The New PQ Tier thread for Blu-Ray - Discussion - Page 465

Really, I didn't think the movie itself was that terrible, considering it is supposed to just be a fun, entertaining summer blockbuster type of movie. It won't win any awards (maybe for Visual Effects), but it was still very entertaining throughout. About the humor though, I just don't think Shia is that funny. John Turturro had most of the funny lines in this movie, and Shia's parents had the rest. The stuff that's meant to be funny comes off as kid jokes to me, especially the cheeseball stuff the Transformers throw out there.

Yep, we are on the same page, as I agree with all of that. Some of the "jokes" definitely fell flat, but that was even more the case in the first one.

Also, I thought there was more action in this one, and some of the action scenes were slightly better than the first.

I'm not sure, Rob, whether you may be including my comments among those that said the CGI was better in the first movie but, in case you were, that is not the comparison I am making. To be clear, I think the PQ on non-CGI shots was better in the first movie, but I would agree that the PQ on CGI shots is better in the second movie. Even though CGI shots make up a much higher percentage of the shots in the second movie, that still does not mean, to me at least, that that's enough. I thought the PQ of non-CGI shots was much more consistent in the first movie than in the second, and that there were a lot more non-CGI shots with excellent PQ in the first movie than in the second.

The transition to the field of planes outside, with what are clearly mountains from desert in the Western US in the background, was extremely jarring. Bay acknowledges the "problem" in the audio commentary.

Thanks for the clarification, because I did read your comments as saying that you thought the CGI in the first film was better than the CGI in the second.

I agree that the first film was more consistent throughout than the second film. I guess I would say that the better CGI in the second film offsets the less than consistent PQ on the non CGI parts.

I would rate Tier 2.75 after comparing the BD PQ Vs. the 480i/60Hz Deleted Scenes. You should definitely have a close look at the PQ of the Deleted Scenes (480i downscaled from 1080i/p) before jumping the gun on the BD PQ. The close-ups shots exhibit nice details though some of it looks Band of Brothers Waxy. The color scheme used is bland and dull which further takes out eye candy factors. Some night shots towards the middle and end seem to exhibit blockiness. Overall, the PQ is above average though can't complain much for the price I paid.

Why would anyone have to do that?

What difference would it make in the Tier recommendation?

'Coz the differences in PQ between the Deleted Scenes (SD) Vs. the actual BD PQ (HD) are minuscule. This one is similar to Harry Potter 1 and 2 where the PQ differences between SD and HD were very minimal.

I would just like to thank everyone for the kind words of support. They truly mean a great deal to me. There are many excellent and notable reviewers that could be culled from the ranks of the regular posters to this thread. At the present moment, I am content with helping out here. Maybe in the future...


I will give the deleted scenes a look when I get the chance. My placement does mention that the master looked processed on some level. On top of that, the image declined in quality as the movie progressed, but that was mostly accounted for in my score. Much of the first half of the movie displayed some suitable eye candy, at least in my eyes. The first half really looked to me what my idea of a Michael Bay-helmed horror movie would look like.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...6#post17362396
The picture partially retains a certain level of film grain, but the transfer does have the look of a slightly processed master. Spatio-temporal filtering is evident in the slightly reduced grain fields. High-frequency details are not substantially affected, but spectral analysis would probably reveal a slight roll-off of the finest detail. The majority of viewers will likely gloss over this level of processing and its slight impact on the final image, but film purists might want to take note. It would be preferable to leave the film untouched of course.

Much of the movie looks quite good. About an hour into the viewing, a ranking in the middle of tier one was precipitating in my mind. Contrast is pitch perfect, with a solid sense of depth and perspective to the picture. Close-ups commonly demonstrated detailed skin textures and the delineated hair structure of most actors. The color palette is a bit dark and oppressive in its tonality, emphasizing shades of brown and gray over the brighter colors. In a bit of a surprise, hues of red are never exaggerated, as is common in horror movies. Black levels are solid but not reference level. The shadows ripple with nuance and depth most of the time, rendering darker objects with good highlights. Crushing in low-lit scenes is never a problem. Flesh tones are nice and well-presented in a naturalistic lighting sense.

