Blu-ray, HD-DVD & SD DVD Comparison Screenshots *WARNING - LARGE PICTURE FILES* - Page 26

Thank you for your input, but SD looks better from 3 feet from my 65 inch screen.

Tell you what, I will not try to tell you what you see with your eyes

- Rich

You must have missed this in my post:



The effect of viewing SD larger or closer is pretty obvious, so you might want
to consider some of us would already take that into account. Even with it taken into account, I'm perplexed by these SD shots.

In fact, I just tested this again. Using a tape measure I viewed SD DVDs on my plasma and compared them to the SD DVD shots on this thread, maintaining exactly the same field of view. Including some of the exact shots (e.g. HellBoy's face). And the images I see at my home (as on many displays) is indeed easily sharper. As I said, aside from the plasma I'm also viewing SD on a very big projected image from close up and still find SD often looks better than what I see on this thread. I've also watched plenty of SD quite close to a 65"
plasma and it was sharper and more detailed looking than these screen shots.

Even when I moved in closer to my plasma than the field of view I'm using for these screen shots, sharpness and detail remained. For instance, the fine texture or pattern on people's clothes remains well defined, whereas on all these screen shots you don't get that - all textures are softened over. (That's one of the first things I noticed about the screen shots).

Hence my comments weren't winging it without thought.

Maybe it's the contrast of having the HD versions right here making the SD versions look soft...

Sheesh, is no-one reading what RichB and I are writing?

It's not the contrast to the HD shots that make us think the SD shots aren't right, it's the contrast to what we are used to seeing with decent SD transfers on good displays.

Remember...I wasn't comparing it to the HD shots; I just finished writing that I compared the detail and sharpness of the SD screen shots to SD DVDs on my plasma, using the same viewing ratio! And SD DVD on my plasma consistently held a sharper, "tighter" detail than what I see in these SD DVD shots. (Which is right in line with what I'm used to seeing with SD DVD on plenty of other displays, large and small).

...I guess it's leave it...

- Rich

...except for the filtered upscaling of the sd frame. Understandably, this is pretty much a requirement in order to view both samples at the same physical size, but nonetheless, it does introduce its own pq loss.

The most "level" playing field would have been to display the sd sample at its native resolution state.

You mean something like this?

(Click for fullsize)


The SD version has been upscaled using nearest neighbor. This is as close as you're going to get to a direct comparison of what's actually on the disc.

Is this more representative of what kind of a difference the viewer will see with SD discs on his HD setup? Probably not. Somewhere along the line, the SD image is being filtered on its way to a 1080p set, whether it's an upscaling DVD player, or an LCD upscaling to fit native res. The quality of that filtering will vary from setup to setup, but it's definitely not going to look this jagged. It's going to look smoother, and as a byproduct, blurrier.

So really, the question is, do we want to compare the media itself, or how it's going to look to the average viewer?

actually that looks pretty good lol (all things considered)

Is that upconverted? I agree, unless you zoom in all the way it looks extremely good. The only difference I see is that the SD version is a bit brighter than the HD version (and of course has jagged edges). Sadly, the added brightness also adds to the illusion of more detail. Unless you zoom all the way in of course.

If you zoom all the way in, it looks like total crap. :P But who watches their television from 2-3 feet away usually? Most people I know are usually 6+ feet away on a 40-60 inch TV.

Er... Sorry, I did an auto-contrast on the SD version to more closely match Xylon's HD grab. Here is how it looked originally.

Maybe Will would provide a better example.

This shot is full size, SD upconverted with nearest neighbor, and NOT adjusted to match HD's contrast.

Personally, I see a huge difference, and am glad SD looks softer than this on my 1080p XBR LCD.

Yeah, it was some of the best CGI I've ever seen. King Kong's CGI was just awful in comparison (of course most CGI is pretty bad compared to Davey's face).

It looked absolutely real in almost every shot.

Unless you think that Xylon artificially softens or downgrades the SD screenshots, there's only two explanations:

a) your computer screen is a CRT which always gives a softer image than a digital display
b) your TV's sharpening setting is cranked up all the way, and you confuse this for more detail

I am sure that this is also because they are freeze-frames. I have often experienced that if you pause a video, it looks a lot more flawed (compression artifacts, grain, motion blur). If video is played back, the details "blend into each other" and you think you see a sharper, clearer image. Also: computer monitors often have the equivalent of 720p resolution or higher (I´m looking at it in full 1080p ). If you watch DVDs on a 720p Television from a few feet away, of course it will look sharper.

So in a way, you are right: These images don´t represent what most people see in their home-theater setup. But when I watch DVDs on my 1080p monitor up close, it can get really ugly.

I´ve said it many times and I´ll say it again: HD is all about size!
I have to make that my signature.

Xylon,

any comparisons for Transformers SD and HD?

Any 28 Days Later comparisons? Thanks in advance...

The Shining, please.

Yeah.. on my screen (107inch) DVD actually look worst than those shot here, it i'am at 11 feet distance.. HD look shining .. DVD very bad depanding on the transfert...

a) It is a 65" Plasma.
b) I run in as a monitor (no sharpness) and have both TheaterTek with ATI and NVidia cards look better. Also, with a Lumagen Radiance and Lumagen HDQ scaler (no additional sharpening). I calibrate it with DVE and there is no edge enhancement.



I do not think that " Xylon artificially softens or downgrades the SD screenshots" using your words.

However, SD can look much better than the images seen here. I hope that does not upset people, but try some TheaterTEK or a scaler and you should be able to see for yourself.

If not, let's leave it at that.

- Rich

The black level is different between the two versions, affecting the perceived level of contrast. If you open up the image in a new tab/window and view it at full size, you see that the black level is different between the two. On my computer monitor, the "black" in the SD appears grey, while the "black" on the Blu-Ray appears as "black."


I opened up the image in Photoshop (Elements), selected the left half, and changed the Levels, "Input" from 0 to 6. This made the black bars look black, matching the right side.

Here's the updated image:

Just a thanks to Xylon for those comparisons. I loved looking through this thread.