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Are Blu-ray's worth the extra Money? (1 Viewer)

jcroy

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FoxyMulder said:
Its an increase in resolution, it gives an illusion of this because everything is more in focus and detailed on the blu ray.
How much of this "brighter brights" and "darker darks" can be attributed to generic bluray players which appear to have the color saturation being turned up by default? Or is this just an illusion too?
 

FoxyMulder

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jcroy said:
How much of this "brighter brights" and "darker darks" can be attributed to generic bluray players which appear to have the color saturation being turned up by default? Or is this just an illusion too?
Thinking about this, it's may have something to do with Rec 601 and Rec 709 and the luminance channels, if you use an Oppo for example there will be no difference, some blu ray players may not do things correctly, i don't know, all i can say is that both formats use 8 bit colour depth, they should have had 10 bit depth for blu ray.

I personally don't see brighter brights and darker darks between a DVD and Blu ray which come from the same master.
 

schan1269

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Typically artificially boosted color is washed out with bleedover. If you have artificial enhancements...

Turn them off. If they can be.

In a perfect world, digital transmission of picture and sound would render "the player chosen" a moot point.

However, I bought a region free Orei(so I could buy European releases). On Underworld: Awakening, you can tell the picture isn't quite the same as it was from a Panasonic BD35. Is the Orei terrible? No. It is just rendering a picture that gets a bit lost transmitting black.
 

FoxyMulder

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schan1269 said:
Typically artificially boosted color is washed out with bleedover. If you have artificial enhancements...

Turn them off. If they can be.

In a perfect world, digital transmission of picture and sound would render "the player chosen" a moot point.

However, I bought a region free Orei(so I could buy European releases). On Underworld: Awakening, you can tell the picture isn't quite the same as it was from a Panasonic BD35. Is the Orei terrible? No. It is just rendering a picture that gets a bit lost transmitting black.
Then its a blu ray player issue, when people see these differences it's the blu ray player and sometimes having "enhancements" turned on, i don't see colour differences on DVD's and Blu rays which share the same master, only ones which come from different masters or have been altered for one of the formats, i use an Oppo and a PS3 and a Panasonic, the examples i gave on the last page show this to be true also. Those titles use the same master and are identical apart from compression artifacts and resolution.
 

jcroy

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FoxyMulder said:
Then its a blu ray player issue, when people see these differences it's the blu ray player and sometimes having "enhancements" turned on
I suspect for $50 bluray players, they might not put much effort into getting everything right. (ie. The original manufacturer doesn't give a damn).

For a high end Oppo, most likely they put a lot more effort into getting things right in their designs.
 

schan1269

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And it could also be people not realizing that the AVR or TV is settable independently on each input.

I had a customer the other day wondering why his Directv looked fantastic and his DVD, BD and XBox all looked terrible.

A few questions later I gleaned that he "tweaked" the Denon picture settings(after taking the display to "equal" on all settings) cause he liked them better.

He didn't realize that "Cable/Sat" settings didn't affect the rest of the inputs. Nope, on his AVR...they don't carry over.
 

jcroy

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schan1269 said:
Typically artificially boosted color is washed out with bleedover. If you have artificial enhancements...

Turn them off. If they can be.
$50 bluray players might not have such an option.
 

FoxyMulder

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If the future is streaming then we will only have to worry about making sure our televisions/projectors are calibrated and that the studio's don't muck up the colours, contrast, brightness and sharpness, if it's Disney animation then we are screwed.
 

earlytalkie

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If the future is streaming then we will only have to worry about making sure our televisions/projectors are calibrated and that the studio's don't muck up the colours, contrast, brightness and sharpness, if it's Disney animation then we are screwed.
The future absolutely is streaming. I just wathed Grease streamed on Vudu in HDX (their highest quality) and I defy anyone to tell the difference between Blu-Ray and ths download. This was their 99 cent rental of the day. No going to a rental store, no mechanics to adjust. In the future you are going to see more and more content streamed and less released on disc.
 

FoxyMulder

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earlytalkie said:
The future absolutely is streaming. I just wathed Grease streamed on Vudu in HDX (their highest quality) and I defy anyone to tell the difference between Blu-Ray and ths download. This was their 99 cent rental of the day. No going to a rental store, no mechanics to adjust. In the future you are going to see more and more content streamed and less released on disc.
Grease could look much better on blu ray, something wrong with that release, anyways i bet i could tell the difference between a film like oh i don't know, let me pick one with a heavier grain structure, let's say Dead and Buried and the streaming edition, i bet you i could tell the difference, streaming is okay, i have seen it, i still see some artifacts in backgrounds with even the best streaming and the image is also a little less detailed than the blu ray, if it's got a prominent grain structure the streaming edition doesn't really do it as much justice as the blu ray high bitrate can.

I am surprised though how good satellite HD is in the UK, some of the HD movies on Channel 4 look very good despite being around 10GB in size.
 

