HTF Blu Ray Review: Miami Vice - Unrated Director's Edition

Re: HTF Blu Ray Review: Miami Vice - Unrated Director's Edition

Are you basing this statement on personal experience (ie, actually viewing both discs on the same system in real time), or on screen captures?

Re: HTF Blu Ray Review: Miami Vice - Unrated Director's Edition

Look at Mr. Hanky's shots in a 720p pass Michel, that's an eye opener. Gear and motion make tremendous differences IMO.

Re: HTF Blu Ray Review: Miami Vice - Unrated Director's Edition

That's why I suggested you use a good 1080p model since downfiltering to 720p evens out/eliminates differences in HF detail of different encodes and transfers.

Re: HTF Blu Ray Review: Miami Vice - Unrated Director's Edition

Stills. And I'm not saying the whole film looks very different on BD than on H-DVD. The stills suggest to me that all parts with little to medium noise in them have subtle differences that are hard to see if at all at 24 fps while really noisy parts will clearly show the additional HF detail on 1080p displays that can resolve it.
I'll compare the two version myself later in 1080p to verify this.

Re: HTF Blu Ray Review: Miami Vice - Unrated Director's Edition

Keep in mind that a good chunk of Miami Vice was shot with the Thomson Viper HD camera, so some of the grain you see in the BD transfer may have been added after the fact. Screencaps are not as informative here as they have been in the cases of films grain reduced to create a "universal" master (Pan's Labyrinth and Dark City).

Re: HTF Blu Ray Review: Miami Vice - Unrated Director's Edition

I was curious, so I checked the screencap-comparison of "Miami Vice" from "some other forum".. People are looking at the grain patterns etc and then try to make up their minds which one is "better". They can´t be "different" no, there has to be the "better one" (of the two).

Now there´s nothing wrong with adding those screencaps (Xylon has again done some hard work), but it´s the debate that throws me off a bit. Everything is based on a few screencaps and then the (rather childish, I might add) argument starts. "Is this grain pattern better than the other grain pattern?". "I can see more noise/grain - it must be better" or "I see slightly smoother picture - it must be better".

I didn´t observed the "grain pattern" when I saw e.g. "Miami Vice" in the movie theatre (since it was clearly partly shot in video, intentionally noisy/grainy/murky, etc), and I´m not going to start now*. If I can´t see any "real mistakes/faults/mastering errors/cut-scenes/etc" when I normally watch the movie, then it´s fine for me.

Ugh.

(*..even when I already have HD DVD-version and BD-version "on order"..)

Re: HTF Blu Ray Review: Miami Vice - Unrated Director's Edition

Yes, Michael Mann added "noise" to the HD video to simulate grain. So the attempts to talk about if the "grain" is there are not are highly suspect. It's incorrect to assume that higher bit rate means better PQ. There is not always a direct correlation. I will admit that MV was an extremely challenging film to encode and that the higher bit rate did correct some problems -- strobbing in the film over the HD DVD version. That is noticeable when watching on any resolution screen, regardless of how far the viewer is sitting. Would anyone be able to detect a fake grain pattern when sitting 1.5X the screen width with a 1080p screen? The 20 minutes I spent comparing it on a 1080p display sitting 1.5X from the screen width, it certainly wasn't apparent to me and I have 20/15 vision (thanks to RK). I haven't watched the entire film, but the majority of the film has the "noise" added to it.

Re: HTF Blu Ray Review: Miami Vice - Unrated Director's Edition

After watching the movie the Blu-ray version is clearly superior to the HD DVD version. No need to nitpick the screenshots

Re: HTF Blu Ray Review: Miami Vice - Unrated Director's Edition

I think any screenshot comparison is fair game. It has been fairly conclusively shown in some of the latest comparisons that even a single frame variance between two different encodes can lead to flawed comparison. Advanced compression codecs and encoders work on a frame by frame basis. A two hour movie has nearly 173,000 frames. Judging an entire encode based on a literal handful of frames is just bad science. Film and video are linear motion entities. The look and texture of a film should be based on viewing 24 frames every second for many seconds at a time under the best possible conditions. Not looking at a single frame under extreme magnification on a less than optimal display like an LCD monitor.

What you have been doing, Xylon, can be useful when taken in the proper context. My problem with this relates to the axiom about "a little bit of knowledge", as in, knowing just enough to be dangerous.

And as to the first part of the above quote, I have also viewed both discs in full 1080p on a 106" screen under very good conditions and the difference between these two is anything but "clearly superior". Any difference between the HD DVD and Blu-ray encodes of this film when viewed at normal speed on even very good consumer grade equipment (the way a consumer video format should be viewed) is exceedingly subtle. In those few frames or shots that there may be a measurable difference under laboratory conditions, those differences would be a matter of subjectivity. What may be "clearly superior" to you may not be perceived the same way by others.

Re: HTF Blu Ray Review: Miami Vice - Unrated Director's Edition

I know most people wont see any difference between the two even if doing A/B doing comparisons. Heck I think this applies to pretty much all HD titles with different encodes, bitrates and DNR. But when you visit my threads we go beyond this. See if claims by studios and their cheerleaders are true. "This is more effecient or this will look better than that." You know the usual talking points. See which one is talking FUD.

Yup nitpicking to the max and I offer no apologies. Without those eagle eyes members we are still probably watching Orlando Bloom with his head cut off