Test: DVDs and Blu-Ray Remakes Nearly Same

[Guest]

For certain movies, the HD promise of Blu-Ray remains unfulfilled.

Test: DVDs and Blu-Ray Remakes Nearly Same : Read more

 

[evilshuriken]

I approve of this. Carry on.

 

[silverblue]

[citation]color[/citation]

When talking about something British? Where's our missing "u"?

 

[ricdiculus]

This make me wonder if when mastering to a dvd format, maybe they don't do quite as good of a job as they could, in effect making bluray look better. Case in point; John Carpenters The Thing. The dvd version is letterbox but placed in a standard definition screen size (2x3 aspect ratio? ) that when scaled up looks like crap. Same movie finaly released on bluray not only fills the screen properly it also looks frigging amazing for a movie shoot in 1982. That beign said, the StarWars dvds look so good (even scaled to fit the screen) that I may not replace them with bluray ( if they ever release them ) all these observations are based on viewing a 46" screen.

 

[tolham]

the studios also need to forgo the bonus features and encode the video to the highest bitrate that will fit on the disc. i ripped the matrix blu ray some months ago. after i stripped the movie down to just the video file and one audio stream, it was only 14 gigs. that's less than 1/3 the size of the BD and this is a graphics heavy movie!

 

[tuc0]

its called rip off britain, they charge us more for stuff thats worse.

 

[BWMerlin]

If the source data is poor then there is only so much turd pollishing you can do. You will not get Avatar from something that was not shot with the same high detail equipment. There must be a lot of money to milk out of consumers that justifies re-releaseing old and crappy films that were once on VHS onto DVD and now onto Blu-Ray

 

[matt87_50]

so true. on the other hand, you'd be surprised how much better they CAN be, especially for old stuff. 2001, blade runner were amazing! just to name two! generally it pays to consider the pedigree of those who made the movie to begin with, and whether any special mention of a new transfer ect has been done.

there is also this opinion that "wow, this DVD looks amazing! can't look much better on Bluray!" where, in fact, if its a good quality DVD, generally, it will mean an outstanding quality bluray. where if it's a crap quality dvd, and has just quietly been released on bluray, there is no reason to think the BD won't be crap too.

 

[maloney]

[citation][nom]BWMerlin[/nom]If the source data is poor then there is only so much turd pollishing you can do. [/citation]
Agreed.

I was just looking at titles last night, and one of the contention points between remakes was the audio encoding used. So they brought back a classic movie for blu-ray, but it's still mastered in Dolby 5.1 or worse? There's an indication that this was just slapped onto a blu-ray disc for resale, not re-mastered.

And I'm choking on the thought of upgrading my extended LOTRs to just the Blu-Ray theatrical release to gain the re-mastered audio and 1080p quality.

 

[cletus_slackjawd]

This is a great article. As an early adopter to Blu-Ray, I can say it's all true what has been said here. Some movies that are remade for Blu-Ray have certain scenes that are updated where you can tell the difference, while other parts of the movie look like standard DVD. Not a scientific observation more of an opinion really but after the buzz of buying the Blu-ray and watching the movies like Matrix, Pirates of the Carribean and such, you'll likely find yourself feeding your player regular DVDs.

 

[Usersname]

An old computing say… Rubbish In Rubbish Out.

Wake up consumers, you're always being sold pigs in pokes. Not once, not twice, but thrice and more besides.

 

[jimmysmitty]

I guess it will depend on the maker. I have tons of old movies on DVD and a few newer ones on Blu-Ray. I also have watched the same newer ones on DVD. The newer movies seem to be worked great for Blu-Ray such as animated movies like Batman : Under the Red Hood compared to DVD is amazing.

I only bought one older movie on Blu-Ray and that was Enter the Dragon due to the extra features which included the ultra rare Bruce Lee: A Warriors Journey. What makes it special is that they remastered it as well as A Warriors Journey which includes all the known original footage from Bruce Lee himself of Game of Death.

But its still sad. I think DVD was the same way for a while. The only plus to it was widescreen over VHS but now it looks as if DVDs are being fully taken advantage of while Blu-Ray wont be for quite some time.

