First BD titles under scrutiny: The Fifth Element and others (1 Viewer)

[RobertR]

You seem to be assuming that showing proof that BD “works” is all that HT enthusiasts ever wanted or expected. Surely you must realize that just showing it “works” wasn’t enough. You have to show that you’re BETTER than your competitor, and that you CARE about quality. Your post implies that such a demand on the part of consumers is somehow being unfair or unreasonable (“poor Sony can’t win”). You know it isn’t, and Sony knows it too. The sad part is that even knowing that, they didn’t give a damn.

There’s a difference between a priori dislike of Sony, and dislike for them because of their actions.

 

[Edwin-S]

The following is speculation.It is not intended to make excuses for SONY's decision to release sub-optimal software. SONY decided to release poor encodings and they are, rightfully, being slammed for it: especially when it is taken into consideration that SONY has been stating all along that their marketing strategy (and price point) is aimed at the HT enthusiast.

The difference between the *other* studios and SONY is that the other studios have to focus on only one thing: producing software. SONY is doing both software and hardware. Right now SONY is embroiled on the hardware side of things. The format is based on a brand new technology and all of the headaches that a brand new technology entails. SONY is focused on getting the hardware working, so software is being relegated to second tier status. After all, if the hardware doesn't work properly then who cares how good the software looks. SONY can always go back and redo a bad transfer, but incompatiblities and bugs in their hardware would be disastrous, so the main thrust of their efforts is getting the hardware right.

The other possibility for the bad transfers is that the software side of things is second man on the totem pole at SONY. The possibility enters my mind, considering the spotty record SONY has when it comes to DVD releases. SONY strikes me as primarily a hardware company which possibly means that the top echelon of management is overweight with hardware guys. In any discussion on the allocation of resources the software people lose because the hardware people control the levers of power.

 

[Larry Sutliff]

Ok, I looked at about thirty minutes of THE FIFTH ELEMENT on BD, and I'm going to give my honest opinion(flame suit on): it doesn't look that bad. In fact, a lot of the time, it looks pretty darn nice. The color is superb, and there is a lot of depth in the space scenes.
Where Sony seems to have screwed the pooch here is with print damage and dirt, which stands out like a sore thumb during the opening desert sequences. But, after reading about all of the problems, I was expecting complete trash, and was pleasantly surprised to see a decent image that looked better than most high def I've seen, with the exception of the best of HD DVD.

Maybe it's just me. Maybe someone slipped a mickey in my Poland Spring water. But I don't think that this BD deserves all the scorn it has received. So far, the worst looking BD I've seen is XXX. But T5E, while not the best, is certainly satisfactory. To me, anyway.

 

[Lew Crippen]

This too is speculation as I don’t really know how Sony is structured, but I’d think it reasonable to assume that the resources for that Blu-Ray hardware platform are entirely separate from those that turn movies into BD releases.

And further a different group altogether is responsible for the authoring software.

 

[Ed St. Clair]

Well, now at least you admit BD software is "Not Ready For Prime Time"!!!

 

[RobertR]

Sony has shown in the past that they can put out high quality titles (the very reason that 5E got so much attention in the first place is that it was always considered a SHOWCASE DVD title), so I have a hard time chalking up their problems to "they just don't have the authoring people on hand".

 

[Edwin-S]

Now who is making an assumption? There are a lot of factors both political and economic that influenced their decision to go ahead with these releases. "Not giving a damn" is probably number 1000 on that list.

There’s a difference between a priori dislike of Sony, and dislike for them because of their actions.[/quote]

 

[RobertR]

Yes, they should. Let’s see if they do it. That will be a good indicator of whether they do indeed give a damn.

 

[Brian-W]

I'm still waiting to see/here/read about someone who's compared Fifth Element HBO (D-VHS recording, etc.) to the Blu-Ray version. I'm having a hard time believing that the version on disc is worse than the HBO version which looked fabulous.

I'd compare, but after my last round of hardware (Immersive) and everything before it, I'm officially done being a consumer beta tester, and am sitting round one of HD/Blu-Ray out.

For now, dumping all my D-VHS to a network drive to stream to PC devices in multiple rooms. That'll give me HD, save me a few bucks too.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Larry,

what type of display do you have?



