Just how GOOD is HD-DVD, really?  

<|--------- THIS good ---------|>

If you look both here and in the BD forum, you'll see many many threads arguing about encoding details, etc. PQ and AQ are the top arguments here. :D

so far i am somewhat dissapointed with HD-DVD.

HD DVD looks fantastic! I've owned most formats: VHS, SVHS, laserdiscs, DVDs, DTheater, & now HD DVD & Blu-ray. What impresses me most is the complete lack of compression artifacts [95% of the time], details/clarity & black levels.

When I first got an HD-DVD player I thought the movies looked good but not as amazing as I had hoped. After several months with the player I have changed my opinion. I think HD movies look incredible and it's much more evident when I go back to watch a standard DVD. Now I only want to rent and buy HD-DVD's.

I love having the HD discs, I am glad I didn't wait. That being said, I think we will see a similar path as that of movies being transferred to DVD. Some movies are freakin outstanding, some just look good, some still have issues. In a few years they will yet again re-release the movies with even more supposed restoration, maybe better compression and color adjustments.

Quite frankly, I don't know how anyone can go back to SD once they're exposed to HD DVD. Your display is also an important aspect to high definition. Just need to play Batman Begins with lossless TrueHD and it settles any questions.

Quality source material is what we all hunger for. I've been viewing overly compressed HD and crappy transfer DVDs for some time now. At least long enough to know that HD-DVD is the best source material my display has ever seen. That alone is enough for me to justify the cost and possible risk of buying into a doomed format.

The quality from HD-DVD to HD-DVD does vary. From the little I know of it, the way these discs are compressed is almost as much art as it is science. It seems like the quality varies from studio to studio, production team (correct term?) to production team, and title to title.

Going back further the quality of the masters varies. Even further we may find that the director shot the whole movie in soft focus or with vaseline on the lens as an artistic decision. No matter how high the resolution or bitrate of a format is or how fine the quality of the work put into it, garbage in is garbage out (as you say).

"Transparency to the master" is the "big talk" used to judge a format. All we can hope for from any given format is that it reproduces the look of the master with perfect fidelity. Very few people here have seen the masters from which HD-DVD is created and can only speculate on a title's "transparency."

How good is HD-DVD? All I know for certain is that this format produces the best image I've ever seen on my display. I've seen it on better displays and it looks even better. As a source HD-DVD is very high quality.

the best HD-DVDs i've seen (CoR, Serenity, Corpse Bride, Training Day, etc) present the best high definition picture I have ever seen. by that I mean it beats the pants off of CSI: Miami.

the worst HD-DVD's, well like you said garbage in, garbage out. i find even the weakest releases look much better than the SD DVD version (traffic, dazed & confused).

it also depends if you have the display hardware to notice all the advantages with HD DVD.

The handful of HD DVDs I've purchased or rented look so good that HD cable now seems mediocre.

Beyond amazing. You have to see it hooked up right in your home to believe.

Unseen crazy 3D depth and clarity, no compression artifacts, deep blacks and colors that make SD DVD look stupid. Sharpness that's unbelievable. Read signs in the backgrounds that were never meant to be read. See subtle foundation make-up textures on the face of actresses that you thought would be impossible to see.

I mean, the list goes on. Some titles are better than others when it comes to the pure "wow" department but ALL titles look better than SD DVD in a noticeable and very satisfying way.

I don't think you even necessarily need the worlds greatest display either. Though I have Samsung's latest large-panel LCD just released this summer - a friend of mine has a very basic, old Panasonic 768p 32 inch LCD and HD DVD. The same stuff looks amazing in basically the same way on it.

The problem is that people don't realize just how bad/imperfect SD DVD is until they really watch a wide variety of different stuff/sources on either one or both formats (meaning SD DVD and HD DVD).

Plus, the better the display you have (as we all will going forward into the future) - the worse SD DVD looks. With displays that can make a picture look clearer and clearer - so to do they highlight the flaws of the weak SD DVD format more and more.

You'll end up like me - owning a great display and finding it difficult to enjoy SD DVD for all the compression artifacts and crap that keep distracting you from the movie itself. I mean, we pay all this money for great displays/equipment - our sources should deliver in the same way. And you don't want to pay a lot of money and feel that the source/picture is deficient or not working up to the level of everything else.

When I first saw HD DVD set up correctly at home - I was shocked by how good it was. It's probably true that my expectations were somewhat low (not really trusting a previously unproven format and never having watched much broadcast HD) --- but my jaw literally dropped and hung open for the first 20 minutes or so. It's that crazy.

