Anyone Else Finding SD-DVD lacking after life with HD DVD/Blu-ray? (1 Viewer)

[Jim_K]

Some of us try to recreate the "experience". First I like to spread a greasy, sticky substance on the carpet in my HT. Then I'll invite neighbors over and assign them various tasks, one to simulate the asswipe talking on the cellphone while the movie is playing. Another to sit behind me and kick the back of my seat and of course the couple who provide a running commentary on the events on the screen, If I'm lucky I'll get a crying baby. Before the film starts I like to run 30 to 45 minutes of obnoxious commercials blaring at top volume. Of course for the film I'll have the audio set out of whack and my video miscalibrated for proper simulation.

 

[John H Ross]

Sounds like you need to arrange your cinema visit around non-peak times! Wednesday afternoons around 5pm is good for me - normally only a dozen or so people around!

 

[DaViD Boulet]

John,

and I'm sure many people watch P/S and love it too.

Naturally the importance any of us place on a particular aspect of how we enjoy "movies" in our home is subjective.

However, wide-angle viewing, just like image composition (OAR), is critical to what the director intended for the viewer to experience visually. There are details in the image, and an emotional impact that only starts to take place when you approach that 30-degree viewing angle. That's well understood and cineatographers are composing their images and choosing their film-stock for that 30-degree experience.

Would you suggest that watching a 3-D IMAX film on a 2" iPod screen was doing the experience justice that the director intended?

Of course not.

Just like with the argument for OAR, until one becomes accustomed to the "difference" that wide-angle and high-resolution can make... and how that brings the viewer closer to the director's vision, it's difficult to convince someone in words. And it's only now with realtively affordable and high-performance "wide angle" options becoming available that average HT enthusasts can even start to dream of incorporating this next-level of film-replication in their home (which is why it hasn't been on the radar in years past as was OAR).

As for all the other thing you mention, they can be true too. It's one reason why for certain films I insist on only watching them in groups (Happy Feet), and I always give my "no cell phone" lecture before the start of the film. I want to watch my film un-interupted just as it would be experienced start-to-finish in the theater... lights out for a 2-hour journey into a cinematographers imagination.

 

[John H Ross]

I still think that a lot of this HD stuff is a case of "boys with their toys". The kid with the biggest screen, latest technology, etc. wins. The idea of inviting a ton of people round for a "movie night" is not something I would do in my wildest dreams. That's not to imply that this kind of attitude is wrong, just that different people have different priorities.

With all of this in mind - sure, I bet HD absolutely blows SD out of the water technically. But is SD-DVD really lacking? I hardly think so.

 

[Jim_K]

If you're happy and more than satisfied with SD then great, good for you.

Somehow I really don't think you are all that satified otherwise you wouldn't be hanging out and posting in the HD section of the forum.

 

[John H Ross]

I drop into about 8 or 9 different areas of the forum, including HD-DVD (even though if/when I do dive into HD it will be Blu-Ray!) just to keep up with things, hear about all the technical problems, etc ;-)

Plus it's a slow day

 

[Jim_K]

But why even consider wasting your money on HD/BD when you're perfectly satisfied with SD?

 

[John H Ross]

Well I haven't. And I may well not.

Being satisfied with SD doesn't mean I won't move across to HD. It just means that I'm satisfied with SD. The two are not mutually exclusive.

I simply want the best value out of what I have.

 

[Garrett Lundy]

We can only dream of such an awesome format (and its appropriate TV hardware) right now.... I give 1080 at least 20 more years.

 

[Tim Glover]

I nearly coughed up my morning coffee reading that Jim.

Did some more tweaking and the softness issue with sd is still there but better sitting further back.

 

[Harminder]

LMAO! That was great!

I can't stand going to the theatres anymore. Last time I went was summer 06. I can't recreate the "experience" at home that's for sure. Why? Cause I have something going better than the crappy theatre experience. And with hi-def, I have no need to see a movie in the over priced theatres anymore.

 

[ppltd]

I find that if you turn your chair around facing away from the screen, the softness of the upconverted disks is no longer an issue.

 

[Mathew_M]

A lot of us are interested in HD but are staying content with SD until the format war is ironed out. I'd hate to be one of you guys that has limited their viewing habits to only HD material. To me that signifies that you're more interested in the technology than the movies.