The overall picture quality drops in merit during the final acts. The setting changes at that point, and the transfer becomes even darker and murkier than before. The compression encode, having been good until this point aside from a touch of banding, starts to falter handling the darkest shots. Brief flashes of chroma noise and posterization intrude on the picture. The cinematography looks to be partly at fault in these scenes. The drop in technical quality from a filming standpoint is palpable. Leatherface gets obscured on occasion because of these problems. These scenes, which comprise the last thirty minutes of the movie, are what drove this title out of tier one in my consideration.

Phantom / Rob,

What I meant was we hardly check Deleted Scenes / DVD to see how the PQ looks in Standard Definition. We have been so used to Blu-ray PQ (good and bad ones) that we are sometimes forced to accept that the PQ is already maxed out.

I too thought the PQ was quite good during the first half but for fun switched to the deleted scenes to see what was CUT. To my surprise, I found the PQ to be pretty darn good for a material presented in 480i/60Hz and I didn't even know that it was SD at the first glance. Hence, the Tier 2.75 rating.

The Godfather Part I

I admit it, I'm the last person on the earth to see this. So that's outa the way.

I broke from my normal process here a bit in looking before writing to see where my original guestimate would put this title. In addition to not really having a great feel for low tier movies, I usually like to see some comparison films to help solidify my thoughts. This one without looking I was going to say 3.75. I see it's a full tier higher than that, at 2.75. I also however see at least one TIer 4 title that I felt looks considerably better, and honestly, I don't remember watching a whole lot that I thought looked worse.

Some may excuse away the PQ due to the transfer. Maybe because of the age of the film. I cannot. Were there not films like The Battle Of The Bulge from the 60's that look like solid contemporary work, I could maybe give this a pass for what I call excessive softness and just say that's age. Any time I use the word "Soft" in a review, I feel it should detract from the PQ some, but there's times when it's not really the case. I like to make a distinction between "Softened" and "Soft". Softened being when a scene is made to look a certain way due to the mood of the moment, and soft referring to the times when someone fell asleep at the wheel. The later looking out of place and wrong. This one, looks the latter to me, pretty much from the opening scene to the end.

This title doesn't even have what I would call a Tier 1 level shot in the entire 3 hours. Pick an artifact you have become accustomed to seeing and it's in here. Grain is present in a great deal of this film but a lot of it looks as if it's there because it was so obvious in the original print. It's not there because they didn't try to get rid of it.

I think most of the shooting in this film really lends itself to an easy encode. Little panning or action. It's a drama that doesn't move around a lot so maintaining a high bitrate isn't really a requirement at any point in the film. Shown in 16:9, there is significantly more data to present, but I've seen that to not be a problem in other films so I won't offer any excuses there either. With so little change in the frame to frame data, I don't see it being a limitation.

I do remember two particular scenes that were extremely short lived, like 1 second or less each, where I thought, wow, hold it, theres a shot that looks like this is a bluray. But that faded quickly and we went back to normal again.

I would never present this to a first time Blu-Ray viewer and expect them to purchase a player.

I stand by my original thoughts, and might be willing to go lower after seeing some other films in T3/4, but I think a fair assessment would be:

Tier Recommendation: 3.75

Viewed on InFocus X10, 106" Dalite HCW from 11 or 12'

Hey Guys & Gal (G3),

We got back from our trip out east a couple of days early (late last night) and I was able to check this thread before retiring last night. You have been busy watching Blu-rays and I appreciate all the reviews that have been posted. You've whetted my appetite for several titles.

Regarding The Wizard of Oz, I go along with all those who recommended a Tier 3 placement. I did get a chance to view some of it again just prior to our trip and as Rob Tomlin intimated...it's just not that good according to the standards of this thread.

