Pointless releases for HD DVD/BD (1 Viewer)

[Vincent_P]

Actually he's slightly off, at least regarding some DV-shot movies. 28 DAYS LATER and CHUCK & BUCK, for example, where shot using PAL DV camcorders, so an HD version would look at least a bit better than an NTSC version, since the PAL original is 576-scanning lines vs. 480 for NTSC. The 16mm sections of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT should look better, too, provided they go back to the 16mm original for those sections and retransfer them to HD.

But overall, I get what you were saying re: movies shot on standard-def DV and the HD formats.

Vincent

 

[ChristopherDAC]

Actually, I'm going to assert that these productions especially should remain at their native resolution and framerate. While the resolution conversion might be slightly kinder to them (not a given, since the 1080 structure is a simple submultiple of 480, 9/4) framerate conversion from 25 to either 24 or 30 is not a comfortable process, and I would be very surprised if one was done and not the other.
If framerate conversion for display has to be done, let it be done in the player, and leave the video in native form on the disc so that a more flexible system can display it without conversion. That's the whole idea behind 24p for film, after all.

 

[Gekkou]

I believe you mean 'PAUSE NOT!'

Anyway, this is a bit of a tricky issue. When movies are shot in standard definition I would in all likelihood just stick with the DVD. It gets complicated though when you consider the possibility of high-resolution audio. Then there are times when a small amount of footage is actually shot on film (like in 28 Days Later), in which case you must decide if it is worth the trouble for just a few minutes of improved video.

I'll just decide on a title-to-title basis. If I feel it offers something extra that I'm willing to pay a premium for, maybe I'll bite. It's unlikely, though.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

I did take high resolution audio into consideration, but then I asked myself: do I really need to see the nude wrestling scene from Borat in lossless 7.1?

 

[TonyD]

i take back saying it is a pointless topic.

obvioulsy plenty to talk about on this.

 

[Gekkou]

Good point. I'd probably want the quality to be as low as possible for that one.

 

[Dave Moritz]

Mmmmmm let me see I can think of a few pointless HD-DVD titles.

1. Enron - The Smartest Guy In The Room
2. Bubble
3. Failure To Launch
4. The Night Of The Werewolf
5. Sister Street Fighter
6. Thats The Way Of The World
7. Vengeance Of The Zombies
8. Fireplace: Visions Of Tranquility 9. Brokeback Mountain
10. Scary Movie 4
11. Manilow Live
12. Nacho Libre
13. Army Of Darkness

 

[Vincent_P]

To David Moritz:

Uhm, why are those titles pointless?

Vincent

 

[Douglas Monce]

I would disagree on Army of Darkness. One of my favorite movies. However I hear the HD-DVD isn't great, so I haven't picked it up.

 

[Dave Moritz]

Hey Vincent,

They just seem to be the kind of titles you do not put out on HD-DVD when much stronger titles are being released on Blu-ray.


1. Enron - The Smartest Guy In The Room
2. Bubble
3. Failure To Launch
4. The Night Of The Werewolf
5. Sister Street Fighter
6. Thats The Way Of The World
7. Vengeance Of The Zombies
8. Fireplace: Visions Of Tranquility 9. Brokeback Mountain
10. Scary Movie 4
11. Manilow Live
12. Nacho Libre
13. Army Of Darkness

Especially since these seem to be HD-DVD only stongest titles for the next few months.

The Good Shephard (Universal)
The Game (Universal)
The Jerk (Universal)
Enternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Universal)
The Nutty Professor (Universal)

HD-DVD Titles - Titles like this competing against these Blu-ray titles.

Broken Arrow (Fox)
Chain Reaction (Fox)
Entrapment (Fox)
Ladder 49 (Buena Vista)
The Marine (Fox)
Phone Booth (Fox)
Planet of the Apes (Fox)
Reign of Fire (Buena Vista)
The Sentinel (Fox)
The Usual Suspects (MGM)
The Prestige (Buena Vista)
Vertical Limit (Sony)
Alexander: The Unrated Final Cut (Warner)
Bullitt (Warner)
The Getaway (Warner)
Casino Royale (Sony)
Dances with Wolves (MGM)
Hoosiers (MGM)
Ice Age (Fox)
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Fox)
Big Fish (Sony)
Chicken Little (Buena Vista)
Finding Neverland (Buena Vista)
The Pursuit of Happyness (Sony)
G.I. Jane (Buena Vista)
Hannibal (MGM)
King Arthur (DC) (Buena Vista)
Me, Myself & Irene (Fox)
The Silence of the Lambs (MGM)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (Buena Vista)
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Buena Vista)
Cars (Buena Vista)
Con Air (Buena Vista)
Crimson Tide (Buena Vista)
The Rock (Buena Vista)

 

[Vincent_P]

Well, ARMY OF DARKNESS has seen how many Anchor Bay releases? Obviously, there's a big market for that title. And I'm at a loss as to how CHAIN REACTION, G.I. JANE, KING ARTHUR, and several of the others you list are considered such great titles for Blu-ray that they trump ARMY OF DARKNESS, or ENRON- an acclaimed documentary- for that matter...

