AVS Forum Blu-ray Disc Reviews - General Discussion Thread - Page 11

Hey guys not sure if this is best place to post. I am about to start buying and burning my network hd movie collection. Question is is there a certain year that the blurays are true quality hd material from there original recording? Like Top Gun is it a good quality bluray or just get the dvd?
Thanks for the help.

Are you trying to imply that when Blu-rays first came out that all they did was upconvert the SD video and release it on Blu-ray? No, never happened. All Blu-ray releases are from HD masters, not upconverts. BTW, it is their original, not there original.


Top Gun via the Blu-ray is great.

No I just didnt know what technology they used 10-20 years ago.Could they could actually make it true hd?

The technology has been around for quite a while. The earliest forms don't still exist. Keep in mind that HDTV has been around for a while now. The technology needed to support it had to be there as well. Not cheap, but there none-the-less.

Obviously it has improved over the years and has become cheaper. The technology to record HD, including transferring film to video, was there before the ability to cheaply create Blu-ray discs.

Unfortunately, the 2nd round of the format wars had to happen. History be damned. First it was the VHS/Beta war and then the Blu-ray/HD DVD war. Adoption of HD discs would have happened sooner, if it wasn't for the stupid war.

Copy that so any bluray disc I pick up is going to be worth the better quality, but from what I am picking up is that newer ones may have a tad bit better quality.

Any by newer ones I mean newly released movies.

Even recent releases of older movies can look better, especially when a lot of companies are going back into their library to find the best copy available and retransferring it to HD, using all of the latest tools to "fix" any problems.

The recent movies have the advantage of being able to work from the 4k HD masters that are used for theaters these days.

So, don't expect a bad transfer when you buy a Blu-ray. Much, much, better than DVD.


Too bad that 4k for home use doesn't exist yet

Just wondering if Blade Runner 'The Complete Collection' or the Final Cut of the film will get reviewed here...A classic Sci-fi that was ground breaking, and ahead of it's time. I was too young to see it in theatres, but came accross the movie in the nineties, and it has been a favourite ever since. I have heard many good things about this particular release, and am wondering if Ralph and the gang will get the chance to review this gem.

Here's all you need to know:

GO BUY IT! This set pretty much has every cut Ridley Scott ever released to the public and it also contains a workprint. If you are a fan of Blade Runner there is no reason this should not be in your collection.

Picked up my copy a 2 days ago. In a word...Stunning. I started with the Director's Final Cut of the film, as it was given the most attention regarding video and audio, and I was amazed. My favourite version is the one with Ford's voice over, which is the North American TR. I am also curious to see the International release, which is supposed to be more violent. All in all, a tremendous Blu-ray package. Wow.

Not much use in Ralph spending time on this one, since there is no doubt it's already in every scifi movie nerds collection, including yours Joe. Not much he could add. I suspect he would use the words "stunning" and "tremendous" somewhere in his review. I have the "briefcase" edition, so all of my fellow movie nerds know what I think about this flick.

Has anybody seen Hostage with Bruce "I'm gonna shoot the bad guy" Willis? It came out on bd and, I'm embarrased to say, had no idea it was even made. Is it worth the 10 bucks,,,,er,,, well, I guess that should tell me something. I tried Ralphs data base blog but no luck.

I'm hearing that Hostage suffers from the same problems, (note earlier post). I think the studio changed the the aspect ratio, which was 235 on the dvd, to 1:185 on the bd and took off all the extras. Nobody has ever said that the movie studio's corporate bean counter's are geniuses, they just want us to show them the money. I too, have pulled back from buying bd's of late.

I ordered it immediately after auditioning it via free Amazon Prime streaming last night. It's a beautiful film - the funny thing is that I didn't cry while watching it, but everything I've read about it this morning has elicited tears.

The image quality of much of this film was intentionally "sketchy" so if you're after a disk to "show off" your system, this isn't it - but as an essay about the human heart, it's unparalleled, and ultimately optimistic.

And to quote Woody Allen, "We need the eggs."

Went on a bit of a BD buying spree recently......among others, No Country fo Old Men, Eastern Promises, History of Violence, Nanny Mcphee Returns, Chronivles of Narnia:LWW, Dr No, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Mummy Returns, The Constant Gardener. Should last a while...

All great titles! Except for Nanny McPhee. Last time i did a BD buying spree was over a year ago and bought 25 titles in one order. lol!

Nanny Mcphee returns was more for my daughter, but I have to admit that I watch them as well. I am also still working my way through my 5 disc Blade Runner Ultimate edition.

Any plans to review The Name of the Rose? Some reviews state that the transfer is not that great, but probably due to the original quality of the film. Audio supposed to be good, but not great. This would be a great addition, but I am a bit disapointed with the first review. Perhaps a second opinion?

..

Hello, I posted this on the Sony Blu-ray player forum, but thought that this might be a better forum for info for my problem. I am using a sony s570 BR player and am outputting the audio by digital coax into my older yamaha avr.
I have had no problem (over 8 months) with the audio on br disc that was DTS encoded, it played in 5.1 (and sounded great). But the last 2 br discs "Red" and "Let Me In" were encoded with dolby digital 5.1 for Red and Dolby Ture HD for "let me in". They would only play in 2 channels. The display for the sony showed dolby 5.1 for the "let me in" movie, didn't check for "red", yet only 2 channels were indicated on the avr's display, and indeed, only the front LR and the sub were giving sound.
I checked the sony with some br discs that I have encoded in DTS and no problem.
Has anybody run into similar difficulty, or have any experience with the 2 br-dvd's mentioned?
Thank you very much.

If you've set your player to send the signal as PCM, and you're connected by coax or optical, it will downmix it to 2-channel stereo, as those connections (collectively known as SPDIF) don't have enough bandwidth to pass more than two channels of PCM.