One day I was in the Time/Warner building on the southwestern tip of Central Park in NYC and I had the opportunity to check out Samsung's new 58" plasma (850 series) and they were using Transformers 2 as a demo. I was so impressed with the PQ that I sat down to watch it for 20 minutes. I kept thinking to myself, "This may very well merit a solid Tier 0 placement," and according to most that have reviewed it my thoughts may prove to be true. I hope to give it a rent some time this week. I will say that I was not too generous with the first installment, for I thought that was a middle Tier 1 title.

FWIW, we had a great trip! The fall colors were at their best in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts and all along I-80 through Pennsylvania. Our three days in NYC are still a blur, for we must have walked every street in Manhattan besides riding the subway rails. It's a crazy city....nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

I'm sorry, I still don't understand.

Again, what does looking at 480i material have to do with a Tier recommendation regarding a Blu-ray movie? The Blu-ray either looks good or it doesn't, regardless of what the corresponding DVD/480i picture looks like.

Blu-ray looks good but not a big leap over the DVD/480i picture.

......and again, how does that impact a Tier ranking?

This thread is not about how much better a Blu-ray looks over its SD counterpart. It's about how the Blu-ray looks period.

Exactly!

This exchange between you and Igans316 has me wondering if there is a thread on the Forum which actually deals with comparisons between Blu-ray titles and their DVD counterparts. If there isn't, perhaps Igans316 should start one.

Rob, is it so unheard of for someone to comment, as a criticism of a particular BD's PQ, that it doesn't look much better than a DVD?

There's lots of em. Look at Xylon's posts in this forum.

Exactly what I wanted to convey. Not a big leap over the deleted scenes which are presented in SD. Thought there was a Tier for Blu-rays that only looks slightly better than DVD.

Edit: Tier 3 it is after re-reading the Tier placement rules.

The Best Of Soundstage

recommendation: Tier 1.5

A compilation of music performances from the series broadcast on PBS, the BD is an exclusive release only available at Sears. It was produced and brought to the Blu-ray format courtesy of WTTTW National Productions on November 11, 2008. The 82-minute program is encoded in VC-1 at an average video bitrate of 27.90 Mbps on a single-layer BD-25. The native video resolution is 1080i, not an unusual choice for live music shot in high-definition video.

Even given the disparate nature of each performance, as there are over sixteen artists featured, each segment is generally of the same picture quality. It helps that presumably the same camera operators and stage were used for each show. The quality does not greatly stray from the typical look of material shot on high-definition cameras. Grain and noise are entirely absent while the clarity remains relatively high. There are small variances in absolute resolution between the different performances. The George Jones' segment stands out as one of the best for the closest visible details.

Contrast is nearly perfect and the ample stage lighting hides any real problem the cameras might show with poor black levels. The camera stays in-focus with laser-like precision on the main singers. Information in the shadows are finely delineated, revealing subtle texture details in the fabrics of the musicians. A few shots get slightly washed out when the complex overhead lighting scheme hits the stage at the wrong angle. The alternate angled-shots from the Sheryl Crow performance strangely display significantly brightened contrast.

Overall high-frequency content is barely average, if that, for the ranks of tier one. There are not a plethora of close-ups by the director. Perhaps the older performers did not want their facial features unnecessarily highlighted in the revealing glare of high-definition. The compression encode represents very good work that lacks any intrusive artifacting or diminishment in resolution from the original source material. At various points it displays sustained peaks in the forties, a very healthy figure. There are no real weaknesses in that regard.

Much of the program shows no halos, but a couple of performances did display troubling signs of edge enhancement. The Trace Adkins' portion had visible ringing for one example. It varies from segment to segment though and is not substantially affecting of the general image. Flesh tones are naturalistic in appearance with the color palette maintaining a good balance between saturation and accuracy. The baby blue in Chris Isaak's suit is a good example of superior fidelity and color depth.

