First BD titles under scrutiny: The Fifth Element and others - Page 6

Re: First BD titles under scrutiny: The Fifth Element and others

DaViD,

I think Stacey responded to your thread on AVS here http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=692990 and said that the samsung doesn't bob.

Re: First BD titles under scrutiny: The Fifth Element and others

David,

You're doing it again!


Each frame is indeed doubled vertically, so is having an effective resolution of about 540 lines, but each other frame is carrying the vertical resolution information the previous frame was missing.

So the effective vertical resolution (to the human eye, after cumulation) is closer to 720 vertical lines (probably even higher, all the information of the 1080 lines resolution is there, although a little bit muddled).


Cees

Re: First BD titles under scrutiny: The Fifth Element and others

And if this is the issue, using 1080I from the Sammy should show a fully detailed image.

Ted

Re: First BD titles under scrutiny: The Fifth Element and others

Cees,

we can debate the semantics of this issue. It's commonly accepted by most engineering folks that bobbing 1080i produces an effective vertical resolution of "540p".

Now, your point is a good one... that each individual frame may have "540p" vertical elements of resolution... but since each alternating frame would be interpolated upon the "missing" information from the frield before... that the combined effective resolution may appear higher. However, in practice the "blurring" of the two together still leaves the viewer perceiving a low-threshold of detail. I don't know if anyone has done tests to measure the actual limits of vertical frequency that can be perceived, and it very well may be closer to 720p. It would be a valuable test... though hopefully eventaully these bobbing issues can be left behind forever!

In any case, my "540p" characterization is consistent with the industry on the matter of bobbing 1080i, though I agree that better explanation of the process is helpful and your comments describe that process in detail.

And to be clear to anyone else reading who's confused, horiztonal resolution would remain unaffected by bobbing (you're still getting 1920 horizontal) regardless of the vertical reduction in perceived detail.



Only if viewed in native 1080i60 (like on a CRT) or deinterlaced using proper inverse telecine/3-2 reversal.

Re: First BD titles under scrutiny: The Fifth Element and others

I saw two Blu-ray demos today, one at a Fry's Electronics and one at Circuit City. Obviously, neither was set up for best performance, but the comparison was interesting. Both used some large flat-panel, and I didn't make a note of what.

The Fry's demo ws running "Fifty First Dates", and I honestly cannot guess what they had done to it, but it looked awful. The thing which I noticed the most was that the colour looked extremely posterised, like it had been reduced from 8 bits per channel to 2. There was also a high level of MPEG noise, which came out of the background and looked like a series of heavy overlays on the picture. The contrast and brightness controls seemed to be turned up all the way, which didn't help, but the picture had an overall smeary and granular appearance I associate with VHS. I was 1 screen height or less away, but it was ridiculous. I also noticed what seemed a freakish level of jitter or judder in scenes with any degree of panning or fast motion. I have to think that there was something seriously wrong with their setup.

The one at Circuit City was "House of Flying Daggers", and by comparison it looked excellent. There was still MPEG background noise, just as on the upscaled DVD of the Gene Wilder "Willy Wonka" playing around the corner, but it was in the background, not the foreground. The colours also looked like colours, and not like someone had spilled a box of pastels. As a matter of fact, the overall impression I got was that it looked like upscaled DVD, except for having full resolution — in other words, the visual texture was the same as DVD, there was just more picture information.

Re: First BD titles under scrutiny: The Fifth Element and others

I don't have the manual in front of me, but I seem to remember it saying that 720p output should be used when the native resolution of the HD DVD is 720p.

720p HD DVD == 720p output
1080p HD DVD == 1080i output

I guess the point is to never use the player's scaler.

Re: First BD titles under scrutiny: The Fifth Element and others

They retracted that in a statement via Amir at AVS and in other venues. The manual is in error. I believe they even sent a memo to Best Buy asking them to be sure their HD DVD demos were all outputting 1080i even if connected to 720P displays.

Read the latest issue of WSR where Amir from Microsoft talks about the Toshiba player in an interview along with Joe Kane...

There are also tons of posts at AVS about the problem with running the Toshiba at 720P.

Re: First BD titles under scrutiny: The Fifth Element and others

Which engineers are we talking about and how do you quantify that number as most?

Re: First BD titles under scrutiny: The Fifth Element and others

I'm aware, although I'm not talking about 720p displays, so I'm not sure why you're bringing this up. I'm talking about discs encoded at 720p, of which there are none at present.

