What is your reference upscaled DVD title? (HD-DVD quality)

I think "Hollow Man" Superbit, "Spiderman 2" Superbit, and "Hills Have Eyes" all have terrific picture quality.

MY reference SD DVD is The Fifth Element superbit edition.
J

Silent Hill...(even re-compressed to 4.3GB with CCE) looked pretty amazing. The constant ash falling in the city really popped on the A1.

5th Element SB for me too. I must have viewed the "She dove off" scene 1000 times and I've used it as a reference to judge the quality of DVD players and displays for a while.

I don't know about no tiers but it's a very good looking DVD. It's not however, HD.

I am not so precise on the PQ of the movies, but I know what I think looks good to me and which things don't. With that said I must say that the Lost Season 1 disks are very impressive upconverted.

Yea, that's the scene.


I think the tier system is silly. Its not HD, so I won't compare it to HD.
J

I thought Cars look psudo HD but thats CG, last film that looked really good I think was "Last kiss". SD dvds don't look very good on 60inchers even with a great upscaling players, just very watchable and awful. Saw alpha dog in SD last night, looked like a big pile of dog pOO.

^Cars had a lot of compression artifacts, but watching The Incredibles upconverted to 1080p, I could have been fooled into thinking it was HD.

I have to disagree with you here. I have a 60" SXRD, and for the most part, many SD DVDs look quite good upscaled. No, they don't look HD, but good nonetheless.
J

I have a 60A2000 SXRD, they good watchable I had an oppo and sammy dvd players. Nothing to say "wow" about. Kind of the point of going to HD, resolution difference is fairly minimal on certain titles but colors on hd really bring the picture to life compared to SD.

If you're talking about the remake, the Fox DVD is really filtered, ruining any fine detail.

Here's a few of mine:

U.S. DVDs:

Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (Synapse)
Ringu (Dreamworks)
Street Trash (Synapse)
City of the Living Dead (Gates of Hell) (Anchor Bay)

Imports:

Dellamorte Dellamore (Cemetery Man) (Italian DVD)
Last Action Hero - Superbit (Japan DVD)
Kung Fu Hustle (Hong Kong DVD)
The Eye 2 (Hong Kong DVD)
Women in Cell Block 9 (Swedish DVD)

Woman in Cell Block 9 has to have the best transfer ever given to a '70s exploitation film. DVD doesn't get much better than this.

Again, Sony's DVD is quite filtered. This is especially apparent because the Hong Kong DVD lacks the filtering.

Sony Pictures (R1, anamorphic, progressively flagged)



Focus Features, Edko Video (R3, anamorphic, progressively flagged, DTS-ES Discrete audio)

Titanic - Special Edition

Even via component, the video looks hella good!

Star Wars Episode III looks amazing upscaled. I made the mistake of showing my friends how good an upscaled DVD looks before an HD-DVD. They would have thought the jump in picture quality was more dramatic.

I think most movies filmed with digital cameras are easier to transfer.

For my Indiana Jones, the quality is amazing!!! better than Star Wars.

Thank You For Smoking seems to be an excellent transfer...better than most SD DVDs I've watched this year.

Ditto on the incredibles.

I'd say my reference DVD would be Star Wars Ep III. However I'm not gonna even compare it to HD DVD being that I've never ever seen a single DVD that even comes close to HD DVD in detail, color saturation and overall picture quality. Even the poorly done ones like Lethal Weapon 1 and 2 still spank SD in all ways.

Yea, I have an oppo too. The upscaling of my A1 is far superior to it. I agree, the colors on some HD DVDs really does look good.
J

The Fifth Element - Superbit version.

A few upscaled DVD's i would say look close to HD are:

1.The Warriors - The Ultimate Director's Cut -

I cannot believe how good color saturation,detail,black levels,lack of artifacts are in this version and the movie is now 28 years old for crying out loud,i will be picking this up again when it is released shorlty on HD DVD from paramout.

2.Reservoir Dogs: 15th Anniversary Edition -

Another unbelievable transfer upcoverted,very sharp picture with vivd colors,this version detroys the older version in everyway.

3.Star Wars Ep. 1

The job they did restoring this and while being upcoverted looks do not disappoint and picture has pop for movie 30 years old now,This is a MUST have HD DVD when it comes out

Funny thing is there are alot of titles that are newer and i mean alot newer than these but these stand out to me because of the wow factor i found when watched upcoverted for a standard DVD imprssive stuff even though the are not True HD-DVD still impressive,most impressive.

Believe it or not, I was blown away by the first 2 or 3 episodes of Happy Days - Season 1 upscaled on my A2. The quality of the transfers seemed to take dip after those initial few though. Not my upscaled SD reference disc, but just impressed at how good it looked.

Wavering color temperature:

The XO Project: Color Correction

STAR WARS (original 1977) is VERY IMPRESSIVE upscaled.

Incredibles. Not only for video, but audio as well.

For Blu-ray: The 2 Pirates movies.
For HD DVD: The Matrix movies

Those Lord of the Rings Special editions are said to look excellent upscaled(the ones that come on two discs for the movie part).

I agree, LOTR Return of the King is my long-time dvd reference.