Consistently excellent picture quality for a compilation disc allows me to recommend a placement in the middle of tier one, tier 1.5 specifically. It is not a disc someone should go out of their way to obtain for pure demonstration value unless a fan of the featured artists.

BDInfo scan (courtesy of Patsfan 123):
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...0#post15316440

No, it isn't unheard of at all.

But that completely misses my point.

I had completely forgotten about Xylon's "comparison pix" threads when I made that comment. Thanks for reminding me.

Personally, I hardly ever visit those threads because I don't put a whole lot of trust in screen caps. I've seen too many instances where one can see anomalies (such as halos) on a still shot but when viewing that scene in motion it can't be detected. So, to me those *comparisons* aren't trustworthy, nor are the conclusions that are reached based on those comparisons, for many very good looking titles are crucified in those threads based on the *perceived* anomalies.

Denny,

I am a little more inclined to believe what I see there, but I'm not looking at the artifacts if anyone is trying to point them out. I am just looking at the image A vs image B and usually, it's a no brainer to see which is the blu.

I can fully understand why you'd not put much faith in those threads though. As an example, if you want a good laugh, go to the thread for Labrynth, and take a look at those images. Then read. I made a comment after reading all the glowing reviews of the bluray and you'll chuckle I"m sure. Be sure to look at the vidcaps and compare the Blu to the DVD first so my statement is qualified. I didn't bother to respond. If that was the general opinion, it wasn't worth my time to type any more.

Are we gonna get a tier 6?

I do agree with you that in most cases it's easy to see the difference between Blu-ray and DVD. That is the main reason I do visit those comparison threads.

Can you give me a link to the thread you alluded to? I'm not sure if you're referring to Pan's Labyrinth or not, but I checked that out and didn't see the posts you referred to.

I misspelled it, sorry. Here's the link.

Vertical Limit (UK import)

recommendation: 1.25

If ever a movie was made for pure eye candy potential and demonstration-value, it is this movie from the year 2000. Sony released Vertical Limit in multiple territories on home video, but saw fit to stick a MPEG-2 compression encoding on the domestic disc. The region-free BD from the UK discussed here reputedly contains a superior looking transfer encoded in AVC and was released later than the U.S. disc on May 14, 2007. Personally I have no experience with the U.S. Blu-ray aside from a few screen captures linked below. Going off those images alone, there does appear to be a substantial difference in quality. The current ranking for the U.S. disc in tier 3.0 may very well reflect the inherent problems with that early transfer and encoding. That should not affect the placement of this newly encoded transfer, one which should not be placed lower than tier one by any reasonable measure.

Taken on its own merits, the AVC video-compression is solid with just a few minor problems. The 124-minute film has an average video bitrate of 29.11 Mbps on a BD-50. Peak parameters rarely top 35 Mbps and the encode displays many of the same attributes of other early AVC efforts by Sony. Most of the film shows absolutely no sign of compression errors or visual flaws. The scenes blanketed by walls of snow hold up well without a hint of macroblocking. The very thin and natural-looking grain-structure is replicated nicely for the most part. One or two scenes do have a touch of banding and posterization, especially when the camera is trained on the clear blue skies of the Himalayas. The real problematic parts are the scenes inside the cave that certain climbers get trapped in. A small amount of chroma and compression noise briefly manifest in the backgrounds of those scenes sporadically. It is a bit distracting, considering the generally top-notch black levels and shadow detail on display. In all other ways the AVC-encode seems to reproduce high-frequency details exceptionally well.

An underrated aspect is the beautiful cinematography that fills the screen. The picture bursts with incredible resolution, revealing eye-pleasing visuals and arresting imagery. The mountain climbers are always highlighted against a backdrop of sweeping snow-capped mountains and panoramic vistas. The nicely composed framing has a fine sense of balance and focus. The slight use of CGI is blended in superbly, and only the sheer physical impossibility of certain scenes clued me I was viewing computer-assisted action. Print damage is negligible nearly the entire running time. A few flecks of white micro-dots are visible for micro-second flashes but generally the print is free of damage or debris.