Brian,

Over at AVS someone may be about to do just that. Turns out that HBO did their *own* film-to-HD transfer of TFE a few years back and so it's a totally different transfer and HD encode versus what Sony used... so there could be real reasons why the two might end up looking very different from each other.

It will be pretty ironic if it turns out that HBO's version looks better than Sony's!

 

[RobertR]

David and Brian, someone did the HBO/Blu-ray comparison. Here are his comments:

"You want to know how bad "The Fifth Element" on BluRay is? My 10GB version from HBO-HD burned onto two regular DVDs and played in the HD-A1 beat it. The BluRay version didn't just have a fair number of artifacts, it also had quite a bit of missing detail and was just soft. We didn't try the SuperBit DVD version, but I really don't know if it would even lose to that BluRay transfer at this point. We looked at most of the BluRay titles on a Ruby. Some others were much better. "The Terminator" looked pretty good (especially for an older film) and between "Underworld: Evolution" on BluRay and "Van Helsing" on HD DVD (a middling title from their releases IMO) I couldn't have really told you which looked better, but somebody else felt that "Van Helsing" looked better. The saddest thing for BluRay might have been pretty much all of their titles were blown away by the image quality of a movie from 1974 on HD DVD, "Blazing Saddles". It looked so much better than any of the BluRay movies that I think that even a lot of non-picky people would have seen it."

 

[DaViD Boulet]

RR,

can you post a link?

thanks for the info!

 

[Larry Sutliff]

David,
My display is a Panny 1080i 47" CRT. I was wondering if CRT may be masking the problems with these discs, as most of the bad reviews seem to be on digital displays. I'm perplexed myself, as I expected to think the transfer was horrid. Don't get me wrong, it's not up to really good HD DVD, but it's certainly on a par with the titles on that format that are just average.

 

[Adam Tyner]

DaViD:

A less-detailed post from Stacey Spears

The post in question by darinp2

 

[Brian-W]

Thanks Robert. Nice to see that...10GB? Must have the newer broadcast...mine is higher, and has nulls stripped out (I think my version is 14GB, but need to double check).

Anyway, I'm in no rush to upgrade, so no worries.

I'm still laughing at the "HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray" fights - they use the same codecs, just the disc structure/laser is different, and equates to storage capacity, not better/worse encoding. I'm sure Warner wouldn't do it, but it'd be fun to have a title on HD-DVD in VC1 and an equivalent on Blu-Ray. Right now, there are no cross over titles, so I take these format complaints/debates with a grain of salt.

I am dying to see Blazing Saddles though, but can't bring myself to buy a Toshiba player.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Larry,

thanks for sharing. I haven't seen the full-length 5E yet in person but I will this weekend!

 

[Ed St. Clair]

You'll turn "BLU", waiting for Sony to exchange these titles for free, with properly mastered versions! ;-)

 

[Edwin-S]

If they have that attitude then they have shot themselves in the foot. If I owned these movies and SONY didn't want to own up then I would never purchase another SONY authored film until I knew for sure that it wasn't sub-standard.

For the record, I stopped buying SONY products in the late 1980's when two identical car audio decks, that I had purchased, broke down within weeks of each other. The service at SONY's service center in Richmond, BC absolutely reeked. I wonder if they have actually improved in the last 20 years?

The SONY thing brings back a memory about TOSHIBA'S service. I mentioned in another thread that "Toshiba sucked". I have to take that back. When my Tosh DVD player broke down, they fixed it and updated the firmware for free, even though it was off warranty. Their service was markedly better than SONY. It is unlikely that I will buy a SONY Blu-ray player. I'll be wary of buying their movies too, if turns out that they do not want to make good when they screw up.

In the meantime, I will not hold my breath as I do not want to turn "BLU" in the face.

 

[Paul.S]

Yeah, I was pumped when Sony refunded my money for the stereo only, single layer Titanic SACD when they released a multichannel hybrid. Same thing when an SE of A Few Good Men came out.

But at least we have the precedent of then-Columbia Tristar later re-releasing many of their early no supps DVDs--even The Craft--as SEs after execs admitted they were embarrassed by their early 'blue blocker' menu design.

But then more recently the re-release-with-only-pan-and-scan dementia set in . . .

 

[Ed St. Clair]

That's the funniest question I've heard this year, here at HTF.
Thanks for the laugh!!!