Whoa! What's Wonka? 480p???? - Page 2

like I said, those that are having problems this bad have some issues on their end as you have found out

-Gary

nope it's simply not there to any degree that is even visible, I can assure you that it is not due to a soft image on my end, if this thread keeps going others in addition to enchntr will pop up

this is a processing issue somewhere along the line, resulting from compatbility problems in some systems

mind you I am not saying it isn't there on some titles, there is only 1 so far that is horridly offensive and that is Lethal Weapon II, it has real problems, all others are a non issue

-Gary

Well, I think that's the crux of the issue. Nobody will disagree that Lethal Weapon II is Warner's worst offender. In comparison, these artifacts are rather difficult to spot on the Willy Wonka HD DVD. This is the case with many of Warner's other filtered releases. If your setup doesn't recreate this problem for whatever reason, then that's good. However, you can't conclude that this isn't an issue on Warner's end, especially when there are numerous other Warner titles with this problem. I will admit that there are many times when I can't spot these artifacts on this particular title.

I said it before (the server crash) and I'll say it again...

I agree with you about Gary. I've argued at him on another forum, and sometimes think he goes overboard in being overly picky about some things... but when he says something is high quality, I know I can believe him because he is picky.

Bumping this because "Willy Wonka" has been the worst HD-DVD title in terms of playability in my experience, and I have almost every US HD-DVD title released. As I've already posted I've found lots of problems with Warner dual-layer discs being either defective or getting 'laser rot' after just a couple years. Those who posted in this thread before, are your discs still playing now?

I've gone through SEVEN copies of Wonka now- most of them won't load at all. I recently got 2 however which are behaving very strangely. On my A1, A2, A3 and A30, they play the FBI warning and Warner Home Video intro, then display an error message and won't play any further. Just for the helluvit, I got out an A20 player I have which does not put out any sound (also posted a separate thread about that) and amazingly both of these copies play on this machine! Only problem is I don't get any sound because of the problem with this player. Tried them a few more times on the A2 which uses the same drive and they still won't play past the Warner intro. Oddly I have 2 copies of "Gods and Generals" which behaved the same way on my A30 but played on my A2, and last time I tried one of them on the A30 it worked.

Too late right now, but this weekend I will try swapping the drive from the soundless A20 into the A2 and see if it will play that way. (And yes, I DID notice the seriously flawed picture with this title- have also seen it on The Fugitive, Enter The Dragon and Lethal Weapon.)

What do you know- I reset my A30 with the Display-7-0-1-Display trick, and Willy Wonka now plays on it! So now I have ALL the US Warner HD-DVDs except for Twister and the "Deluxe Edition" of Full Metal Jacket.

And yes, the picture really does suck on this, but I just care that it plays the way it's supposed to. (BTW the 25th Anniversary laserdisc of this is worth having just because the analog track is isolated music and sound effects, with no dialogue.)

I'm glad you were able to get Willy Wonka to work. I tried the display 701 trick but no such luck for me Mine freezes when the kids enter the factory. I bought one of those over priced blu-rays on ebay and the picture quality was even worse. The hd-dvd picture may be grainy but atleast the actors faces are sharp and clear. The blu-ray picture is real soft with alot of DNR. I played the two discs simultaneously and compared the picture of Grandpa Joe's face and the hd-dvd is clearly the winner. You could see all his wrinkles and even veins around his eyes on the hd-dvd. On the blu-ray, all I could see was a digital mess. Looked like a woman with tons of makeup on. Hopefully the 40th Aniversary Edition will be a remastered version.

The player reset only seems to help if a disc stops playing after the Warner Home Video intro- seems to be a software thing. If it happens in the middle of the movie, the disc is bad or rotting.