HD masters without a blu-ray (yet) (1 Viewer)

[mattCR]

Originally Posted by benbess
Sorry to be ignorant, but what is VUDU? And can you name some specific Hitchcock titles you've seen that aren't on blu? Thanks.

Video rental service. It's available on PS3, many bluray players, PC.. it's interesting but I've never really went in for it. It's fairly high quality though.

 

[Matt Hough]

Mastered in high definition could mean mastered in 1080i, This is what happened to Singin' in the Rain which is why Warners had to go back to the drawing board with a new transfer for a 1080p Blu-ray release. Supposedly we are getting that movie in 2012 (an anniversary year for the movie).

 

[benbess]

Sorry for the silly question, but is there really a clearly visible difference between 1080i and 1080p? Say on a 42" Sony Bravia (what I've got)?

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Originally Posted by benbess
Sorry for the silly question, but is there really a clearly visible difference between 1080i and 1080p? Say on a 42" Sony Bravia (what I've got)?

It depends on how clearly you see things - I know that's kind of a vague answer, but some people say they notice the difference, others don't. It depends on the quality of the encoding, as well as the quality of the player you're using, the electronics within your TV, etc. The further away you sit from the screen, the less noticeable many of these things become anyway. If your TV or player is bad at handling interlace artifacts, or if those are the things you notice (what might appear as lines or jagged edges or shimmering, among others), you'll notice it more than some. That's one of those questions where if you asked ten different people on this forum with similar size TVs, you'll probably get ten different answers.

More importantly, when a studio like Warner says they want to do a new master for Singin' In The Rain, it means they want to use what's state of the art today -- not state of the art ten years ago -- to give us the best quality possible by today's standards. Putting in that kind of effort is almost always a good thing.

What may be more noticeable to more people isn't so much the difference between 1080i/1080p but the fact that an older 1080i transfer wouldn't have been done on the kind of state-of-the-art equipment used today. Also, from what I've noticed over the years, a disc looks better when the source material is of a higher resolution than the actual disc -- in other words, a 1080i master makes for a better looking DVD than an older 480i master, and a 2k master will make a better Blu-ray than a 1080p master. (The more resolution that's present before compression, the better job the compression equipment will do in accurately reproducing the quality of the original.) I think it was on the Digital Bits where Bill Hunt visited Universal, and Universal has been notorious for having less-than-stellar Blu-rays of classic titles, and he learned there that they were making new masters -- but the masters were only 1080p, so that kinda backs up the theory that the more resolution you have going in, the better the overall quality is going to be, even if all of that resolution won't be present in the end. Think about it this way -- if you're making an MP3, you're going to get a better quality MP3 converting directly from the CD than you would converting from a slightly-higher quality MP3. My guess is that it would work somewhat similar on the picture end of things.

 

[Cinescott]

Originally Posted by benbess
Sorry for the silly question, but is there really a clearly visible difference between 1080i and 1080p? Say on a 42" Sony Bravia (what I've got)?

The differences can be subtle, especially if you have really good equipment. 1080i is more standard in cable presentations, where the signal uses less bandwidth. You have to be very observant to notice a difference, but there can be little slips with 1080i, particularly with patterns on-screen, like in a screen door or similar. However, even 1080p can look pretty bad on poor HDTVs unless the refresh rate is suitable (i.e.: 120 Hz or better). The refresh rate refers to an algorithm used by the display to "guess" where proper colors and movement will be in-between the 24 to 60 frames/second, resulting in a smoother picture. I have a 42" display as well (an LG LCD) and have noticed some problems with 1080i; it's not a big difference, though.

 

[benbess]

Originally Posted by Josh Steinberg
It depends on how clearly you see things - I know that's kind of a vague answer, but some people say they notice the difference, others don't. It depends on the quality of the encoding, as well as the quality of the player you're using, the electronics within your TV, etc. The further away you sit from the screen, the less noticeable many of these things become anyway. If your TV or player is bad at handling interlace artifacts, or if those are the things you notice (what might appear as lines or jagged edges or shimmering, among others), you'll notice it more than some. That's one of those questions where if you asked ten different people on this forum with similar size TVs, you'll probably get ten different answers.

More importantly, when a studio like Warner says they want to do a new master for Singin' In The Rain, it means they want to use what's state of the art today -- not state of the art ten years ago -- to give us the best quality possible by today's standards. Putting in that kind of effort is almost always a good thing.

