Blu-ray, HD-DVD & SD DVD Comparison Screenshots *WARNING - LARGE PICTURE FILES* - Page 22

I clearly see those artifacts, because I have a 100'' screen and a fullHD projector. Anyway, Fettastic put a clear description on Tier 0: "No artifacts whatsoever, no matter how small." It doesn't say: "Tier 0: a movie with artifacts too small to be seen on average displays".

Exactly right!

This thread turned out to be great. Sorry about getting on your case at the start Xylon, some of these direct capture comparisons are amazing in what they reveal.

Great work!

question:

is the comparison done to an upconverting dvd player. I mean if i have a set that only goes to 1080i, shouldnt i see the same results from an upconverting dvd player as i would with a hd player on that particular set.

An upconverting dvd player doesn't create more picture information. You still only get 720x480. The only way an upconverting dvd player benefits the image is if it deinterlaces and upconverts better than your display.

so then an upconverting dvd player outputting 1080i no matter how good is no match for a hd dvd player outputting 1080i

Not sure why you would say that, but as someone said already it depends on the process used to deinterlace and then resize the picture to the proper resolution.

A HD DVD player upconverting a DVD is doing the same exact thing as a standard DVD player that upconverts, which is what an HD display does with a non-HD signal -- that is upconvert the image to a higher resolution. Whichever piece of equipment does the best job of this will look best.

But an HD DVD player playing an HD DVD will definitely look better than an upconverted DVD (save for the handful of really bad-looking HD DVDs).

For something ranked as the best transfer ever, defined as "No artifacts whatsoever, no matter how small", Dead Man's Chest sure has a lot of compression artifacts...

Ok, I've updated the post with the 2x versions.

You are right. King Kong is still the sharpest HD movie out there IMHO.

Yuo need Loseless video to have no Artifact.. any Lossy Video codec will have artifact, the trick is, is it visible at normal viewing range ...

Yeah, because every shot in Kong is that sharp. ::cough:: And of course it has nothing to do with the photography, film stock, digital compositing of elements, or if it was shot in a tightly controlled greenscreen studio or on a docked ship outside.

I'll agree that Kong and both POTC seem to be in another dimension of detail, even with their occasional flaws. The Matrix films look good but not in that crisply textured/3-D pop/Now This Is HD way. Maybe Revolutions is a step up?

That block artifact on Depp's hat is odd. I'm tempted to go with Rdjam's "it must be on the master" defense.

Sometimes you have to also consider the upgrade might be more pronounced depending on the quality of the DVD. The Matrix movies are near reference for DVD whereas from what I can see the DMC DVD looks awful, even for DVD. The BR version is a huge step up, right up there with the best on either format although I wouldn't say it surpasses the best either.

The Matrix transfers are softer but that seems to be how the films are shot as opposed to flaws in the encodes. King Kong shows you can have just as much detail on HD DVD. As Kram said, every film has a different look.

Judging from recent AVS vs VC-1 shootouts I have no doubts the Pirates movies would look equally good on HD DVD.

Luckily I'm format neutral

Incidentally, I think the King Kong DVD looked horrible compared to the HD shots as well. I know very little about this stuff but is it possible a softer movie like The Matrix would compress better to DVD than ultra-sharp movies like KK or DMC?

Right now sometimes we can blame the master but still say it was the directors intent to shoot that way. And currently there is no presumption the director had any intent to shoot in a way that made a good hidef home video.

But the studios try to run a business and I think in the future this may cause those priorities to change a bit. That is, a director may find financing and studio acceptance a bit easier if he agrees to make movies that will look good and help sell HDTV broadcasts and hidef DVD's, assuming those eventually become a significant revenue source (not yet).

I think it is foolish to just think of movie producers and directors as just artists with no concept of the eventual target customer. Among other things, a new medium like HDTV is a media sales channel.

- Tom

Wow, some of those DMC shots look terrible. Especially the dark scenes. How can anyone call this the best HD out there?

The matrix shots look fairly soft, but imho look slightly better than DMC. Neither looks as good as the screenshots of KK.

I haven't seen the Matrix in HD, but those POTC screenshots look NOTHING like what I see on my 9ft screen (in 1080p using the Pearl). That quality would be unacceptable to me if that was indicitive of the actual BD.

Just saw DMC and POTC1 at a friend's house. gotta admit, they both trump the Matrix, not that I was expecting any less. IMO, POTC1 is the closest thing to KK I have seen outside of animation.

Matrix 1 was very good; for some reason, the sequels don't look as nice as the first. rather, they look more filtered. I think Xylon's grabs also indicate that Matrix 1 is superior to Reloaded in detail