SD vs HD, a link to a great site with picture comparisons. (1 Viewer)

[DaViD Boulet]

Hey Andrew,

a screen ripped from a DVD has a native resolution of 720 x 480 pixels. Saving this as a well-compressed JPG or even bit-map will produce virtually no visible loss and doesn't choke anyone's dial-up connection.

Regarding "resolving power"...we're talkinga bout *detail*...not color accuracy or contrast etc. Just curious...what type of display do you have and how many screen-widths away do you sit?

if a set can't resolve the fine resolution/detail of *better* DVDs or the viewer is sitting too far away for those details to be distinguished between the two images...then to the viewer the sub-par DVD and the outstanding DVD look "the same". If they've come to regard that as a great picture...then both get called "great".

We see that all the time. People with smaller sets or who sit farther away or with displays that can't resolve the finest detail of the DVD often praise titles as being "sharp" and detailed and crisp. Think of Cold Mountain! Then on a projector suddenly the "great" DVD looks like utter crap...and another DVD that looked "the same" on the small set suddenly looks near-HD because the fine details allow it to edge ahead in perceived quality.

If you remember, Ron also thought that the Beauty and the Beast DVD (disney) looked perfect too...because his set was masking the MPEG noise that other HTF members saw who had better displays.

I remember when that Cold Mountain fiasco happened Bill Hunt praised the image quality of that and the English Patient as being "sharp" and "detailed" blah blah blah because that's how they looked on his HDTV (probably from 2 screen widths or more away). I was the ONLY reviewer who called the shots like they really were...and bagged both image presentations for the blurry, noisey, digitally-filtered mess that they both were. Then about a month later Bill Hunt got a front-projector. Suddenly Bill saw the SAME problems I had seen with both Cold Mountain and English Patient.

Same is true here. displays without resolving power make bad DVDs look "great" in the sense that they reduce the visible improvements with better DVDs making them look "the same" and people usually watch these types of sets from greater than 2 screen-widths where even laserdisc would look "sharp".

Blow those DVDs up to 8 feet wide and watch them from 1.5 screen widths and suddenly the same "great looking" dvds look inferior and the better discs look *even better* because their added layer of resolution is able to shine through.

 

[JediFonger]

actually, *ALL* SD DVDs look like crap when projected. you can see the limitations of SD DVDs. ya just gotta literally IGNORE the problem and enjoy the movie for its story not picture quality. HD content looks awesome when projected.

 

[Andrew Bunk]

Dave,

I have a 57" Toshiba RPTV 16:9 (model 57H83), and my eye level is about 8.5 ft. away. I believe the screen length is somewhere around 50", so I would say about 2 screen lengths but not much more. Also I use a Pioneer DV-563A player.

I remember the English Patient/Cold Mountain discussion. I've never screened Cold Mountain, but I watched English Patient and I can definitely see the problems with that transfer you originally mentioned.

I don't doubt that FOTR would lose a lot being blown up to 8 ft. And again, I'm not saying the transfer is perfect. TTT and ROTK have noticeably better transfers.

I have HD cable and have the set calibrated for that signal type as well. I know Disc-based HD will look better than my HD cable, but at least I have a point of personal reference for HD. As such, some content I watch in HD is hands down way better than anything on DVD, but I've seen some SD transfers on DVD that on my set look to me to be almost as detailed as the HD cable broadcasts, and I made sure the broadcast was in fact HD.

I have a feeling FOTR:EE gets criticized more now because it was so heavily praised at the beginning. It is not a "bad" transfer. It just may not be as good as it is reviewed or as good as it *should* be. I've seen plenty of DVD's that I thought looked bad or lacking or detail, but FOTR:EE never made me think this.

And Dave Mack, I can't deal with PAL speed up or I'd happily check out the R2. But I'm a musician and very sensitive to pitch, and PAL speed up takes me right out of what I'm watching.

 

[Sean Bryan]

Wow. I think there may be one or two folks who would disagree with that proclamation.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Absolutely not. While a 1080P feed of Toy Story would be mind-blowing, the current 480P DVD scaled to 720P looks *stunning*.

As does the Fifth Element Super-bit.

As does Training day.

As does Singing in the Rain.

Yes, all of these titles would look even better in native HD. But they certainly don't look like "crap" even when upscaled from DVD source material!

In fact, the upscaled DVD looks better than many typical 35mm projected prints I've seen at the cinema!