 

[Marc Colella]

For me the main reason I haven't made a move to HD is simply due to content. The vast majority of titles available are Hollywood movies in which I have little interest in. There are a few films I thought were decent, but nothing I'd want to own.

Content is more important than video/audio quality, and it's not like I'm "slumming it" with DVD as they still look/sound incredible - and I actually have movies I want to watch available to me.

 

[Norman Matthews]

Sorry to go a bit off topic, and maybe I'm blessed, but the last time I had a bad theater experience that I can actually remember (besides a projector breakdown while seeing Gladiator for which everyone in the theater was reimbursed) was The People Vs. Larry Flynt, and I go to the movies quite frequently.

In fact, I've had many more memorably frustrating experiences at the live theater, to which I go much less frequently than the movies. But I guess that's the tourist factor for you.

As for wide-angle viewing, there's a point to be made there, but it's silly to ignore the fact that the director of every single movie made for the last thirty years and more has known that the film he's making would spend the vast majority of its life being seen on television screens, not in the theater.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

I always have to explain that they're not talking about the emotional impact of the *film*, they are talking about the emotional impact of the *story* and the *performance* of the actors and not the "film" which is the art of communicating those ideas via a visual and aural medium manipulated by an artist for a desired effect.

If all you care about is the story and acting, that's valid, but then it need not be a film at all: a book, a play, or a dramatic reading could all have conveyed the same "story" or idea.

What makes film the art-of-film is the *medium*. That's true with any art: divorce it from the medium that conveys it and it's just an "idea", no longer "art" at all. The medium was designed to be experienced by viewers in a very specific way. The better we preserve that experience, the more directly we experience the art as it was intended by the artist.

 

[John H Ross]

My thoughts exactly. If a person upgrades their system to HD and has, let's say, 30 HD titles which make their 1500 SD titles seem "lacking" and less enjoyable - well they have only themselves to blame!

Personally I will only upgrade to HD when AT LEAST 50% of the movies I want are available and I can be sure that the rest (including pre-HD era television) will still look reasonably fine. It's basic common sense!

 

[John H Ross]

And yet, take an average cinema. And I mean an ACTUAL cinema. You have seats right down at the front/left, the front/right, the back/left, the back/right, the back/centre - how many people actually see this "perfect" 30 degree view of which you speak in the very place where a film is INTENDED to be seen?

And, as a point of interest, when a director sits on the set, he witnesses the movie through a compareably tiny little monitor. When he overseas the edit, he sees it on a screen not much bigger than a standard LCD monitor. I'd be interested to know just how aware even the director is of all those little details that seem so crucial (especially modern directors who hardly even know where to put the camera!)

Sure films look different on a big screen. They look more important. They look "larger than life" - they ARE larger than life - and that is diminished on the small screen. But I would maintain that it's hardly lost.

 

[Cees Alons]

That would be someone owning only a limited SD library, I guess.

I myself (SD library >2700 discs) would not have embraced HD DVD if I could not have been pretty sure that my existing collection wouldn't get obsolete all of a sudden.

I'm happy to inform you that it hasn't: I only buy some of the HD releases (approx. 96 now), still order SD DVDs I like and see those (including TV material, e.g. the two seasons of House MD) upconverted through my Toshiba HD A1 - and I'm still flabbergasted how good the SDs look. It's certainly no HD DVD material, but it's so much better than on the old 480-display!

(Only disadvantage: I still need my old modified DVD player to play the occasional R2-SDVDs I own, however: for that purpose I use an upconverting image processor).

John, given the requirements you stated: you could safely upgrade now, believe me!


Cees

 

[John H Ross]

Well that's fine, but that "artistic" vision is always going to be compromised. If not by the technology at the viewer's end - or the quality of a particular theatrical presentation (see earlier post) - then by the quality of the film stock or similar at the film-maker's end.

I just have a hard time getting my head around this concept that, now that HD has arrived, films are finally worth watching (and some folk have actually said that certain films they never cared for are now entertaining)! Everything else that came before it is crap. Theatrical presentations are crap, VHS was crap (okay, I can buy that), laserdisc was crap, DVD was crap. The last 100 years of movie presentation was crap. But now - YAY - HD is here and finally we can appreciate the artist's intention...

Unless of course the disc won't spin, or the picture freezes, or the audio drops out... all of which seem fairly common with current HD disc technology!