The New PQ Tier thread for Blu-Ray - Discussion - Page 3

My PS3/blu-ray player ate my app! But I'll volunteer to help poll..

I'd start with a poll to help properly place Apocalypto.

There were many voiced disagreements on its placement in the last thread and that partly contributed to, or even set off, the whole issue about posters feeling Fett was not considering the opinions of others enough.

Art, may I suggest that you start and maintain a separate thread which ranks BD's based solely on how closely they resemble your image the directors intent? I'm sure many would appeciate it if you could donate the time to do this for the betterment of our forum. But before we can let you do that we would need proof a your ability to rank movies. To test this ability we will need you to watch each of the movies on this list in the best available theater print, then watch the BD on the best available components (which of course you can provide for this task) you will then assemble the movies into a 5 tiered rank system. I'm sure this task should not prove difficult at all as anyone could do so reasonably well. But, here's the catch. We have to demand complete accuracy and remove any thoughts that our list curator even has the ability to be wrong about a ranking. So, you must repeat the process one week later using no cheat sheet or similar device, to prove that your ranking decision is impecable. Can you start today? As you can see the benifits are amazing!!!

Just watched Curse of the Golden Flower and I have to say that is a beautiful picture. There is some noise or I don't know what you would call it, but the armor they wear looks really sharp and detailed. The AQ is awesome as well. I would put this at tier 2.

edit: oops, I was looking for the movie, but I couldn't see that it already was in tier 2, good choice!

Thanks for your vote of sarcasm. What I might suggest instead as a more balanced and mature stance is not just throwing a title out because it has obvious soft focus techniques, coloration, exaggerated contrast or any film grain. I think most of you read Robert Harris when he posted his thoughts on removing film grain.

It's as if the bulk of posters feel that these discs shouldn't look like film, when they are reproductions of film... really, come on, what is that about ? Who doesn't want sharp when it is part of the print but shallow depth of field has been part of filming since it's inception yet it is treated as an artifact here. It doesn't take having seen the answer print to know what that is, or that a film is contrasty throughout and might have crushed blacks therefore or is intentionnally a green color for effect.

Your comment about testing me as if I need to be tested is interesting ("letting" me comment of image quality). Have you made a rule that those commenting should only be "allowed" to do so based on a test !

Just a point that seems to be lost on this group,a point that discs that look like video games or Discovery HD HD tape aren't the only "perfect" looks. Again not saying that a thread full of great CGI and video camera images aren't beautiful simply that you are short changing the concept to leave film and many ubiquitous filming techniques out of consideration.



Art

???

Where does King Arthur and Hellboy fit?

As much as I agree with you Art with 90% of what you said. I did find the tier list to be very useful. Of most of my HD-DVD and Blu-Ray movie's that I double dipped on because I have the SD-DVD and perhaps VHS/Beta-Max as well as Laser Discs.. For all of those SD-DVD titles, they all look soft or more film-like simply because they are of lower resolution that is blown up. Moving up to High Definition has been an experience like putting on eye-glasses for the first time when I re-watch all my old favorite films that I have re-bought in HD. This 3D effect is what makes HD what it is. If I wanted a more soft look with all my HD-DVD and Blu-Ray titles, I would be setting the screen to 480p and be happy with it. Now that I have gotten used to wanting to see HD films that are super sharp, it is very hard to watch a movie like Superman Returns that has little facial detail and looks super soft and be able to enjoy it. Forget about any digital artifacts due to poor or in-efficient encoding. I am not someone who enjoys post processing filters that add artificial grain which we have seen already. However I don't mind grain at all if it is part of the original film as Alien and Aliens had plenty to make it look more dirty on purpose. I am looking foreword to those movies in HD and if they remain true to the master, I will be very happy. However I cannot rank an older film with lots of grain in the same league as a film as good looking and pleasant to watch in HD as POTC DMC or King Kong. I'm not pushing for or saying all films should look like CSI: Miami or your new Discovery HD footage. Take for example Lions Gate's Stargate Blu-Ray release with the messed up sub-titles. This film is a mess of grain and white sparkles everywhere. It is the same master as the sd-dvd and simply makes the film look worse. Are there better ways to clean up this old master and make it look better? As George Lucas has done with Star Wars, (perhaps not to that extent or cost but at least do something) I would like to see better HD transfers from the source and getting the dirt that shouldn't be there cleaned up. Afterwards I would like to see a BD50 used to its fullest with the encode to achieve the highest transparency to the master as possible. Perhaps this is too much to ask, however I will at least ask for each studio to try and match or best each others top quality reference discs.

