Blu-ray Review HTF BLU-RAY REVIEW: Ratatouille (1 Viewer)

[DaViD Boulet]

Jedi,

I noticed no instances of visible banding on my projector (running HDMI which normally makes these painfully obvious). There might have been one brief instance where I *think* I might have seen banding during a quick "camera pan" around the light around a light post. But the movement was so fast that it wasn't clear enough to discern.

Other than that... perfect color gradations.

Did you see banding?

 

[JediFonger]

i see banding in everything on HDTV from TV programming to HD DVD, Blu-Ray, encodes, everything. not just my home equipment, stores, friend's house with proper calibration, everything. i'm just 2nitpicky/perffectionist =P.

i'm not @home currently, but one thing i can remember is TMNT. if you have that disc, que the beginning after the ancient battle and the "camera" pans down on the manhattan skyline, lots of banding.


http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/901/tmnt.html
^he notices it as well.

it's not just animated CG stuff, old and new movies have this as well.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Yes, but I mean specifically do you see banding on *this* BD?

What's your system/connections?

 

[Lyle_JP]

I'm not looking to bash an entire (and very popular) family of monitors, but a majority of complaints about banding seem to come from folks with flat panel LCDs. Just sayin'. Actually, I find banding pretty unnacceptable on my sister's DLP set, but it's a 720P set that's few years old. Still, my much older 1080i CRT shows no banding with most titles (with the exception of some obvious offenders like the Finding Nemo DVD).

Let's hear it for analog technology!

 

[JediFonger]

4:54 when the camera pans, lots of color-banding. mine's a LCD, so you'll blame it on that, but i've seen it on DLP, CRT projections@stores. same stuff =P.

 

[Todd H]

Checked that scene out via a PS3 running to a Sony A2000 at 1080P. No visible banding that I could find.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Have you checked it out with *this* title on all those other displays? Running HDMI from BD to display?

I have a DLP PJ and saw no banding.

 

[Matt Hough]

I certainly saw no banding either (via PS3 to 56" 1080p/24 DLP), and I was looking for it after the discussion about banding on THE JUNGLE BOOK DVD.

 

[BrettB]

It's there. Thanks a lot Jedi.

I'm not too worried. I see it freeze frame but watching it about 10 times at regular speed knowing it's there I couldn't see it.

Jedi, if you caught this in the normal course of watching the movie you have my deepest sympathy.

PS3, HDMI, Sony XBR960 tube

 

[DaViD Boulet]

I wonder if that's the spot where I think I noticed what looked like it *might* be banding around that street-light during a camera pan. I'll check out that time-marker next time I have the PJ fired up...

p.s. if that's the extent of "banding" in this movie... it's hardly cause for alarm...

 

[BrettB]

Don't waste your time it's not the notorious street light banding that is in just about every version of the trailer released.

It's in shotgun granny's house.

Remy is eating the strawberry & cheese
He hears a noise as SG wakes up
Incredibly quick pan from Remy to SG (this is where it is)

There is cgi motion blur going on which probably doesn't help Jedi's sensitivity to banding. Freeze and step through the pan. It's worst in the first frame where Remey has exited frame right. Banding on the brown walls.

Like I said, I tried to see it in real time and couldn't.

 

[JediFonger]

it's when the pan happens, NOT still.

i catch this while watching everything on any technology. that's why i'm so excited for LED/OLED-hybrid LCD or new HDR technology like the new samsung that provides 92% of the color spectrum. i really can't wait for that stuff to come down in cost. that'd the ultimate display playback technology!!!! =).

it's sad cause everything from our current HDM player, HDTV, HTPC (all PC graphics cards), Software are all 8-bit based and not 12/16-bit based.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

Cars came first.

 

[JediFonger]

if you've seen the behind the scenes, i like how they hired a DP for this even though a DP is not "technically required", but they used her expertise to make the lighting so much more "cinematic". there's also some mis-en-scene that is very nice done in many ways modern live action films don't quite care for.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

HDMI 1.3 passes deep color. And even though BDs aren't recorded with deep color to start, in theory there can be an improvement since the video decoding, processing, and signal chain to the display can all happen at a greater bit-depth. Your next display should have an HDMI 1.3 connection.

 

[JediFonger]

hi David,

the spex for hdmi is good, but:
1. as we said, none of the Blu-Ray/HD DVD are encoding in higher color depths.
2. even if HDM were higher color depths (which they SHOULD HAVE BEEN from the start, so they can wait for technology to catchup), none of the current/announced standalone HD players can play that back. so you have to buy a NEW player.
3. even if you had the source, player, you still don't have the displays capable of it. it's very rare to see 10, 12, 16-bit color depths displays because they are so expensive to make. they're coming though... i believe the samsung led backlit+LCD combo is supposed to cover more of the NTSC color spectrum, but it's still not a true higher color depths display, still 8-bit and 8-bit voodoo.
4. if the AVR is 1.3, it can pass higher color depths along as long it isn't processing or touching it (rescaling purposes, etc.), otherwise you'll need a brand new AVR.
5. none of the PC video cards outputs more than 8-bit color. 2D is still the oldest/least worked on spex on the computer end of things. macs do have higher color depths 12/16, but they require a lot more horsepower just to maintain that stuff. all in all practically speaking, you still can't output it via computer. i dunno if VGA/DVI even supports higher color depths. displayport will have pretty insane color depth support. but so far, only the ati firegl series are higher color depths:

http://ati.amd.com/products/fireglv8650/index.html

true HDR is happening on the PC end, but not fast enough!!!! i'm gonna hold off on buying new HTPC's and stuff until we get 16-bit color depths.