Perhaps that is outdated, though.

Re: First BD titles under scrutiny: The Fifth Element and others

Ahh. I see. Sorry for the confusion on my part.

Re: First BD titles under scrutiny: The Fifth Element and others

It's kind of scary, I can explain the way a computer works right down to the details for almost all of the common hardware, I can even program in 3 different languages. But I have *no* idea what David is talking about, can't remember the last time I ran into a technical explanation of something and was completely lost. Kudos! I love a challenge.

Anyways,

I saw a BR demo today at BB, running the demo disc. I was surprised by the lack of quality to say the least. While I could tell much of it was High-Def, it just looked blurred to me. Kinda like a soften filter for a picture, the detail was there, but it was just...fuzzy...sort of. Not at all like the quality I've seen with HD-DVD.

The player was running on a 40" Samsung 1080p LCD. I didn't think to look what inputs were being used.

Quite disappointed, not commiting to either format until I see a VC1 BR disc and/or a DL BR disc. If that's representative of BR's IQ I may have to go HD-DVD, and I *really* don't want to do that because I'm not thrilled with HD-DVD's capacity or market plans.

Re: First BD titles under scrutiny: The Fifth Element and others

I'm still waiting for owners of the Samsung model to report on there experience with picture quality using the component cables. I thought there would be a lot more people trying this out after the Digital Bits report yesterday.

Re: First BD titles under scrutiny: The Fifth Element and others

Read this, Brian. Bill Hunt's observations are not shared by others.

Re: First BD titles under scrutiny: The Fifth Element and others

I am using a Marantz DP12-S2 projector on a Stewart Firehawk screen. I have tried both 1080i HDMI and 1080i Component. I see little difference between the two.

Local Best Buy is using the same set-up as described in this thread earlier. The display there is Samsung 40 inch 1080p LCD TV. They were operating at 1080p and used HDMI connection. The demo disc was variable from superb to soft. I don't think it is the BD hardware or BD capability at play. I think that there was poor choice of some of the demo material.

I have 11 Blu-ray titles at home and I have seen no glitches on any with the Samsung player based upon chapter by chapter sampling.

Re: First BD titles under scrutiny: The Fifth Element and others

Maybe you should qualify that with "his observations are not shared by others, mainly HD DVD owners on one forum." When he posted there, he was insulted, called names, and eventually the moderators had to tell them to lay off. The same thing happened when Chris Walker (a manager at Pioneer) merely posted that they could ask him questions and see a demo if they were in the area. I said it there and and I'll say it here: almost no one outside AVS Forum holds Bill in such low opinion, and especially with such disrespect. The fact that this "courtesy" was extended to a Pioneer official as well was pretty sickening.

Re: First BD titles under scrutiny: The Fifth Element and others

Jesse, that may have been true about some other threads over at AVS, just like it has been true here, where the moderators won't tolerate it any more, but RobertR has a link to a thread that does not have "mainly HD DVD owners" posting. The people on that thread are asking legitimate questions about how GOOD the HDMI 1080i output is on the Samsung and how it equals the HDMI 1080i output on the Toshiba, hardly a biased opinion against Blu-ray.

Knowledgeable people, like Stacey Spears of (Secrets: DVD Benchmark), are testing these things out to correct any false conclusions and will report on that thread.

Paul

Re: First BD titles under scrutiny: The Fifth Element and others

I make no such qualification, because the people I was referring to are SAMSUNG owners making comments about what they see on their own displays. That **some** people on AVS made rude remarks about Hunt is irrelevant to and doesn't change the fact that there are SAMSUNG OWNERS with a different view about HDMI vs. component on the machine from Hunt's. Your attempt to obfuscate that fact by calling into question everything that's said there by trying to divert attention to an unrelated issue involving generalizations about posting behavior doesn't work.

Re: First BD titles under scrutiny: The Fifth Element and others

Robert,

That last sentence is exactly what spoils discussions like this and was better left out altogether.

I urge anyone else NOT to react to that part of the post.


Cees

Re: First BD titles under scrutiny: The Fifth Element and others

WHAT IF:
The 'issues' with the first BD release turn out to be hardware, instead of software related?!?!?!?!?!
That would be a tough (not in any way catastrophic) way for Sony, umm, I mean Blu to get started. With 'everyone' thinking titles are not "Blow Away" great, just average, when in fact its the Samsung hardware that's just "average"!!!
Ugh!