Gladiator Master Blu-ray Comparison and Review Thread - Page 2

At first i didn't think the BD looked so bad in the other thread. But seeing these pics, especially compared to the unmolested extended scenes, really makes me sick
Why do the studios need to tinker with the image? It's great as it was before!! How do they not see this? We want to see pores, threads, fine detail!! not wax!

Damn, I bought into this format looking forward to own titles like Gladiator in high definitionAnd now we get this, an old transfer "freshed up" with DNR and EE looking worse than the HDTV broadcast version! You`d expect the studio to take care and do their best to present their flagship titles in the best way possible, but they did not botherdid not BOTHER! I am very dissappointed.

It hurts, but I will pass this one, it will be a rent at best

Having an off-loadable HD PVR is priceless!

I knew my DVHS looked damn good despite measly 14 Mbit/s MPEG2. Oh, what could have been with 30 Mbit/s AVC! But no, we get this dreck instead. Thanks, I'll pass. I prefer my DVHS by far.

That is really weird. Also look at the fireball in the trees on the right-hand side. There seems some strange blueish blob on it on the BD version!? Are you sure it's the same frame (sure looks like it)? If it is, something or someone did unacceptable damage to the picture.

I'm sure the self proclaimed "HD Guru" will be here defending it soon

Thanks again OP for saving me $$$s

Yep but I rarely trust areadvd.de. Some slightly reliable German review sites are:

www.hd-reporter.de
www.blurayreviews.ch


This forum has taught me a lot on DNR / EE.

Btw, there are many self proclaimed gurus out here who likes defending the Studios.

New encode, same transfer/source, same issues/filtering. This goes for both the UK and German Universal Studios editions. Cancel your order while you can ;-)

(sorry for the double post)

Those BD shots are pretty !@#$ing awful. One shot will have massive EE halos and another shot will look like something out of Clay/Dark City. And then you have nasty scratch removal artifacts on top of that. Completely undefendable.

Thanks very much.

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Your order has been successfully cancelled. For your reference, here is a summary of your order:

You just cancelled order placed on Aug 2009.

Status: CANCELLED
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1 of Gladiator (Limited Edition Steel Book) [Blu-ray] [2000]
By: Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix

Sold by: Amazon's Jersey Merchant, Indigostarfish.com

I've just posted a 1-star review at Amazon. (Cemetery Mink)

I hope you will all do likewise (and 'like' any review on Amazon's page that warns people about the DNR) That really is the best way to get the message out to people.

Hopefully, if there's enough of an outcry, a big title like Gladiator will finally get a proper release in the near future.

Sony eventually figured out how bad there 'Fifth Element' was, and acted accordingly. I would think Gladiator is even more deserving.

(Meanwhile, at least I can still buy Braveheart this month, so that's something)

DVDBeaver claims the image looks "magnificent" but neither the shots in this thread or their page looks anything close to magnificent.

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompare7/gladiator.htm

It's all processed and given the quality of the extended scenes I don't see why. It's a sad state of affairs when a broadcast looks better than a disk.

Strangely DVDBeaver also reviews Braveheart which is part of the same "Sapphire" series and the image quality does to me look excellent.

Both movies are vastly overrated IMO but I know a lot of people are waiting for Gladiator so you'd think it would be treated with more respect.

Pre-order cancelled.

I am pissed at this. One of my favourite movies.

The reviewer seems to have had access to the MPEG2 broadcast but found the Blu-Ray better. It seems he [...] forgot to put his glasses on. Very disappointing.

Edit: The review was updated and seems to more fairly reflect the image quality issues now.

[quote=DrXym;17047415]DVDBeaver claims the image looks "magnificent" but neither the shots in this thread or their page looks anything close to magnificent.

/QUOTE]

Yes. The un-zoomed caps look magnificent. Once you zoom it looks Gillette.

The BEV stream happened to be my HD demo source for quite some time a few years back (as it was likely yours...). It certainly has its fair share of issues but most of the running time it was a standout in detail and definition (and it comes with the usual pretty high BEV MPEG2 bitrate - so compression was fine).

My wild, unqualified guess is the reviewer at hand (Gary Tooze) is watching the whole affair on a plasma/LCD sitting at the other end of the room. In this situation the "contrast enhancement" of the BD will likely appear preferable to the less filtered HD stream.

Welcome to the wonderful world of mass-market ;-)

Whats annoying is that they actually have a pretty good master, and somehow decided not to use it.

I chose Gladiator BEV to showcase my plasma to a potential buyer about 2 years ago...

I knew it ;-)

The reviewer just has bad eyesight, I assume. DVDBeaver also gave glowing reviews to Dark City, The Longest Day, Amadeus, Salo and a whole bunch of other abominations. (Didn't check if it was one incompetant reviewer or several)

Fortunately, because it is a visual site, it's still useful no matter how bad the reviewers.

The funny thing is, for a while, DVDBeaver seemed to be improving. They were actually learning about DNR, discussing it in reviews, etc. but clearly it didn't take.

To me it looks like the c4 and BD text has EE but the BEV doesn't. Am I correct?

The c4 broadcast's artifact doesn't look like EE to me. It looks like ringing caused by vertical resampling. You can see a similar problem right at the top of the frame, where the black 2.35:1 border begins. There's no ringing in horizontal axis.

Is it a spare thats been cut in half by DNR at the left in the germania pick, it looks like a tree in the background, whatever it still spells disaster.

It could look even better, but they could at least used the best master that exist today, and even better create a state of the art master for this.

Selling a 9 year old movie in a new format and charging $27 for it and it not being of the utmost quality is ridiculous and we have every right to be mad.

If the average selling price is $20 and they sell a million, that's $20 mil. How much do you think it would have cost them to rescan the prints and make sure it is high quality? Certainly a tiny fraction of what they will make from it.

Pretty bad... But is still HD

For $27 is is worth it to me. I am still very much aware that I used to pay $30 - $60 for the average 480i / DD laser discs. So, for $27 I'll take this great piece of film making and deal with it. This would have been a $60 release back in the day. If it is even 10% than the DVD, I'll buy it. It couldn't be worse as the DVD looks piss poor on my 14' screen.

I guess it comes down to how much money you have. I have plenty BDs on my list I havnt purchased for economic reasons. So Gladiator went down on that list.

I agree Im still hanging onto my pre-order. I got rid of my SD version.

Not really the money at all. I buy more for the film than the absolute PQ/AQ. There are a lot of perfect PQ/AQ films that I would not dream of buying. I might buy 5-10 BD discs a year as only find that many films worth watching in a given year. Gladiator is in my top 10 films of all time. It is now on Blu Ray, so it is easy math to buy it regardless of PQ issues.