Oldboy on HD DVD - anybody buy it?

Alright, had a chance to at least look at it last night (but not to watch it in its entirety...). This is most certainly one for the "how it looked theatrically" crowd, and should prove a tough sale for anyone expecting three dimensional sharpness in every frame. The encode very accurately captures the look of the film: often a little soft, diffusely lit, varying degrees of grain and overexposure - it's all there. Anyone expecting this to look like Tokyo Drift or Batman Begins will be sorely disappointed. The disc is a clear step up in every way from the DVDs, as those had a very hard time reproducing the peculiarities of the look without artifacts (grain became noise, EE). Detail is greatly improved, but is nowhere near what you may expect given some of the more impressive titles on the format. I threw in the DVD afterwards and that looked worse than I remembered, not matching the detail and color of this presentation by a long shot. Audio sounded very much similar to what I knew from the korean DVDs, including instances of clipping.


There' s a variety of extras offered, including a commentary, making of, deleted scenes and trailers. All accessible via a rather cumbersome menu system.


Conclusion: disc accurately captures the material it was taken from, offering a step up from the DVD in all respects without being impressive in terms of the new format. I saw no problems related to the encode itself, further corroborating the assumption that the limitations are in the master and the original look and sound of the film.