As for my comment on this new tier thread. I don't think polls are the right way to go for every release since everyone is going to have different set-ups and others who don't even own the movie in question will vote low to bring the overall score down. Since this forum has about 30% more HD-DVD supporters than Blu-Ray, you can be assured the poll's will be skewed lower to get the movie placed in a lower tier.. A thread without polls where if you have seen the film in question comes on here and posts where they think the title should be placed is more useful. and for those that haven't seen all the films, that is OK. For example if you watched The Fifth Element and Black hawk Down on Blu-Ray and then watched Casino Royale for the first time, you can say you feel casino should be lower than BHD and higher than TFE and then explain why you feel that way by explaining the picture quality problems you witnessed between those three films. This is much more useful than a poll for placement. Furthermore the polls will be based on popularity which is why The Matrix is placed in tier 0 in the HD-DVD thread when it really shouldn't...just my 2 cents here...

Art,
Stark, grainy sarcasm was the intent of my post and by noticing it as such you have passed the first test .
My point though is that you suggest it is worth the effort to discover the directors intent, but while not volunteering your expertise or even your opinion on which movie's were not properly considered and why, you simply rant and rave that nobody here cares about directors intent and that this thread is nearly pointless. Art, you seem very passionate about altenative techniques in filming, so collect your thoughts on which movies used these techniques and let us know how well they were transfered on the the BD media.
I for one, love the use of grain, skewed colorations, softening, unique types of film, etc. But sometimes I think that using these techniques causes an inborn tradeoff in picture quality that the director knows he is accepting by choosing that sort of film. When that kind of movie is transfered to digital media there may be little difference between the SD version and the HD version. I personally would have a hard time putting a magnificent transfer of a the movie Traffic in the same tier as Kingdom of Heaven, even though I think that the film style positively adds more to the story of Traffic than the style used in Kingdom of Heaven adds to its story. That just my opinion, and is worth no more than you are willing to pay for it.

It does seem that the best solution would be for another sister thread to this directed at how close the transfer gets to the theatrical presentation. So in this other thread you would see movies like Superman Returns quite high up but with marks deducted for the banding but not for the intentional softness. Fifth Element still way down for well almost everything, and titles like The Devil's Rejects being up quite high for being very close to the theatrical presentation. It seems like there is definitely a place for both here.

Art, don't suppose you'd be interested in running that?

Art, just curious. Do you own a Blu Ray player and any Blu Ray movies? I didn't see that in your HT setup.

Art until you can come up with a practical efficient way to judge home media based on directors intent and how close the movies resemble the master people here are going to judge the movies on how they look on their TV when they play the movie.

You should either accept it or put the effort into making your own directors intent\\master reel tier thread. Maybe you and Gary should start your own thread and put the effort behind it to make it a reality instead of just bickering about this type of tier system all the time.

Just wanted Pirates - Dead Man's Chest yesterday on my 135" screen and it was phenomenal. Watched the 3rd Matrix film the night before and they are close in PQ, though of course one is BD and the other is HD-DVD

I think on many titles, director's intent can be very easily understood. Spielberg and his cinematographer have discussed their techniques and reasons for certain films like SPR, Minority Report etc... having a certain look. There have been interviews and articles written. Same with Tim Burton and Sleepy Hollow. Very often the information is indeed out there.
When SPR finally gets released, it would probably get a Tier 4 or so in the old system, regardless of how well the tranfer was done which is in my opinion, ludicrous.

