A Few Words About A few words about... Apollo 13 -- In High Definition (1 Viewer)

[Rachael B]

Ed, I have to take back what I said last night. I think I might have watched Apollo 13 in 720p accidentally. I told you the player is bugy. It's so slow to respond to commands. The player was in 720p when I turned it on last night. You hit a command and it's so-ooooo slow to respond to many things. Goodfellas looked great in 1080i and I now think the fleshtones mweet or exceed D-Theater. I looked briefly at some Apollo 13 chapters after the feature presentation. It looked better, I thought. Now, I'm more mressed with it. There's no on-screen display for the video output, just tiny stuff in the player's display. So, I noticed that the player had landed on 720p when loading up Goodfellas last night....

 

[Jack Briggs]

Mr. Harris, your comments are authoritative and I am happy. Though disturbed by the impending format war, I know that either of these technologies will deliver with a vengeance. What's a fanatic to do? Wait for a combo player or simply purchase both an HD DVD and a Blu-ray Disc player? But, as you said, we're in for the ride of our lives.

 

[Robert Harris]

Regardless of who wins the HD war, if either format...

Those who control the two formats have far-reaching pockets, which means that this will probably not come to any clear solution in the foreseeable future.

I'll be setting up for both formats, neither one of which seems to have any great superiority to the other at the consumer level. They're simply two competing formats.

 

[Steve Schaffer]

I would suspect that after an initial period of studio exclusivity with one format or the other we will eventually see virtually all releases on both formats, just as we did with VHS and Beta for something like 8 years. Initially the HD-DVD format is going to carry half the admission price of BluRay which, if it results in a significantly larger installed player base, will force the BD-exclusive studios other than Sony to start releasing on HD-DVD as well as BD.

If the PS3 debuts at $500 or less, I'll buy one and then have access to BD-exclusive titles, but I'm not willing to pay 1k for a BD player.

 

[Dave H]

I will stick with HD DVD and my Toshiba player until next year - at which point I'll only consider a Blu-ray player if studio support remains unchanged and remains as it is today (which I doubt).

 

[Stan Rozenfeld]

I love high def on dvd. Mr. Harris' comments make me even more enthusiastic, but also remind me that this format war will probably not be resolved so quickly.

Right now I am a happy owner of Toshiba hd a1, and would love to find a reason to justify buying first generation blu-ray players. Unfortunately I can't justify $1000 risk at this point. I'd be happy to see a nice price drop on one of the blu-ray players. I am sure that many studios will eventually release in both formats, but I don't think Sony will ever release in hd dvd. And their library is too good to ignore. I mean, what's a movie fan to do when they start releasing Lawrence of Arabia, Bridge on the River Kwai and other classics on blu-ray!

Anyway, I can't wait to receive my copy of Apollo 13 from Amazon!

Mr. Harris, please keep those high def dvd reviews coming!

Stan

 

[TonyD]

picked up an xa1 last night and have apollo 13 in now.
sampling bits and pieces.
wow is the first word to come.

i guess dts is the default audio?

i have it connected with toslink(fiber optic) and denon set to auto and the sound is all dts.

this is thrilling.
i must say just like the beginning for sd dvd for me.

 

[Steve Tannehill]

Tony, when you connect via toslink, the Toshiba decodes the DD+ stream into separate PCM streams, then re-encodes them to full-bitrate DTS (as opposed to "lossy" Dolby Digital). If you connect via the 5.1 discrete outputs, there is no additional encoding step.

- Steve

 

[TonyD]

so should i use the 5.1 seperate outs or is the toslink better?

i'm guessing that since you added the no additional encoding, the 5.1 deps would be better.

 

[Steve Tannehill]

If you've got the 5.1 discrete inputs on your receiver, I would use them for HD-DVD, unless the disc offers plain old Dolby Digital as a core sound stream. I would use toslink for regular DVD (there is a difference in sound quality).