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earlytalkie said:
The future absolutely is streaming. I just wathed Grease streamed on Vudu in HDX (their highest quality) and I defy anyone to tell the difference between Blu-Ray and ths download. This was their 99 cent rental of the day. No going to a rental store, no mechanics to adjust. In the future you are going to see more and more content streamed and less released on disc.
Must be a pretty cruddy blu-ray.
 

earlytalkie

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The HDX as used by Vudu requires extremely fast internet. I had to perfom a test with Vudu to see if my internet could handle it. The picture is better than any other streaming I have seen. No artifacts, no inconsistant quality as on Netflix. I'm watching this on a 40-inch flat screen, and I tell you if you haven't seen this, you haven't seen how good streaming can be. And no, I haven't watched a Blu-Ray of Grease, "cruddy" or otherwise, but this streamed picture is superior to anything I've seen.
 

Rick Thompson

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earlytalkie said:
The HDX as used by Vudu requires extremely fast internet. I had to perfom a test with Vudu to see if my internet could handle it. The picture is better than any other streaming I have seen. No artifacts, no inconsistant quality as on Netflix. I'm watching this on a 40-inch flat screen, and I tell you if you haven't seen this, you haven't seen how good streaming can be. And no, I haven't watched a Blu-Ray of Grease, "cruddy" or otherwise, but this streamed picture is superior to anything I've seen.
Nice to know those with "extremely fast" internet and relatively small screens will be just fine in the brave new all-streamed world. Those of us in other areas and larger screens will have an experience akin to watching bad animation.
 

Jim Mcc

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Rick Thompson said:
Nice to know those with "extremely fast" internet and relatively small screens will be just fine in the brave new all-streamed world. Those of us in other areas and larger screens will have an experience akin to watching bad animation.
Not for me. Streaming Netflix HD in 1080p looks excellent, and that's on my 106" diagonal screen.
 

schan1269

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Jim Mcc said:
Not for me. Streaming Netflix HD in 1080p looks excellent, and that's on my 106" diagonal screen.
Let us reiterate that not all of us have unlimited high speed internet.

We* have 20g**, at most, of high speed in a combination of Wild Blue, Tmobile(from 2 phones and a dedicated Jet 2.0), Sprint(two phones with wifi sharing) and Verizon Wireless(5 device network card).

*That "we" is me, my gf, my cousin, her husband and my uncle.

**That 20g is what is left from 33g of high speed. 13g(at least) is chewed up by ADT, Itunes(ipods and ipads have constant link), papers for school(online classes).

20g at 720P(which is what I self-impose) gets us around 14 hours...a month...among 5 people.
 

earlytalkie

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This is not a discussion of what a person can or cannot afford. Or what is or is not available to them at this partcular time. I really don't care if someone shares internet service with 4 other people. It's a discussion of whether blu-ray discs are worth the extra money. I say no, since there are better formats coming out. I can't afford to buy a Tesla electric car, but I don't deny it is a much better car than a 2004 Kia I may be driving. I thought this was going to be a forum where you could talk intelligently about the lastet technologies, not listen to a bunch of whiners wanting to deny inevitable progress. As this will be my last post here, you needn't report me to the moderator. I have no intention of bursting your bubble again. I find it amusing that anyone here knows what I pay for my internet service!
 

schan1269

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Where, in my post, do you read it as a "cost problem"?

It is not a "cost problem" as I pay more for my internet than you do. I have the internet I do from having...

No other choice in the matter.

I do not have access to DSL.
I do not have access to cable(probably wouldn't go this route anyway).

If you are blind to the fact there is a huge section of this country where we can't get the internet to support 60+ hours a month of streaming...

Bye.
 

FoxyMulder

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earlytalkie said:
This is not a discussion of what a person can or cannot afford. I really don't care if someone shares internet service with 4 other people. It's a discussion of whether blu-ray discs are worth the extra money. I say no, since there are better formats coming out.
There are always better things on the horizon, the question is will they become mainstream and have your favourite films released.

We have 4K on the horizon, i look forward to it but i certainly won't be rushing into it straight away, for one i cannot currently afford the display, it needs to be large and preferably a projector but if it's a television then really i feel 80 inch minimum to take advantage of 4K, for two there will be some films which are not worth upgrading over the blu ray edition as some movies don't have that much resolution for various reasons and for three i feel you need at least 6K film scans, not 4K scans, to actually get all the detail, a 4K scan doesn't actually get you 4K of detail, you need to scan higher and like i said not all films are going to have the resolution anyways.

Discussions often veer off the subject matter, it's one of the fun things about the internet, they veer back on too, this forum is one of the better ones in allowing this to happen and is lightly moderated, i'd stick around if i was you, as i get older i am starting to understand there is no point in getting annoyed at the world or anyone in it, well maybe just a little annoyed with the Tories/Republicans and Papa Smurf. ( It's good to be blue )
 

jcroy

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My immediate deal breaker to go 4K, would be if a 4K restoration of the original Star Trek tv seasons and the first six movies is released. (Assuming prices of 4K screens and players have also tumbled to manageable prices).
 

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