The New PQ Tier thread for Blu-Ray - Discussion - Page 225

I have had JFK for about a week now and think Warner handled this BD very nicely. The regular scenes not involving stock footage look great. I am not ready to write up a recommendation yet but I am even thinking of possible tier one status for this title.

Hellboy 2: Tier 0.

The screenshot is a lossless PNG so I am assuming it is a lossless screengrab of the original frame.
Obviously this is all guesswork, but I think an educated guess can be a pretty good one. Here's something to consider:

Someone made a firmware hack for the Canon Powershot camera I've got which allows them to dump the raw sensor data and bypass the 'hidden' processing. here's a crop of the same photo I took: one from the EE'd picture the camera normally puts out http://img389.imageshack.us/img389/6488/ee1hm7.jpg
and one from the raw version: http://img389.imageshack.us/img389/7637/raw1bo8.jpg
(the camera's internal color balancing is a bit different from photoshop's RAW import, but its from the same shot)
I think that shot from Baraka has a similar, somewhat processed look.


and here's something which might look a bit familiar (tiny crop, not scaled):



(anyway, im putting way too much effort into convincing people this transfer has issues i'm sure its a great looking film but lets not be too hasty about sticking it on the top of Tier 0)

Those shots are interesting, but they don't look like what I see in Baraka. I think we may all be interpreting the picture assessment criteria differently as well, which is bound to happen. I interpret the criteria to mention EE because it can ruin the picture. It does not say that there can be no processing. If it did, I doubt many films would pass. So, I think we all have to decide which photo tricks are acceptable because they result in a great looking picture and which are unacceptable because they spoil the picture. On my 126" diagonal screen, Baraka looks terrific. I have more problem with a picture like The Fall because -- to my eyes -- the cinematography is boring and it results in a well resolved, but uninteresting picture. This -- to me -- is different from Baraka which -- to me -- is well resolved and has masterful and interesting cinematography. IMO, it takes great cinematography AND high resolution to create the depth, pop and three dimensional quality referenced in the picture assessment criteria. IMO, resolution alone doesn't cut it. To my mind, this is also referenced in the opening paragraphs of the thread where the OP talks about a title that is pristine, artifact free and a nice transfer, but doesn't have pop and depth so he ranks it in tier 3. I have been far kinder to The Fall.

I have not recommended Baraka for top of tier 0, only top half of tier 0.

I have recommended The Fall for low Tier 1/high tier 1 1/4.



.

Perhaps! I won't deny that seeing and reading the Baraka thread has been a bad influence

I still think it's Tier 0 though and still a demo disk.

More like Tier 2 IMO. I am not sure whether it was the presence of so much CGI that was responsible, but most of the movie looked quite disappointingly soft to me. I enjoyed the movie though. Much better than the first one.

I rented Hellboy 2 today, so I'll post my thoughts soon.

Patrick99 - Do you think that Hellboy 2 looks softer than the Hellboy 1 Blu Ray?

It's been a while since I watched Hellboy 1, but I certainly do not recall there being softness to this degree in Hellboy 1. But I also recall that there was considerably less CGI in Hellboy 1.

Interesting. I'm going to be viewing these two back to back, so I'll be able to get a decent comparison.

I had forgotten what studio released the first one, so I just checked. It was Sony, whereas number 2 is Universal.

Hellboy 2. I agree with Patrick99 on some softness and out of focus shots I saw at times especially in the beginning, but I disagree as to placement. This should be in top Tier 1. I do not see it as a Tier 0 title, but I think it has very similar PQ to most of the top tier 1 titles.

Overall it was a great ride and good movie.

I have absolutely no idea what you guys were seeing that was as clean a transfer as any released to date. Softness... where? the picture was 3d throughout 90% of the film. Colors and depth were on par with any live action movie. There were no compression artifacts and I saw no edge enhancement or DNR. Are you trying to tell me that the tier 0s are better? Please... All of movies have shots that are inconsistent. Its the nature of the beast. No camera can get it right 100% of the time. The transfer is pristine... end of story.

JK

IMO top tier 1 and most of tier 0 particularly the bottom, minus the CGI/animated movies, are so close in PQ they are a wash. For example, I think Kill Bill 1 is exactly like Kill Bill 2. I respect your opinion on what you think the PQ is, but it is not end of story just because you say it is. We have other opinions and posters in this thread and thankfully we are getting more and more so we do the best we can at placements.

The difference between top tier 1 and tier 0 is often very, very subtle. In fact, I believe some tier 1 titles used to be tier 0 titles. The more titles appear, the more picky people are getting, which is only reasonable.

Futurama looks great. probably tier 0 or top tier 1

Without having to dig back through this thread would someone briefly describe the difference in picture quality between the two Happy Feet listed in the Blue Tier?

I noticed the Import was ranked higher. Not sure if it would play on my Samsung BD-UP5000.

Thanks for the help.

Same video encode but the import features 16/-bit LPCM audio at 4.6 Mbps.

