Have you jumped onto the high definition movie train yet?

[Sharingan]

So Blu-ray has been the lone high definition video format for some time now (about 2 years). Have you taken the plunge into highdef video yet, or are you still hanging on to DVD/downloads?

Let's have some votes.

For me, it's been about a year since I first started buying Blu-rays, and I haven't stopped since. I did cease all DVD-purchasing, because frankly, going back to standard definition just ain't cutting it anymore.

I have 80+ Blu-rays now, and loving the format more and more.

[xpect]

Once you see HD movies it's hard to go back...


Just a correction Sharigan, Toshiba dropped HD-DVD in February 2008, so little over one year now.

[Stephen Coates]

I would, but I don't have a Blu ray player in my computer. I am tempted to get one though. Do you need a special hardare decoder for bluray like you do for DVD?

Using the computer would be necessary as my monitor is more than capable of displaying the HD resolutions, but I don't have an HDTV.

[Harrison]

You don't need a separate hardware decoder for HD video playback. However you do need a CPU powerful enough to cope with the playback data rate and a graphics card that can cope with it too.

If you are still using your old Pentium 3 system then it won't be able to playback full HD video from Blu-Ray.

It also depends on what type of HD file you are playing back. If it is a 720p resolution then a Pentium 4 with a reasonable graphics card can play it back. However, if you wanted to playback full HD 1080i/p resolution video then a single core CPU will struggle a bit unless it has a graphics card with HD playback support. Even the cheapest new ATI and nVidia cards now offer this feature.

A dual core CPU and a graphics card no less than 2 years old is recommended.

[xpect]

if you wanted to playback full HD 1080i/p resolution video then a single core CPU will struggle a bit unless it has a graphics card with HD playback support. Even the cheapest new ATI and nVidia cards now offer this feature.

With CoreAVC can play 1080p content in at least a AMD AthlonXP 2Ghz (real speed) single core processor. Was tested in my old computer 2 years ago. Not sure about P4 though.

But if you have a Dual Core processor you can play any HD content, or as said by Harrison any graphics card that supports it native.

[Shoonay]

I've tried a few on my PC, most of those were... erm... backup copies, if you know what I mean...

I try not to be a collector or view movies I've seen before, so, it just ain't my cup of coffee
There are SO many good old movies and shows I missed, that I'll probably be occupied till the invention of a new laser TV technology that burns the movie frames directly on your eye balls, lol

PS: Don't forget to check those free movies done in free soft like Blender, the first one was Elephant's Dream (2005), and then came out Big Buck Bunny (2007). Great watch in 1920x1080.

[Teho]

Yep, ever since I got the PS3 and a 1080p TV two years ago I've all but stopped buying DVDs. I have 50+ blu-rays now, and most are great. I have to say the quality is very up and down, particularily releases of older movies don't turn out half as great as recent ones. For example I got the Godfather trilogy and Casino and while these do look better than their DVD counterparts they pale next to modern movies. I don't know why that is, they say that because all the old movies are shot on film it's easy to make high-definition copies. But in my experience it doesn't seem so. 2001 on the other hand shines in high definition, but I think that's more because the picture in that is all straight lines and flat shades throughout.

[Sharingan]

Just a correction Sharigan, Toshiba dropped HD-DVD in February 2008, so little over one year now.

Ah, right-o. Must've been spaced out when I made that post


But it's just like Teho said, the quality of older movies on Blu-ray tends to fluctuate, so sadly, you can't simply blind-buy anything in the store and expect it to be automatically great. Even more recent movies are sometimes hit-and-miss, which is a shame, since there simply isn't an excuse why they can't produce a good transfer out of a 2006 movie, for example.

That's where the Blu-ray review sites come in, I suppose.

[Harrison]

There is an easy answer to the reason for the random quality of Blu-Ray releases. Cost cutting.

Any film can be made to look good on Blu-Ray if enough money was given to get the job done properly. With older films as mentioned you can scan the frames directly from the original film, which has more than 3 times the resolution of 1080p Hi-Def so there are no problems there. The only issue you might get is that film tends to give a softer image, which can look slightly out of focus, and there is also the film grain to contend with. However both can be fixed these days with some post production effects processing. However to fix such issues for a whole film is quite time consuming and costly. Also colour grading is always needed when transferring a film to digital format, and that is a costly and specialist art.

An alternative much cheaper option which a lot of companies do is to just upscale their DVD releases and re-release them on Blu-Ray. This is very naughty as you could just run your DVDs on a DVD player with upscale technology. But they do it and get away with it often. Upscaling at the production end though will create a better end result than running upscaling on a DVD player at home, so it will still look better. But no where near as good as if a real true resolution copy was obtained from the orginal film reels.

Recent films however are now all films using digital hi-def cameras so there should be no excusses for a poor quality Blu-Ray release of them. However it does still depend on the budget and who is doing the disc.

Sound quality is also still an issue. Blu-Ray supports much better quality 7.1 channel audio then DVD did. However the minimum audio requirement for Blu-Ray is the same as DVD, so most of the time the discs just have the same 5.1 audio track as the DVD release.

[Sharingan]

Fortunately, sound quality has pretty much become a non-issue, since most major film studios now have Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD sound as standard.