The only reason I can imagine for this problem to crop up suddenly is that you were sending as bitstream previously, and switched to PCM recently.

Why would you have changed that? Perhaps because you had played a disk with audio in a format that your receiver choked on and switching to PCM got you sound, but only in stereo.

If your receiver has an HDMI input, use an HDMI 1.3 (or better) cable, which can carry up to 8 channels of PCM - for 7.1. That way, if your receiver can't decode the newer formats, you can have your player translate them to 5.1 or 7.1 lossless PCM - much higher quality than bitstreaming over the coax connection, which sends the audio in the lossy core of the Dolby or DTS soundtrack.

Hope this helped!

PS Nice to see that Sony is now putting SACD capability into its lower-end Blu-ray players. I'm still using an old Denon Universal DVD player to listen to my SACD and DVD-Audio disks - using a 5.1 analog link (6 RCA cables) into my pre-HDMI Yamaha AVR. Using an HDMI connection to your amp (with the player set to output PCM) would also get you better sound from your SACDs than the optical connection.

Another pair of possibilities has occurred to me:

1) You're bitstreaming, but those disks only have info on the two front main channels. I've encountered disks that use only the front center channel: check out the Blu-ray disk of The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn. The original was in mono, right? So they used only the front center channel on that disk.

2) If, on the other hand, you have this problem with every Dolby Digital disk you play but not for DTS, there may be something wrong with your receiver's configuration for decoding Dolby Digital. You didn't identify what AVR you're using, so I couldn't download the manual for it (I did for your Sony player, which was how I saw that it plays SACD disks).

Go through your AVR's setup menus carefully - if there's a separate section to configure Dolby from DTS, see if you can make the Dolby settings match the DTS settings as much as possible.

Good luck!

Phil, thanks for the suggestions. I did check to make sure the output was not in PCM, but in Auto, and I know that I did not change anything. Somebody suggested that in fact, the company making the disc is not providing the lossy DD, but only the DD True on the blu-ray-they said that they have encounterred this with other blu-rays by that company.
One other thing that occurred to me-I have the tv (sony) connected to my Yamaha AVR by an optical cable for 5.1 when watching cable (no box , just coax to tv) and the audio return channel sends the DD 5.1 from the tv to the yamaha-maybe the tv is taking the audio over the HDMI and sending it to the receiver (preventing the dig coax from sending the signal to the receiver-but I would think that this would also occur with DTS encoded discs). I am going to try to play the disc again and remove the optical cable from the tv to the yamaha.
Thanks again

Phil, it wasn't the ARC (audio return).
I found a setting on my Sony player's menu that is called "BD Audio Mix"-in the on position it outputs the audio obtained by mixing the interactive and secondary audio to the primary audio.
When I turned this to the off position, I got my 5.1 DD soundtrack.
Go figure, anyway glad that I solved the problem.

"I think that in the future, everyone will wear a mask. They're quite comfortable." The Dread Pirate Wesley, in The Princess Bride

The way Blu-ray players from all manufacturers handle the commentary /Picture-In-Picture audio track is a disgrace. If left enabled, the player transcodes the lossless audio tracks into lossy Dolby Digital even when there is no Secondary Audio track - compromising the sound quality even through the multichannel analog outputs. Secondary Audio should only be enabled when you actually want to listen to a commentary or PIP track and then be immediately disabled.

Of course, the setup menu to enable or disable Secondary Audio can only be reached while the player is stopped, requiring the player to re-read the disk in order to play the Secondary Audio track.

To make things worse, to avoid tech support calls from customers who can't hear the Secondary Audio track, most ship the damn things with Secondary Audio enabled - leading many consumers to the conclusion that lossless audio is a scam because they can't hear any difference.

Glad you've solved your problem. Nothing takes the place of a little spelunking in the setup menu!

I got the Blu-ray of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, as I said I was going to a few posts back, but I've run into an unusual problem.

I have a Panasonic DMP-BD50, one of the pioneering Blu-ray players (the first to be able to internally decode DTS HD Master Audio and send it - and Dolby TrueHD - to the AVR via either LPCM or 5.1 analog outputs). It has never had a problem with any Blu-ray, DVD, or CD I've fed it in the three years I've had it. (It's on firmware version 2.1 from a year and a half ago. I won't be able to load the new 2.2 released this week for a few days.)

It plays the movie fine, but I can't get to any menu - it just autoplays and then repeats. Pressing Pop-Up Menu or Top Menu on the remote elicits the standard scold popup that says that you can't do that. I can use the Audio button to select soundtracks, but that's the extent of the menu control I have of this disk.

As a result, I can't get to the special features!

I have an SD card (probably 2GB) in the machine, but no internet connection to it, and thus BD-Live, and all internet access, is switched off. (I've always done my firmware updates via CD-ROM.) My theater is in the basement but my apartment, and thus my Wifi G router, is on the second floor. I tried using a WiFi G print server which doubles as an ethernet hub to connect the player, but the signal was so weak it took forever to do anything - twenty minutes or more to download a trailer.

Does this disk require using BD-Live to see the special features?

I just found out why I can't see the extras on my copy of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

While I ordered the domestic version of the disk from Amazon, I got it for a really good price - turns out what they sent me was the Canadian version, from "Alliance" instead of Universal, which has no extras, even though they're listed on the printed cover. The Alliance logo screen shows up right before the screen I describe above.

Now I have to call Amazon.

PS The only way I figured this out was by cruising the reader comments on the film under the review at HighDefDigest.com (which I found by using my favorite review aggregator site, hddb.com). The last comment mentioned that the Alliance version, imported from Canada, has no extra features.