The picture quality shows most of the characteristics of the best films in the tier system. The image displays a wonderful magnitude of dimensionality and sharpness. Very few soft moments litter this disc. The party scene before the initial climb literally jumps off the screen with its depth and pop. Colors are saturated excellently and flesh tones shine with a healthy, natural appearance. The finest details are evident in the frequent close-ups employed. Robin Tunney has what appears to be a slight scar between her eye-brows that was invisible on other Blu-rays that had featured her. The principal characters' facial features are shown in stunning resolution. Expect to see every wrinkle and out of place hair.

In many ways this disc is a contender for a placement in tier 1.0. What drops it out of that ranking is the horrendous use of edge enhancement in multiple spots. For a disc that easily holds up in resolution at all viewing distances, even on the largest projection screens, the frequent sight of halos will likely be a negative to viewers on the largest displays. It can be noted that the master is unscathed by any grain-reduction tools, as the film looks shot on stock with little grain to begin with.

I provide the link comparing the screen captures only as a reference point. On my display the UK disc looks superior to what I see on my computer from these one-frame pictures.

Watching on a 60" Pioneer KURO plasma at six feet fed by a 60 GB PS3 (firmware 3.01).

BDInfo scan and comparative screen captures (courtesy of msgohan):
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...1#post16838091

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...8#post16838088

^^^^

Thanks for the good review Phantom. I am a BIG fan of this movie, especially the cinematography, so I'll definitely look forward to purchasing this release. I'll weigh in when I do. BTW, I saw this title on one of the HD Movie channels last year and it looked very good, though it was a bit soft at times.

Thanks K-Spaz! I complete agree with your view on those two comparison pics. Though there was more detail in some areas on the Blu-ray (such as her blouse), the flesh tones are terrible, especially her neck.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

What can I say - another fine animated presentation overall. However, I didn't see it as up to par with the latest Pixar or even Dreamworks titles. First, there was a general softness throughout. I found most of these on the two mammoths' fur. Similarly, texture wasn't always rendered well. Some of the scales and skin on dinosaurs looked more like clay.

Contrast (or perceived contrast) was also weak at times. I believe these were intentional since they usually appeared in mixed lighting situations. That's all I have for negatives, save for some slight ringing in certain scenes as well. Keep in mind, these negatives were not horrendous. They're comparative observations to the best of the best animated titles.

Blacks were bold and contrast, when outside of the weak ones described, produced excellent balance. Details were intricate, particularly the once the story took us underground. Depth and dimensionality were also well-rendered throughout. Colors were vibrant and pleasing.

Overall, I still felt this lacked the pop found in some of the higher-tiered animated titles. I believe it's a solid Gold Tier contender...

Tier Recommendation: 1.50

Sub lovers - the LFE on this title was satisfying.

ln46a650 - 1080p/24 - 8'

The Counterfeiters

PQ is nothing to write home about. Grain was moderate to heavy throughout - intentionally produced to complement the setting and tone of the film. This was distracting in a number of scenes. It also had a sepia tone throughout to represent a WWII set genre.

Facial details were very limited. At the very best, they were in low Gold territory during Sally's visit of Herzog's home. Blacks were mostly crushed and contrast was below average. Shadow details were unrevealing and shallow. Colors were muted; skin tones on the pale side. There were a few scenes, post-WWII in Monte Carlo, where colors looked more natural. A few outdoor, daytime shots exhibited decent depth. However, these were but a handful of scenes.

And if those weren't bad enough, pervasive ringing (in the form of EE) can be found throughout. Finding comparisons, this is slightly better than Eden Log, and about on par with 12 Monkeys (not for the same reasons).

Tier Recommendation: 4.50

ln46a650 - 1080p/24 - 8'