Dragonheart Blu-ray

Another HDDVD exclusive bites the dust.

The film has its charm.

It's very corny and basically a made for TV movie but with big budget effects (pretty amazing at the time).
Also, one of the best film scores of all time.
You can't count how many times it was used in movie trailers.

This is a sentimental favorite of mine. It was the first movie my family and I watched in our first theater room. Now with every major update or new room since we moved we have made it our first movie. I own it on HD DVD. Yes, its a little corny but fun.

Stace

Don't sell your hddvd yet...

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/113504

shoot - for a brief second i thought i was reading dragonslayer

dvd, hd, dvd, hd, dvd, hd

wtf? I mean, I've seen worse but why filter out the detail?

Awful cover is awful

Gah!

What ever happened to using the original theatrical one-sheet for movies? I guess it could be worse with giant heads and stuff.

Shame there is no decent art out there, oh, no, wait



What I hate with Universal is the DNR and the bad art take way more effort then just popping the hd-dvd onto a BD

I am kinda reluctant to go on one image alone, still it would fit Universal's pattern. I have the HD-DVD version and it is the best catalog (or near catalog) pq by Universal on HD-DVD but I did not care for the movie at all.

I actually had to look really really hard to tell them apart, they are very close. But the HD-DVD wins out slightly wow. But really the difference is negligible. Would have hoped the BD would be better but what we are getting is still not bad.

Maybe now is a good time to sell my Dragonheart and Equlibrium hddvds

I was wondering why Universal didn't release this sooner to BD as it was out on HD DVD pretty much straight away. Yeah the movie is dated as are its SPFX, the acting is nothing special but that score is timeless! It is still what I consider a fun film and I really look to adding this title to my BD collection.

I remember being awed by very deep bass in the dragon heart beat reveal in the earlier formats (or perhaps it was at the cinema), but felt it was somewhat anemic in the HD-DVD. Perhaps I should now be even more worried about the Bluray I have on pre-order.

Because they were busying deciding how much more filtering to apply to an already slightly filtered master.
Also how much they could nickle and dime with a rubbish photoshop cover art for the BR.


I disagree, the difference between the already filter HD-DVD and the BD is pretty distinct. Clearly not Predator or Patton end of the scale but this is yet another example of filtering that is commonly accepted by reviewers for other releases as well. As everyone fawns over the improved Out Of Africa it to suffers from filtering, more pronouncedly in various shots than others but still the DNR knob was used throughout, but since it is better folks seem to overlook, or blinded to, that fact.

Best Regards
KvE

The poster says you will believe. Correct!! You will believe how BAD this movie is upon finishing it...if you can. Awful film!

If he cannot see it he probably cannot see the difference between any Universal HD-DVD & BD. Still one should wait for a more through comparison.

It's difficult to understand why Universal would bother re-encoding any HD-DVD: it's a simple matter to remove the pulldown flags used with HD-DVD VC-1, without touching the encode itself, to make it Bluray VC-1 compatible.

Unless they are taking the HD-DVD as the source and then passing it through an AV encoder to give the Bluray. This might explain the DNR, which may not be DNR applied at all, but implicit to the deblocking filters in the encoder. It would also mean that the resultant HD audio would be no better than the DD+ on the HD-DVD.

And that 1.5mbps DD+ is still almost indistinguishable from the studio master so all is well.

shoot - for a brief second i thought i was reading dragonslayer

Hear, hear.

That's been asked a lot before. I have been able to demux HD-DVD VC-1 into standard mpeg2 (a long while back) so I cannot see why Universal would need re-encoding plus WB and others did not have to re-encode for BD.

Holy flashback. This just reminded me of something I had to rollout. Its waiting for a new home theater...

i believe its vc-1 on video \\probably they re converted the Hddvd

DragonHeart from the pre-occlusion age:

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Dragon.../36697/#Review

I am stunned the reviewer admits the HD-DVD version is probably better due to more filter (his word) use on the BD release. I suspect this is correct going by my HD-DVD copy.

Goofy "standard practice" DNR and scratch removal. The HD DVD barely has any visible grain to begin with.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/119933
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/119934
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/119935
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/119936

The Blu-ray.com JPEGs are a lot smaller than their typical compression though.

In the last image the woman's finger tips are missing in the BD image.

Good ol' Universal!

Would it be possible to rip the video from the HDDVD version and remux it with the DTSHD Master of the Bluray, for a best possible version?

Yes people have done that already

Cool, now to find out how.