were singled out to be scrubbed more than the rest of the series other than that everything got the DNR hammer.

Rationalize, justify it all you want, pro-DNRs, it is less than HD, and with the wonderful/painful comparisons between the HD-DVD version from Japan against the unfortunate US BR we can plainly see that once more appealing to the lowest common denominator has struck again leaving us with another causality.
Regardless of how lightly the DNR is, draw one line of tolerance it to will soon be redrawn, rinse repeat.

Best Regards
KvE

PS
Now I can put the money towards other more worthy BR releases.

I'm no fan of DNR, but this is still way better than the DVD's I had. I'm not going to miss out on seeing this in HD because of this issue, sorry.

Funny. I just bought Under Siege (pt 1) on blu-ray and while it a great transfer, one thing it didn't have was filtering. It was extremely grainy throughout and I was shocked. The transfer had other issues, but I doubt there was any filtering on that.

Hate to burst your bubble but Xylon takes direct digital caps from the disc not via a camera. So no factors that are associated with that method of screen grabs.

I have watched several BR discs that have the DNR on my lowly system and can see the problems, even the more 'subtly' scrubbed ones. As well on some of my buddies systems that are far fancier and larger than mine and the 'minor' DNR becomes really obvious.

After having watched some of the titles Xylon has been cool enough take screen caps of I can verify that those shots are not trumped up nor isolated to those specific scenes, unless noted otherwise.

You do not need an absurdly expensive system to see these issues. Heck this stuff is obvious on my 17" LCD Samsung monitor I bought, oh 3 or 4 years ago.

Best Regards
KvE

PS
Again there is no excuse not to provide the best picture, they actually spend more time and money to apply the DNR to appease the masses that have their sharpness cranked to high and have tons of video post processing applied with torch mode color, oohh pretty clipped bloomin over saturated colors!

"Maybe someday the studio's are going to produce A/Vphile quality stuff, but you're <0.5% of the market, if that much." And one can reply in return, why even bother buying into HD if one is satisfied with 1080P SD quality, keep buying DVDs and play them with an upconverter.