Off the Baraka topic for a moment...has anyone gotten the chance to watch Band of Brothers yet? I have it but haven't had the time to watch, and was wondering how good the picture quality was.

+1

I agree, the difference between the two tiers can be subtle. And yes, some titles have been moved from Tier 0 to Tier 1 and we can expect a lot more of this as time goes on, for *ideally* future transfers should become more pristine. Who knows, Tier 0 titles today may be in Tier 2 or 3 in a year or two.

I watched Transsiberian last night from First Look. Reviews are mixed. AVS (Ralph) has the PQ ranked at a 78 meanwhile Adam at DVD Talk who I also respect has it ranked as a 5 star ranking.

It's a very clean VC1 transfer with no issues I could detect. As far as eye candy goes, it really doesn't qualify due to the material and filming locations.

Rank: Right next to "Before the Devil Knows your Dead". To me, they are very similar looking movies and transfers.

Watched Wall*E yesterday....and I think that we have a new PQ king. Absolute stunning PQ. I would put it at the top of Tier 0.


Equipment:
Samsung LN65A46
Playstation 3
Viewing Distance: (about) 6 feet

Sounds good! You have just whetted my appetite for the copy I just ordered from Amazon (along with Kung Fu Panda).

(as expected) Hidef Digest agrees with my opinion of Wall*E

JFK

tier recommendation: bottom quarter of Tier 1

Warner released this 1991 movie to Blu-ray in the past week in a digibook edition. The 205 minute feature is encoded in VC-1 on a BD-50. The average video bitrate is 18.85 Mbps (BDInfo scan link courtesy of House found below). While there are brief bursts peaking into the high thirties and low forties, most of the video encode hovers between 12 and 24 Mbps. This is a very nice compression job, with few visible artifacts. The bitrates tend to go higher for the various stock footage. There is the faint hint of some chroma noise in the backgrounds of certain indoor scenes but nothing else stands out.

Oliver Stone used a comparatively large amount of stock footage in this movie which I did not take into consideration when calculating my final recommendation. Grainy black and white television footage, 8mm footage from the Zapruder film, 16mm and video footage all comprise portions of the movie. But the normally filmed segments of the movie are on 35mm film and look great for a catalog title of this vintage.

Warner's High Definition master for this film must be in great condition as it looks pristine and in excellent shape on screen. Few if any flaws are visible, though I did notice a couple of digital scratch removal artifacts. The color palette is nicely saturated with above average fidelity. Flesh tones are rendered naturally if a tad warm in a few scenes. There is little if any edge enhancement apparent. If Warner is using DNR on their titles, it seems to produce much less impact on the final image quality than other studios. The 16mm footage looks appropriately grainy with little sign of unnatural grain or shifting fields.

The image appears razor sharp with solid detail in close-ups, though this is the weakest aspect of the transfer. High frequency information is average and probably closer to a tier two ranking for this particular aspect of the image. Shadow depth and delineation is excellent with very solid black levels. Contrast is near perfect and the image has a great sense of pop.

I am recommending this BD to be placed in the bottom quarter of tier one. I feel this is a very nice job Warner has done in releasing this movie and unlikely to be improved on given the source material.

Watching on a 60” Pioneer Kuro plasma at 1080p/24 played by a PS3 (firmware 2.52) from a viewing distance of six feet.

BDInfo scan:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...0#post15002300

I can't wait to get this.

Not to cause problems, but why is one rated higher than the other if this is strictly a video rating (not audio) thread??

I've read the US version has color banding issues actually.

How often does the front page list get updated? I was wanting to see where Shawshank and the new Batman stackup when they come out and Band of Brothers is already out...

"Patience is a virtue".....This old cliche needs to be remembered when it comes to updates on this thread. New releases like the ones mentioned will need to be seen and reviewed by a number of members before a consensus is formed as to placement. This may take a number of weeks, depending on the interest of any given title. So, have patience...in time the titles you are interested in will be included in an update.

May I encourage you to participate in this thread...simply watch a Bluray title, and then post a review and suggested tier placement. Oh, and welcome to the thread!

What Happens in Vegas

I'm not sure what it is about Romantic Comedies, but they all seem to be shot with a soft lense or something because most of them that I've seen on blu are all the same. You can see plenty of fine detail, it's just blurry. This was true of 27 dresses as well.

Either top of tier 3 with 27 dresses, or bottom quarter of Tier 2. There were really no issues with the disc other than it was soft.


I definitely don't agree with this. Face closeups in Bank Job were Tier 0 worthy whereas the rest of Bank Job was low tier 1/high tier 2. What Happens in Vegas is just soft all over. Face closeups aren't revealing at all... if they were, we'd actually be able to clearly see the wrinkles on Cameron Diaz (and no, i'm not putting her down..she's just getting older, no big deal). I remember looking at some of the scenery shots of NY and saying "wow that's soft". I agree with it having 3D pop though, and nice colors.