I hope we don't get into another debate about "Traffic" and director's intent and how it should Tier 1 or whatever. Best to keep director's intent out of the picture.

"short changing the concept to leave film and many ubiquitous filming techniques out of consideration"

Don't you get it? The point of the tier threads is to judge how good the picture looks when your watching it on your TV at home. I'm sorry but crap is crap even if it was directors intent or the film stock they used. If it looks like crap it should be graded accordingly even if the director wanted it to look like crap.

You will never be able to objectively judge directors intent or compare each disc release to the master reels. Start your own tier thread instead of mucking up the current ones.

I totally agree.

Agreed.

Austin, just so there is no confusion, I think you should make your descriptions of the different audio formats match what is listed next to each movie. For example, you have a description for uPCM but PCM is what is listed next to the movie descriptions. I know it is minor, and of course you can just ignore the suggestion, but I think the description should match what is actually listed.

Thanks for the consideration. I was just thinking that in a thread such as this a sub-category might be added. In it films that are artifact free yet look like film get high marks. I feel like Don Qixote here though. In the days of DVD reviews this is how they were rated. If a title had no mosquito noise, edge enhancement,alaising or blocking artifacts and had good color and the print was clean it was a long way to getting refrence status. Now, the filming techniquers are used to discriminate and this just seems misguided since it just lets go films like MI 3,or Sky Captain as examples. I mean , I hear complaints that black and white films shouldn't even be considered since they look
like cardboard !

I don't want to run a thread ,I was asked to review titles for an internet site and it is just too time consuming for a guy with six children and a very busy orthodontic practice.I tried in the DVD forum years ago,I couldn't do it justrice time wise.

I just feel that we should consider the look of the film in the rating nothing more.

Please understand, I'm not criticizing for it's own sake just want what I strongly consider a valid side to be heard.

By the way, I have a Pioneer HD 1 player and enjoy it very much.

Art

Art, I think that you have some excellent points, and on the basis of purity of reproduction, really the whole tier system should/could be done that way...how close to the master.

However, many people to want a quick check of "how good does this look" or a more generic check. Not to mention the lack of masters to compare to.

I wonder if he could leave the current basic tiers alone, more a judgment of the general consensus to overall eye pleasing (yeah this will favor the clean stuff). But then instead of leaving it there, when a title is clearly meeting the directors intent, doing a great job on the compression, etc, the feedback will assign a "*" or other designator.

For instance, 300, with it's purposeful grain comes out...perfectly captured with no actual compression artifacts, the (uneducated? ) masses determine it to be a bottom tier 1 or maybe even tier 2...then, feedback from multiple users as yourself, can lead to an asterisk or designator that points out while not at the top for "J6P instant visual gratification" it is a stellar and accurate capture of the director's intent.

This is just a suggestion, mostly because the tier type system, esp with polls and feedback will default to the situation where a perfect transfer could end up in the middle of the pack. It will just happen, and maybe the best way is to have a special marker for something clearly pushed down even while matching the master (if we could ever see it).

In this case Art, I agree with you 100% You have the very best equipment anyone can ask for and that has been calibrated. Of all people you would be one of the best to people to give judgment on where a movie should be placed on a tier list.

It was a crappy thing that you said, but I didn't even have the will to address it in PM. Don't sweat it.

Is this thread to replace fettastic's? I was gone for a few days and that one is gone and this is in its place...
I am confused. Alao I am not sure on the voting, I would rather have a few people with excellent setups and experience give their opinions, rather than every Tom Dick and Harry with a variety of setups, TVs, room conditions and eyes. I know at least several people with 27-32 inch 720p HDTVs here and I dont believe you can fully judge the quality of a Bluray on such a TV.
That being said I also dont think director's intent should play a role. Something gritty may be good for the war movie style, but this list here is about the quality of the image, and what we consider the best to show off the capabilities of the medium.

Answered via PM. Essentially, Fett's not here anymore.