 

[Brent M]

YiFeng, your statment is absolutely ludicrous.

 

[Mark Lucas]

David gave a pretty good explanation a few posts above. Mediocre displays will tend to make all images look similar as small details like EE and bad mosquito noise won't be perceptical. It will simply be smoothed over into a soft visual mess that will apear to be good because there's nothing to compare it to.

Anyway, I agree with YiFeng. After you've seen real hidef even the best SD dvds looks like junk. I have a hard time watching my old dvds from less than 2 or 3 screen heights away. There just isn't enough depth and definition to sit closer.

 

[Andrew Bunk]

Mark,

I'm a little offended you think I don't know what EE and mosquito noise look like, or that I view a "soft visual mess". I've had my RPTV for almost 3 years, and I've gotten quite used to what looks good and what doesn't. Almost all of the titles infamous for EE (Gangs Of New York, Phantom Menace, Engilsh Patient, etc.) I coudl see it immediately. I also do very regular 56-point service level convergence on my set.

I may not have a top of the line projector or RPTV (do you?), but trust me, my Toshiba is tweaked to near perfection. Eliab Alvarez is well known through the calibration circles, and he has received much acclaim. I don't think he's capable of calibrating a display into a mess.

We'll have to agree to disagree.

 

[Mark Lucas]

Andrew, I wasn't really thinking about your setup. I had in mind the setup that Ron did his reviews on. I imagined one of those old 27" Sonys for some reason.

Can your setup do 720p or 1080p?

 

[Andrew Bunk]

I know it can't do 1080p, but I'm pretty sure it can do 720p, but I'd have to check the manual to make sure. It's a 2003 model, and I'm not sure how common 720p was for the mid-level Toshiba line that year.

 

[Brent M]

Saying SD DVD is "junk" or "crap" really makes me laugh. Most people were still watching VHS tapes until a couple of years ago, but now certain elitists act like anything less than HD is totally beneath them. Give me a break! Sure HD is better, but that hardly makes DVD a bottom dweller technology. I could start listing off DVDs with top notch PQ that look absolutely stunning on my setup, but it would take too long and it's not worth wasting my time.

 

[Dave Mack]

Andrew, The LOTR PAL discs are pitch corrected.
I notice the PAL speedup too but for these discs it's not an issue! But to really see a difference you would need a player like the oppo that outputs native PAL without converting to NTSC.

Btw, what do U play? I sing and play guitar.

D

 

[Adam Barratt]

I have taken my own screen captures of FOTR, and they seem to roughly concur with the screen captures of the linked site.

These captures are of the same scenes as the first two image captures of the linked site:

Capture 1 New
Capture 1 Original
Capture 2 New
Capture 2 Original

These images were generated by:

1. Capturing with VLC as JPEG
2. Opening in Photoshop
3. Scaling horizontally to 853 pixel width
4. Altering document resolution to 162.1 pixels/inch, scaling to 1920x1080
5. Saving as JPEG at 95%

Adam

 

[Andrew Bunk]

Dave,

Does that mean the PAL disc isn't shorter? I've seen where PAL films wind up being minutes shorter because of the speed up.

BTW, I'm a primarily a bass player. Ever since the Simpsons did their Rock-n-Roll Fantasy Camp episode, my friends and fiancee never miss an opportunity to remind of the scene where nobody wants to play bass.

 

[JediFonger]

the people who are saying DVD isn't crap. do you have a front projector? do you spend hours in front of it?

on smaller displays (under 60") it's very difficult to spot the difference between SD&HD. therefore if you're content with SD&HD, it's OK.

once you start amassing a size larger than 100", you can see a big diff between SD&HD. i have 5th element (ultimated ed DVD) SD and in 720p HD. T2 EE, and so forth and so on.

the HD looks so much sharper than SD. here's an easy test: look at the FOTR pix posted by Adam above. zoom in around Gandalf's hat or plants in the foreground before the river. you can see a fuzzy hate around the pointy hat contrasted against the green hills or the plant's fuzzy nature contrasted against the river. that's the technical limitations of SD. but if you take the same scene in HD and you zoomed in, you'll notice that problem doesn't exist and the plant will be SHARP contrasted against the river and Gandalf's hat will have maintained increased detail contrasted against the green hills int he background. in fact, you can probably see the individual blades of grass in the background and the specific folds and creases in G's hat.

when i get home tonight, i'll fire up the FP and post some digital pictures showing the diff.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Adam,



Thanks for taking the time and effort. So...the "new" is the one you just ripped and the "original" is the one up on the site everyone was wondering about?