I'm not too keen on the re-encoding step for DD+, although I appreciate the use of the encoder which is less lossy. One day we will all have receivers capable of handling DD+ in its native form.

- Steve

 

[TonyD]

thanks for that info steve.
using the 5.1 ext in i can hear a difference on hd and sd dvd.
the differnce i hear on sd is a fuller more enveloping sound.
i feel/hear the environment of the movie better.

i've been testing this with A New World.
there is so much going on with this movie for sound that the 5.1 ext in are just fabulous.
while it seems louder, i dont think it is just the volume that is improved the overal sound is better.
about 8 min in there sound of birds and animals as john smith walks in the trees is startling.
close your eyes and you are in the forest.

about 14 minutes into New World there is a LF sub sound effect that is near thunderous (svs) in ext in, just ordinary switching to DD(tos).

 

[Walter Kittel]

Finally watched this title last night; first time on HD-DVD. Just spectacular. I was astounded at the level of detail. ( I guess I sound like a broken record, but sheesh it looked incredible. )

The white (uniform) and blue (life preserver) colors, when Lovell (Hanks) was in the water after splashdown were heartbreakingly pure. I couldn't believe how vivid that sequence looked. Space has never looked better on my system ( the shots of the moon from inside Odyssey/Aquarius were to die for.)

- Walter.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Siiiiggggghhhhhh......

 

[Michel_Hafner]

I sampled about 15 minutes of Apollo on a Ruby. Based on that I would say the quality is sometimes unsatisfying and quite uneven. Some shots look good, others are fuzzy. Most look noisy. Some show signs of digital grain reduction with the usual artifacts. There is no doubt in my mind that this film can look better when they rescan the original negative, don't use any filtering and compress with a high bit rate. The transfer looks somewhat dated, not state of the art. "Training Day" and "Riddick" on the other hand: NICE!

 

[Member 323668]

Objection!

"Apollo 13" was shot on somewhat "grainy" 90's Super 35 film stock with the special-effects-shots filmed in VistaVision. This explains the different "look" of many scenes as concerns film grain and sharpness.

The HD-DVD of "Apollo 13" is an absolutely stunning transfer, exactly preserving the "look and feel" of it's theatrical presentation. The visible artifact-free grain structure of the Super 35 film emulsion really is beautiful. As Robert said: It is a revelation.

"Training Day", "Swordfish" and "Riddick" are totally different things. Different film stocks and that "processed", styled look created in post-production. (also represented perfectly in the HD-DVD releases)

 

[Robert Crawford]

I'm in agreement, I've watched the HD DVD of Apollo 13 the other day and thought it was outstanding. Today, I was sampling it for a good hour or so and still thought it was fantastic.




Crawdaddy

 

[CaptDS9E]

I think people need to realize, now more then ever with HD, that not all movies are filmed the same way. Some are made to have grain, no grain, be darker, be brighter, have a certain tint, etc...

 

[Michel_Hafner]

Objection as well. I know how grainy film looks when it's free of digital artifacts. Apollo 13 HD master is NOT free of digital artifacts. They did use digital grain reduction and it shows! Early in the film in a scene with Hanks and wife she has a blouse with stripes. The texture is MESSED up by the filtering! This transfer is overall not stunning. Some shots look very good, yes, others so so and yet others are simply badly done on the 15 minutes I checked. I believe the disc looks like the master and the encoding is very good. The master has issues though.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Then we're going to have to agree to disagree because I think this HD DVD was stunning.

Without a doubt, the same disagreements that many of us had about the quality of some dvd presentations are going to carry over to the HD formats, but probably moreso due to the limitations of SD DVD.





Crawdaddy

 

[John Lloyd]

I agree the picture quality is excellent when I watch the movie on my HD-A2. However, I really wonder about the audio. I pulled out my DTS "Demo #2" disc and it was definitely 10db louder during the launch sequence. Is the audio on "Demo #2" cooked? It certainly shakes my room a lot more than the HD-DVD.