Just buy into it with the concept that your favorite movies of the present/past will never look better and that this is the last physical format you have to buy. I mean, this IS essentially true. Maybe in 10 years, George Lucas will invent a 3D-hologram camera with which to film Star Wars episode 7 - and then we'll need to buy new equipment just to watch that movie and some others that come out later....but for now this is it. Movies like Blazing Saddles, Casablanca, Mission Impossible III, and Batman Begins - will never look any better*.


(*cept for maybe slightly better on some frame-by-frame perfect master restoration on a future HD DVD special edition re-release a few years from now :D ).

hd-dvd looks extremely good

my player broke and i had to watch sd-dvd for a week and kepted rubbing my eyes cause everything was so blurry i tought it was my eyes

it looks way better then any cable hd channels

actually after watching prison break, oc, heros i think they look like sd-dvd wehn compared to hd-dvd

*cough* Toshiba Salesman *cough*

just exactly how i think! :D :eek: :cool:

oh , read the news :)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/05/1548207
lucas quits film buissness

Nope, you'll see plenty w/720p. Many of us have 720p native projectors & they show off HD DVD's capabilities really well. Sure, good 1080p PJ will be better, but I don't expect by a whole lot.

FirebirdTN,
Like most have said, once you get HD DVD, SD DVD just doesn't cut it.
Don't worry about the 720p thing, the difference will make you smile.

Don't pay attention to the sewer denizens, :rolleyes: someone must've left the lid up ;)

I have a 37" Panny plasma that is 720p & I see the difference on HD-DVD vs. SD DVD from 8' away. If you have a decent or better HT setup, the audio is particularly impressive esp. if the movie is TrueHD. DD+ is excellent too.

The Toshiba HD-DVD is also an excellent upconverting DVD player for SD DVD movies (even better than my Sony 70h upconverting player).

Speaking of which, 1080p is frankly over-rated. Unless you have a very big screen greater than 50",& sit very close, it's arguable if you see any difference between 720p/1080i vs 1080p:

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6449_7-...-1.html?tag=ms

I have a 32in and a 46in LCDs. And HD-DVDs look great on both. you don't need a $5k plus dislpay in order to truly appreciate it. Heck I've even taken the 15in LCD from the kitchen and hooked it up via composite and still, there is no way you'd mistake it for SD

Lucasfilm will instead focus on television. Lucas states that for the price of one $200 million feature movie, 'I can make 50-60 two hour movies' that are 'pay-per-view and downloadable.'


Oh great... Instead of 1 bad movie every few years we get to see 50-60?

Yeah, there's more to an amazing HD viewing experience than resolution. An image that's compressed to snot or based on a crappy transfer is going to look bad no matter what.

I own MI-3 HD and Batman Begins HD and several others and I still haven't seen one that looks as good to me as Monday Night Football HD.

Maybe thats a limitation of the source material and I never will, I dunno.

with a Samsung LCD?!?!?

thats what i have been saying...

filmed for HD, is way better than downgraded to HD

Any of the the HD-DVDs I have seen are better then any DVD out there, but I am using a Projector with a 92' screen so I really notice the difference.

I would like to clear something up. There are some people who believe Monday Night Football in HD, and in another thread recently someone mentioned their HD camcorder, displays the best HD PQ they have ever seen. And because of that, they regard HD DVD PQ lower.

But, comparing the two is apples and oranges. The reason people seem to prefer broadcast HDTV is because every single thing you see on the screen is in focus. This is called deep focus, or having a deep depth of field. Any sports broadcast, or even The Tonight Show with Jay Leno uses deep focus.

Broadcast HDTV uses HD video cameras, either at 720 or 1080. The light goes through the lens and hits a CCD which is usually about 1/3 the size of a 35mm film frame. Because it is smaller, it is easier to get everything in focus. But most movies are shot on film, and inherently lean toward shallow focus, meaning the most detail is in the thing they want you to see. The director focuses your attention where they want you to focus.

So if you think that jumping to HD DVD from SD DVD will automatically make everything in focus, you will be disappointed. HD DVD only shows more resolution of what is already there.

great point on deep focus. Also, all home movies and sports/broadcast HD are video sources with 60fps, not film which has 24fps. So it looks more real in regards to motion - called 'true' motion or video motion. the framerate for film tends to subtly distort motion, especially camera pans.

I still think the focus has more to do with your preferences. A disc like The Searchers was filmed with Vistavision which had a depth of field much greater than other cameras of the time. Which is why you get so many reviews saying The Searchers looks better than even new films.

And Monday Night Football has the contrast turned crazy high, sharpness, colors, etc. tweaked to get that response.

If you saw a movie tweaked that way it would look horrible.

You cannot compare the 2 at all. Anyone that thinks so needs to do some research and come to a better understanding between made for TV and films.