What may be more noticeable to more people isn't so much the difference between 1080i/1080p but the fact that an older 1080i transfer wouldn't have been done on the kind of state-of-the-art equipment used today. Also, from what I've noticed over the years, a disc looks better when the source material is of a higher resolution than the actual disc -- in other words, a 1080i master makes for a better looking DVD than an older 480i master, and a 2k master will make a better Blu-ray than a 1080p master. (The more resolution that's present before compression, the better job the compression equipment will do in accurately reproducing the quality of the original.) I think it was on the Digital Bits where Bill Hunt visited Universal, and Universal has been notorious for having less-than-stellar Blu-rays of classic titles, and he learned there that they were making new masters -- but the masters were only 1080p, so that kinda backs up the theory that the more resolution you have going in, the better the overall quality is going to be, even if all of that resolution won't be present in the end. Think about it this way -- if you're making an MP3, you're going to get a better quality MP3 converting directly from the CD than you would converting from a slightly-higher quality MP3. My guess is that it would work somewhat similar on the picture end of things.

Josh: Thanks for this excellent explanation. Helps a lot. +++

 

[benbess]

Originally Posted by Cinescott
The differences can be subtle, especially if you have really good equipment. 1080i is more standard in cable presentations, where the signal uses less bandwidth. You have to be very observant to notice a difference, but there can be little slips with 1080i, particularly with patterns on-screen, like in a screen door or similar. However, even 1080p can look pretty bad on poor HDTVs unless the refresh rate is suitable (i.e.: 120 Hz or better). The refresh rate refers to an algorithm used by the display to "guess" where proper colors and movement will be in-between the 24 to 60 frames/second, resulting in a smoother picture. I have a 42" display as well (an LG LCD) and have noticed some problems with 1080i; it's not a big difference, though.

Scott: Thanks.

Another silly question: can 240 hz give a "video" look to a film?

 

[Cinescott]

Originally Posted by benbess
Scott: Thanks.

Another silly question: can 240 hz give a "video" look to a film?

Not a silly question at all. I've wondered the same thing myself. I've noticed a sort of "processed' appearance on a friend's 55", 240 Hz display. I'm not quite sure if that's the source material on a larger screen or the TV's processor trying to make the image as smooth as possible, or both. I've sampled several titles and they all seem to display this quality. It could just be my eyes, I don't know. By most accounts, the image is stunning, but I suppose no video is going to look exactly like film, regardless of how good the transfer may be and how efficient the display is at handling the signal. My 42" is a 120 Hz and that seems to be fine. No "video" look to it at all. As with many things, it may be in the eye of the beholder, but I do believe a 60 Hz may be inadequate for many >40" displays.

Then again, I could just be insanely jealous of the large display

 

[Worth]

Originally Posted by benbess
Another silly question: can 240 hz give a "video" look to a film?

It has nothing to do with the refresh rate per se - that is, it isn't the fact that the set refreshes at 120Hz or 240Hz that creates the "video" look. That's the result of frame interpolation. The set adds extra frames to the incoming material by guessing what and where they should be.

 

[mattCR]

The difference, however, is the multiplier. 240hz and 120hz are considered "good" because they are even multipliers (24fps/30fps/60fps) which will all evenly go into those numbers. Wheras a set at say, 60hz means 24 doesn't divide evenly into it, which is part of the issue.. my experience is: maybe. Some people never notice to begin with. Some it drives batty. Only your eyes will know

 

[benbess]

Originally Posted by Worth
It has nothing to do with the refresh rate per se - that is, it isn't the fact that the set refreshes at 120Hz or 240Hz that creates the "video" look. That's the result of frame interpolation. The set adds extra frames to the incoming material by guessing what and where they should be.

Can that be turned off? On my sister's set it looks awful to us. She lives in another city, however, and so it's hard to advise her long distance on how to turn it off.

 

[Worth]

It can be turned off, but every manufacturer calls it something different - it's usually something along the lines of "smooth motion".

 

[Peter Neski]

I think its a little silly complaining about some of these TV HD versionss not being 1080p With so Many Not on Blue Ray,and little chance for them coming out anytime soon,and
most of the versions are better,or a lot better than any dvd that out now.Its a Mad Mad Mad ect world was far the best version 1080p or not,Badlands looks a lot better than
the dvd ,so does many others ,Manhattan looked the best it ever looked (mgm had some stupid logos on this)
Thief ,Sounder and many others were very nice

 

[Eddie W.]

Originally Posted by benbess
Sorry to be ignorant, but what is VUDU? And can you name some specific Hitchcock titles you've seen that aren't on blu? Thanks.

Yes, VUDU is a streaming PPV service. They have a vast library of titles available in 1080p HD that aren't on Blu Ray. The quality is quite good, depending on your internet connection. Most of Hitchcock's 1950's - 1970's films are available in HD, from the better known titles like Rear Window & Vertizo to stuff like Torn Curtain & Topaz. And everything in between, like Rope, Trouble Harry, The Birds, Family Plot, etc, etc. Probably about 20 or so titles.

Probably coming from the same masters that appeared on HDNET around Dec '07 & were never shown again.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Originally Posted by benbess
Can that be turned off? On my sister's set it looks awful to us.