Or SCARY MOVIE 4 and NACHO LIBRE, both big box-office hits. That list of Universal titles you have? ALL strong titles, certainly stronger than CHAIN REACTION. As for the "B" titles like VENGEANCE OF THE ZOMBIES, not for nothing but I got into home theater in the first place so I could collect Japanese laserdiscs of some of my favorite Euro-cult films. You'd be surprised how many of us cult movie fans are early adopters who eat this stuff up. There's more to life than the movies produced by the big Hollywood studios, you know.

BTW, those Warner Blu-ray titles you mention? They're coming to HD-DVD, too.

Anyway, this whole debate is missing the point of this thread. The point was re: movies shot on standard-definition DV formats which won't have any real increase in image quality when converted to HD, not whether or not a title is "worthy" of the HD treatment from an artistic (or popular, or whatever) viewpoint.

Vincent

 

[Stephen_J_H]

I guess that's what happens when you don't read the thread before posting. :rolleyes

 

[Don Solosan]

"The point was re: movies shot on standard-definition DV formats which won't have any real increase in image quality when converted to HD,"

Yes, but they're still heavily compressed to fit on DVD. If nothing else, the HD versions won't be compressed and therefore should look better. No?

 

[Rolando]

Oooh! you might have a point. I had not thought of that one. I think this can be added to the list of reasons why even these titles might get improvements if released on HD or BD.

SO my opinion is, bring it on! since the factors that could improve PQ VS the existing DVD release are:

-new transfer
-remastering from better print
-HD audio
-upconversion to 1080 done by professionals with state of the art tools should look better that on the fly conversion of even the best player with the best SD material
-less compression
-better codec

any other points?

 

[ChristopherDAC]

It sounds like a good idea simply to dump the 25 Mbps DV stream to a disc which can deliver that bitrate, but you do run into the following problem : does the disc format support DV? If not, it has to be recompressed anyway, and no recompression (even at a higher bitrate) is transparent.

 

[Darren Gross]

I'm with Vincent on this one here. SISTER STREETFIGHTER or NIGHT OF THE WEREWOLF in HD are extremely enticing to me and other "B" movie fans.

There's a core-audience of early adopters that lean to the comparatively more obscure fare: Hollywood classics, Foreign, Horror and cult titles. The big glossy new releases help to penetrate the main-stream, Joe-Six-Pack buyers, but to cinephiles, those are not the priority titles that will help sell them the format...Look at the core of LD buyers, lfor example. Let's call them the 'Criterion/Japanese Import crowd'...

Why anyone would consider BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (which was a 35mm production, a smash hit, and probably an enormous dollar-generator for DVD) as 'unworthy' is a real head-scratcher.

 

[Rolando]

you are absolutely correct, however it can theoretically achieve BETTER compression and/or more transparent recompression that can ever be achieved on SD-DVD. right?

 

[ChristopherDAC]

In principle, yes. In practice, we always need to discover whether the gain is sufficient to justify the trouble. In this type of case, I would say that these releases would make more sense when the HD format has become the "default" format.
You can take one of two strategies. Either you can convert the DV stream into a MPEG-2 stream of roughly the same bitrate, taking advantage of the similarity between the two codecs to do as little re-encoding as possible, or you can convert the video wholesale to another codec, such as MPEG-4 AVC, which generates totally different artefacts. A comparison between the two strategies might be interesting.

 

[Scott Calvert]

Wow. Lots of people jumping all over the OP. This is the Home Theater Forum...I thought people here were more mature, polite, & knowledgeable than that. Stephen_J_H even repeated his intent several times. It's obvious what he is talking about.

Movies and TV shows shot on 480 interlaced video will have negligible to no benefit on HD as far a pic quality is concerned. That's basically it.

 

[TonyD]

well i stl say no release will be pointless.

i think the title of the topic was a poor choice.
how about
releases that won't look as good in hd dvd/br
or
something else.