The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring HDTV vs Blu-ray Comparison - Page 3

DVD

Sadly, while the DVD comparisons DO reveal that these are better, there's still no denying that this isn't as good as it could be. Almost seems like a repeat of the Star Trek collection (though nothing so far has been quite as bad as Star Trek VI).

DVD

Well... that's looking pretty bad. I can definitely see how people with the broadcast version would bypass this release. I'm torn here, I was really looking forward to this set and my wife loves these movies. They're not disastrous like Gladiator or most of the Trek films but...

I think we'll probably cancel our preorder and give this a couple weeks to drop in price and just make due with this until the Extended releases. In the meantime Mr. Jackson should be embarrassed that he's apparently put his personal stamp of approval on this.

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=3849
Jackson replied: "I've seen the Blu-ray as they sent it to me to approve and I looked at the film and it looks fantastic on Blu-ray"

Frankly if this was approved by Mr. Jackson personally, I'm not sure I'm going to raise my expectations for the Extended editions. If this sells like hotcakes (it will) and Mr. Jackson gives these transfers a big thumbs up what's to motivate Warner into doing a better job on the next versions? Which, I might add, are even *longer* and will be more challenging to compress.

It will explain what they did to make the BD image look richer, more elegant, and less washed-out looking than the HDTV image. What else?

No, you should be embarassd for thinking that the Academy Award-winning and knighted filmmaker is wrong and you are right. AVS arrogance at its finest

Arrogance is assuming that because someone has a certain set of credentials, they absolutely must be right. Obviously you are wrong in your assumption of this.

Anyone check out the photos in the "media" section of the official LOTR website? Wonder if they're production stills or actually from the film Man, those look nice

That screengrab of the beginning of Fellowship speaks volumes. I like the BD better than the HDTV version. It has better gamma and color, not washed out from the comparison shots posted here. The BD is leaps and bounds over the DVD especially with the posted shot of Gollum crouching and the intro of Fellowship with Frodo reading in the Shire. I pre-ordered days ago and I'm not sorry with the decision based on those grabs. However, it is clear DNR was done. There has to be LOTR footage somewhere that is quite sharp and does not have DNR. Maybe it is pre-processed footage the public has never seen.

Clearly we all know what is going on here. Warner will issue Peter Jackson's epic multiple times over its lifetime. They know it is a hit and will milk it to the last drop. Nothing wrong with that. I hate DNR but I prefer it over edge enhancement. I'm sure they will work from better masters and release the extended editions and tie that in with the release of the Hobbit. It will be a bit sharper and maybe some grain here and there but I doubt it will be a complete remastering from the ground up using original negatives. Just enough to get people to double dip on Blu. Maybe the extended editions will include just a remastered version of Fellowship and then the rest of the remasters will follow when Hobbit is released on BD. Till then, close your eyes, accept DNR, reopen them and enjoy these movies if you love them. Warner could have blown everyone's socks off, they had plenty of time to remaster these, but they went the Corporate greed route.

Nonsense, they've mushed away Gandolf's beard in almost every shot, and added some artifacts on top of the mushiness. This is *not* a very good transfer, and frankly I think Mr. Jackson should be embarrassed for blessing this type of low quality, lazy work *precisely* because he is an Academy Award winning, Knighted filmmaker. Mind you, I'm an admirer of the man's work and consider him to be a brilliant director.

I just discussed this release with my wife - again she loves these movies - and she wanted to see some of the screen caps. I told her she wouldn't see a difference, as she generally doesn't even care if a movie is on DVD or Blu-Ray. She immediately made a bit of a shocked face at every shot of Gandolf I showed her. Right away she noticed the mushy, missing details and became genuinely disappointed. My only arrogance was in assuming my wife wouldn't notice a difference.

Either there is something wrong with my browser or something weird is going on with the BD caps.

This one for example.
http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/4505/lotr7bd.png
compared to this..
http://comparescreenshots.slicx.com/comparison/43820

I addressed that in my update to the post:
"
edit- but the overall look is just so bad, its really hard to believe that such an ugly nasty low-res look is from a 21st century movie with a 100 million dollar budget. I hope there is a higher quality version out there and we really are just looking at a nasty artifact from the master made for the dvd era."