Great job. It does seem that in terms of visible "detail" the new/original are very similar. The color differences are less of an issue...that has to do with MPEG decoders or settings on the PC...but the detail is the key issue here.

 

[Vader]

YiFeng,

Nobody here is debating the obvious fact that as screens get larger, the limitations of any medium will become increasingly apparent. That has to do with the display and not the medium itself. That is completely different than the blanket statement "DVD sucks". I know a bunch of other AV enthusiasts that said the same thing when SD-DVD came out in 1997 with respect to VHS, and will say the exact same thing when the next format emerges (T.A.D.D. = Technological Attention Deficit Disorder). I have a "puny" 65" display, and SD-DVD can look great; a FP scaled to 65" would look approximately the same, incidentally, assuming that both were properly calibrated (so why does it make a difference whether we have a FP? - it's only a question of screen size, which nobody is debating). There is no doubt that HD will blow it away, but that does not take anything away from SD-DVD; I have the capacity to enjoy both. If $$$ were no object, would I replace all my SD-DVDs with their HD counterparts? Of course. Does that mean that once I see HD on my "puny" 65" display I am suddenly incapable of appreciating SD? Or that my "puny" 65" display is somehow inadequate to give an excellent picture? These strike me as elitist claims, as well as being complete nonsense. You don't need a 100" screen to appreciate the immense improvement HD offers. But some of us have the capacity to continue to appreciate current technology when something new comes along. I know you were right there along side me (and everyone else here) when DVD first emerged, singing the exact same praises of the "incredible" leap of DVD PQ from VHS (if you weren't, you would not be here right now, or you are less than 9 years old ). When screen sizes reach the point where HD also "is crap" (your words), are you going to change your mantra to meet the times? Can I quote your position now for future prosperity?

 

[DaViD Boulet]

I would actually disagree...I think that the ONLY way to judge the DVD "medium" is to judge it projected wide-angle. Why? IMO, a medium that is trying to "repclicate film" needs to be able to produce a satisfying film-like image when viewed at approximately 1.6-1.7 screen widths distance as that's the kind of ratio required to produce a realistic film-experience. I personally feel that DVDs reviewed from 2 screen widths (or greater) are not properly evaluating the capabilities of the format...just like I wouldn't consider a CD being reviewed for "sound quality" to be properly judged on a portable boom-box.

That's not trying to put-down anyone's HDTV display. It's just a fact about the viewing angle required to replicate a "movie" experience versus a "TV" experience.

That being said, the DVD format will show its limitations at a 1.6 screen-width. However, I'm also saying that inspite of those limitations the DVD medium is *capable* of producing a satisfyingly film-like image at the same time (hence, not "crap"). Very often, the DVD actually looks as-good or better than the typical mass-produced film print projected at the local cinema (which fall well below the capabilities of proper 35mm quality)!

A native 1080P image viewed from the same distance/width ratio will produce an oustandingly-convincing film-like facsimilie...one that does not include the artifacts of the DVD medium.

 

[Vader]

Thank you, David. As always, you say what I mean to, only better. For the record, I do watch at approx 2 screen lengths (about 10'), which still gives me the "theatrical experience" (to me, it's not so much about screen size, nor am I evaluating the medium - wereas you, as a reviewer, are). I have found that the optimal seating position in a theatre for me is about 2/3 the way back, in the center. That gives the same perceived screen size (proportionally speaking), which I find to be most comfortable.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Derek,

it's actually a bit subjective to carve in stone the exact "viewing distance/screen-width ratio" at which the "movie experience" is born.

For you personally, it may very well be 2-screen widths which, as you point out, is the same distance-ratio you prefer at the cinema.

For reviewing-sake, I tend to fall back closer to that "30 degree viewing angle" as most research points to it as the turning-point for human peripheral vision stimulation to give that "movie" feeling. That's more like sitting in the front 1/3-1/2 of a typical theater.

For folks who like to sit in the back-row...not doubt about it...visually they are replicating a "TV" viewing angle when they go to the movies! (Of course, they get to enjoy the rest of the movie-magic like the group experience of the crowd).