It can be turned off, but every manufacturer calls it something different - if you can get her to tell you which model TV she has so you can look up the manual online, look for something with "motion" in the description. On my Samsung, it's called "Auto Motion Plus". (Also, I found that in addition to turning that off, turning off the "edge enhancement" setting fixed whatever remaining weirdness was still present.)

Some people don't even notice - I don't know how they don't, but my dad had picked up a brand new 46" 1080P Samsung back in 2008, great picture, but it came with that setting turned on. I remember visiting for the holidays that year, I bought him a Blu-ray player as a gift, and when I popped something on I couldn't believe how terrible it looked. And he said he didn't notice but let me change the setting. I was very tempted to take one of his favorite records and unplug one of the speakers and ask if he noticed that

 

[Cinescott]

Originally Posted by Josh Steinberg
It can be turned off, but every manufacturer calls it something different - if you can get her to tell you which model TV she has so you can look up the manual online, look for something with "motion" in the description. On my Samsung, it's called "Auto Motion Plus". (Also, I found that in addition to turning that off, turning off the "edge enhancement" setting fixed whatever remaining weirdness was still present.)

Some people don't even notice - I don't know how they don't, but my dad had picked up a brand new 46" 1080P Samsung back in 2008, great picture, but it came with that setting turned on. I remember visiting for the holidays that year, I bought him a Blu-ray player as a gift, and when I popped something on I couldn't believe how terrible it looked. And he said he didn't notice but let me change the setting. I was very tempted to take one of his favorite records and unplug one of the speakers and ask if he noticed that

I noticed the same thing on my mom's new Samsung. It's funny because she had had the thing a week and hadn't noticed anything (and had watched at least 1 Blu-ray). Why is it that the people that don't know how to drive have all the Ferraris? Cable and on-air hi definition content looked fine, but Blu-rays had an awful "artificial" look I'd never seen before. Weird is as good a word as any. I was able to shut it off and everything looked fine again. I know my LG has a setting for this and Samsungs obviously do as well. Does every manufacturer provide the ability to shut the "motion enhancement" feature off? I hope so.

The new Samsung with its default settings made Blu-ray content look "processed." Foreground characters seemed to pop way into the foreground (and it wasn't on a 3D setting) and motion seemed a little too fluid, as if there somehow weren't any defining lines around characters or objects, for that matter. When the action on-screen was still, everything was perfect. Put anything in motion (camera or character) and things got weird.

 

[benbess]

Thanks folks for the help...

 

[Cees Alons]

Originally Posted by benbess
Sorry for the silly question, but is there really a clearly visible difference between 1080i and 1080p? Say on a 42" Sony Bravia (what I've got)?

Not silly at all, people have tried to fool us for commercial reasons.
Only (potentially) would differences be visible if those are images of real-time recordings, like TV-camera recordings (video). In that case, it makes a difference if the "odd" (-lines) image part is recorded after the "even" (-lines) part or not. And the difference will only be visible then if it is projected on your screen the wrong way (e.g. wrong sequence; theoretically that can also be caused by a wrong 3:2 pull down sequence, but that's not relevant when we're talking about BD).

However...

When a movie frame is scanned, the whole picture ("odd" plus "even" lines after scanning) is readily present (as a "photo", you could say) and frozen in time together, so it doesn't make any difference at all in which sequence the pixels are subsequently transported and finally put back into the frame you are looking at. All that matters is that they arrive at their proper place in the image buffer of your TV - and in time. Of course this is exactly what the system carefully does.

So - unlike some marketing tried to tell us - there is no difference at all between a properly displayed 1080i and a 1080p image once you see it with your eyes. Both have exactly the same image resolution: 1080 horizontal lines (and 1920 vertical columns). This is called a 1080 vertical resolution x 1920 horizontal resolution (sic!) image.

Both images (interleaved or progressive) would exactly be equal and are thus of exactly the same picture quality.


Cees

 

[Josh Steinberg]

re: turning off "auto motion" on different TVs - someone posted a link to this article in another one of the sections of the HTF. For the purposes of this discussion you can skip all of the parts in it about why the author prefers plasma to LCD, but what was really useful was that they showed pictures of the menu screens of different brands of TVs with how to turn off that motion smoothing on different models:

http://prolost.com/blog/2011/3/28/your-new-tv-ruins-movies.html

 

[benbess]

Originally Posted by Josh Steinberg
re: turning off "auto motion" on different TVs - someone posted a link to this article in another one of the sections of the HTF. For the purposes of this discussion you can skip all of the parts in it about why the author prefers plasma to LCD, but what was really useful was that they showed pictures of the menu screens of different brands of TVs with how to turn off that motion smoothing on different models:

http://prolost.com/blog/2011/3/28/your-new-tv-ruins-movies.html

Thanks very much. I'll pass that on to my sister.