Honestly, if they are knowingly releasing such a crappy copy... its not technically fraud but its really bad. The only reason to do this is to double dip.

those are likely what the film really looks like, but they won't release it until after they rip off everybody the first or second time around.

The comparescreenshots HDTV screenshot was better. The grain in the background almost dissapeared on the Blu-ray picture...

DVD

@Guys,

are you sure that all of this is caused by DNR?


This can't be DNR. I don't think anybody in his right mind would apply DNR to one frame and then not to the next frame. DNR is either applied to the whole movie, or at least to specific scenes, but it's definitely not applied to single frames. So this TTT issue seems to me like a compression problem. I've seen this before. If the bitrate is too low, one frame has grain in it and the next is waxy and so on.

But I take it in Fellowship whole scenes are DNRed and not just some frames?

madshi,

This DVNR was automated, not human supervised/conducted. The likely culprit is the Digital Vision DVNR turnkey hardware.

http://www.digitalvision.se/products/dvnr.htm

The DVNR issues you see in one frame but not always others is symptomatic of the very same thing that happened to Dark City Director's Cut, which also happens to be a New Line Cinema/Warner property.

Just look at Xylon's Dark City image comparison thread if you don't believe me.

Pan's Labyrinth also got the smoothing over treatment in the U.S. release whereas the U.K. release looked top notch.

Ouch.


Yeah, there's a reason why I have Pan's Labyrinth UK in my movie collection. Beats all other releases. Funny enough, it's using VC-1, which goes to show that it's not neccesarily the codec which is responsible for subpar Warner / New Line Blu-Rays...


Ah, that makes sense - thanks!

I wish DNR were made a federal crime, resulting in an automatic 5-year movie watching ban for all guys responsible.

Hmm, any chance that another release might come out that´s better PQ-wise? Im not buying this version, thats for sure!

I don't have much hope for that, because unlike some other studios, Warner releases usually reuse the very same encoding world wide.

Nah, the European version is most likely "clean" without the Elvish subtitles (which would be player-generated depending on selected language) - so it has to be another encode.

I'm not sure why everyone is so shocked. Its clear this is just a money grab until the "real" set comes out. I mean sure they could have done it right and nailed it this time, but why spend the money on it when it doesn't matter? They'll still sell tons of them and most people won't care.

I know we're enthusiasts and its maddening, but I totally expected this.

Why don't they just pretend it's HD and just release an upscaled DVD version? There would be no repercussions and most people wouldn't notice the difference. It would be the cheapest solution and then they could release a 720p version next year, followed by a 1080i version then a 1080p version that looks like this. Then they release the EEs the same way. Finally they can release the good versions of the TE and EE in 10 years. So they would be releasing like 10 versions which would make them a TON of money. Cause that's what it's all about right????

Not sure what the case is here, but to ad to some of the other replies, there is a specific scene in Star Trek III when Marcus, young Spock and Savvik are in a snow storm and the automated DNR filter literally pulses back and forth between smooth/filtered and untouched/grainy. As discussed, it points to automated DNR tools and poor quality control.

Honestly, if they don't want to pay to have a QA person supervise the DNR process and check the results manually, why not just forego the entire process? Less money and better picture quality.

I did a search last night and it appears TBS will be broadcasting these movies, one each night starting April 2. The first movie starts at 9:00pm and the other two at 8:00pm. I'm unsure if they will be in HD though.

I'll be renting the BDs when they become available. And you know the price when released is going to be attractive just like Gladiator and Braveheart were which will influence many purcahses.

+1.......This comparison made me see what everyone is talking about...........WOW

Canceled my Amazon preorder. If they're not going to do it right they won't get my money. Unfortunately Amazon doesn't get it either (winds up hurting the re/e-tailer too).

I've been trying to put all the screens on that mouseover site but I gave up after doing it twice and not getting the correct results.

I refuse to be nickled and dimed. I think I'll watch the EE trilogy on DVD sometime by summer to get my current LotR fix, and from there it'll be a piece of cake to be patient for the pristine transfer of a 3D EE edition that will likely come out years from now.