The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? - Page 3

... So I take it nobody's going to take a quick close look at those scenes on the Heart of Gold and say they see/don't see these issues? I'm starting to think I need to aim a video camera at my screen and show everyone what I'm experiencing.

I'd really like to know why seems to show up only on my setup, and only on this *one* movie, when all my other BD titles (many also AVC encoded) look stunning. If there's a problem with the way I've got things configured, I'd sure like to know. But my gut tells me that this is an extremely poor encode; the way I figure, if an entire legion of reviewers can miss the bad framing of PotC, this might've gone unnoticed as well.

Take a couple of pictures with time codes and I'd be glad to verify. If that's too much of a pain, give time codes for some of the more standout issues and again, I'd be glad to verify. I've only watched the movie on Blu-ray Disc once so far, on a 52" Sharp Aquos using the PS3. The transfer didn't stand out to me as great but I had no real complaints at the time, though I thought a few scenes were a bit grainy.

I would just say to start at 26:38, the first interior shot of the Heart of Gold. ("Ford...?" "Yes?" "I think I'm a sofa.") Keep your focus on the lower right of the screen, just below and to the right of Sofa Ford. I'm seeing large blocks of slight discoloration and subtle streaks of darker lines emerging from the rightmost button of the sofa. It comes and goes fast. There's evidence of jitter and flicker all throughout the picture in the upper left between the two window portal thingies as well. At 30:35, when Marvin says "Ghastly, isn't it", I'm seeing big blocks of what looks like posterization and/or solarization to the right of Marvin, on the wall behind him. This kind of effect manifests itself in pretty much every interior scene of the Heart of Gold that I've seen. It's not film grain (I don't mind grain at all -- bring it on, I say) and it's definitely making the movie unwatchable for me.

I'm probably just going to bring the movie over to a friend who has a PS3, and have a look-see on his setup.

I see no macroblocking there. No blocks of color, no streaks from the button. However... I definitely do see a couple flecks of white pop in and out (one to the right of the Ford sofa, one beneath it), like dust on the print or digital noise.

OK, looking between the windows again. No jitter but more specks of white. In the next scene I'm finding more slight evidence of print damage with what actually looks like a scratch on the negative at one point. I don't see any posterization near Marvin at 30:35 either - I only see the overlapping shadows moving against each other because of the multiple light sources. I do see more evidence of print damage here though. I'm not seeing any evidence of print damage on scenes that aren't in The Heard of Gold, however.

Ah, here's the scratch I was talking about. Take a look at the space between Trillian's legs and Marvin right around 29:04, it appears for a single frame on the ceiling panel. That's definitely a scratch on the print.

Despite these imperfections, I still think that this is a rather pleasing image overall. I think it's Tier 3 rank is justified. I had to sit really close to the screen and pay very close attention to specific parts of the image to notice most of this stuff and scenes outside The Heart of Gold seem quite good.

Thank you, Dev, for taking the time to have a closer look. I envy that you're only seeing (mostly) imperfections in the print -- I could easily tolerate scratches, dust, etc. but something in my setup seems to be causing very annoying digital artifacts. Or perhaps there are different batches of encodes out there? Using AnyDVD-HD I ripped the disc to my hard drive, played the offending scene in Media Player Classic, and saw the exact same problems. I'm thinking I may just hand this disc off to a friend and keep the DVD.

Again, thanks.

Funniest book I ever read, one of the more boring movie I ever saw.

Saw this again last night and noticed quite a bit of digital 'noise'. Not to mention the lack of (i think) DTS MA or Dolby TrueHD....is there a remaster out there that is better than the original blu???

Why would you need a lossless audio if you already have uncompressed PCM track? And the Blu-ray looks great.

I don't think it would happen anytime soon. Most reviewers found the PQ to be solid and the digital noise is supposedly the intent of the director. Also, it has a lossless LPCM 5.1 audio track, so DTS-HD MA or Dolby TrueHD would be a bit redundant.

I also am happy with the disc

AV is fine; the movie ain't.

I love it personally, and I was a fan of the book and the TV version

The disc defaulted to dolby 5.1 when I played it. Had to go into the disc menus and tell it I wanted the loseless track.

Not lossless, uncompressed

You're right, uncompressed.

Oh, and I liked the TV version more than the movie.
Movie was still fun though.

Uncompressed PCM is lossless. DTS-HDMA and Dolby TrueHD are just compressed versions of the lossless PCM. Many of the early BD releases did not default to the lossless audio.

Uncompressed is uncompressed.