 

[alidan]

here is a point that i learned from an encoding stand point.

some things are upscale, such as with anime, where they will be played on tv in 720p, but its an upscale made for that tv station, not a real 720p video.

now when you hear that, you have 2 options, get the 480p its natural resolution, and play it full screen, or get the 720p tv upscale.

the downside is that its a bigger file, but the upside is that even an upscale, the quality is better than your computer can do in real time.

my point being, is that even if these are just upscaled from dvds, the quality is still better than a dvd.and if you are like me, and only buy new if there is the option to, because some people treat there discs like crap, there is no real reason to buy the dvd version. where i live the novelty of bluray has worn off, and you are only paying a 5$ premium on brand new releases, anything a little older or not on par, you may be paying 2-5$ more than the dvd, which for the quality gain is nice at 12-15$

 

[gazorgan]

I have a good bit of content from HD, not BD. Player went for $39 and the disks were $3.99 there at the end. Some titles looked supiciously like upconverted DVD's. I think some were encoded from the original DVD source captures, particularly the ones with almost identical 5.1 audio tracks.

That being said, I can tell the difference on a 42 inch 1080p screen with a true BD encode. Avatar was released with the BD and DVD. with some effor and starting at a chapter point, I was able to pretty much get them in sync for awhile. I toggled back and forth, looking at background items and anwhatnot. you can really tell the difference in a true BD master title.

 

[thechief73]

Just another example of companies taking short-cuts at their customers expence. Prices for Blu-Rays are getting out of hand, well formated or bad, the prices when not on sale are ridiculous. Enough Said.

 

[_Cubase_]

The quality of the BluRay depends entirely on whether or not the studio has taken the time and effort to remaster the film in HD from an original 2k or 4k transfer (provided they have been transferred this way), or simply upscaled an existing HD/SD digital transfer they used for the DVD.

 

[alextheblue]

[citation][nom]evilshuriken[/nom]I approve of this. Carry on.[/citation]
Ditto. I strongly approve of the "remastered in HD from the original source" logo!

Also, good to hear that Zulu turned out well. My dad will love that! OOOO ZUULLUU!

 

[iam2thecrowe]

[citation][nom]tolham[/nom]the studios also need to forgo the bonus features and encode the video to the highest bitrate that will fit on the disc. i ripped the matrix blu ray some months ago. after i stripped the movie down to just the video file and one audio stream, it was only 14 gigs. that's less than 1/3 the size of the BD and this is a graphics heavy movie![/citation]
I agree with this. I watched some extra features when DVD's first came out, but its useless, i never watch them any more. When ripping movies to hard drive I always remove everything but the main title.

 

[skyjogger]

[citation][nom]tolham[/nom]the studios also need to forgo the bonus features and encode the video to the highest bitrate that will fit on the disc. i ripped the matrix blu ray some months ago. after i stripped the movie down to just the video file and one audio stream, it was only 14 gigs. that's less than 1/3 the size of the BD and this is a graphics heavy movie![/citation]
this is sort of true, but the features aren't there because they think it greatly enhances the disk, they are there because they have the space. why not give your self and extra selling point when it doesn't take away from the original movie. i think you don't quite understand video encoding, it doesn't matter how many graphics are in the movie this doesn't really effect the size because its just video, its all ready been rendered so a graphic takes the same space as something that's real that's similar. they can only render the movie at the bit rate blu ray can play which clearly in this example is a lot less than the size of the disc. so they put the extras on because they may as well put something on there to use up the rest of the disk

 

[_Cubase_]

[citation][nom]skyjogger[/nom]this is sort of true, but the features aren't there because they think it greatly enhances the disk, they are there because they have the space. why not give your self and extra selling point when it doesn't take away from the original movie. i think you don't quite understand video encoding, it doesn't matter how many graphics are in the movie this doesn't really effect the size because its just video, its all ready been rendered so a graphic takes the same space as something that's real that's similar. they can only render the movie at the bit rate blu ray can play which clearly in this example is a lot less than the size of the disc. so they put the extras on because they may as well put something on there to use up the rest of the disk[/citation]

Not true... the Avatar BD (film only version) uses up almost the entire contents of the disc, so it can be achieved. It was encoded at a much higher average bitrate, and yet it plays fine on all BD players. This was becuase they chose to decrease the margin between the lowest and highest avg bitrate when encoding, so it hovers pretty much at around 40mbit/sec the whole way through, and thus the film fills up the entire disc.