BD demo at Tyson's Corner in DC (1 Viewer)

[DaViD Boulet]

Sorry!

The BD player was just a prototype... it couldn't even play DVDs. It seemed to play pretty well though... the sales guy was able to skip and fast forward etc. without any problem. Once during the demo for no explainable reason the player locked up and needed to be turned on/off.

But again... just a prototype so nothing to really dig into as far as a reflection on what the final player performance will be like.

 

[Mark Zimmer]

Which "old" transfer do you mean? The old old one does indeed suck big time, but the now old Superbit one is pretty good---even Robert Harris liked it, as I recall. Though it does have the usual Sony Edge Enhancement-o-rama, it's better than the original version. I'm still hoping that ringing is something from the SD DVD compression process and that the HD master is indeed as beautiful as DaViD is saying.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Mark,

both the original and the SB DVD utilized the same film-to-digital *transfer*. The newer DVD had merely been digitally color-timed to be more representative of the intended look of the film and better compressed (but the mild EE was unavoidable as it was locked into the transfer iteself).

It looked to my eyes, at least, like the demo clip on this BD was sourced from a new film-to-digital transfer all togehter, though I could be wrong having never seen the film in true HD before.

 

[Vincent_P]

Ed:

I believe the quote by me that you've taken out of context from another thread was in regards to somebody complaining about visible film grain on some HD transfer, or something along those lines. I stand by my statement with regards to visible film grain when it's a part of the original movie, and fully expect that HD transfers of movies shot on 65mm film and the like will indeed resemble "looking out a window" on reality.

Vincent

 

[Robert Harris]

There is no "new" Lawrence transfer.

The transfer is, and has been, fine.

RAH

 

[Michel_Hafner]

All LOA versions I have seen so far including HD are not fine in my books. Artifacty electronic look ( EE, too soft, electronic noise issues). No comparison to new transfers.
Remains to be seen if the Blue Ray can improve on this. If it looks as expected lots of videophiles will complain. It simply will not measure up to expectations.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

This LOA HD clip was simply stunning.

Though it was an indoor scene and if I remember most of the "ringing" in the transfer was along horizons in outside shots.

But if the interior shot looked *this* good on the BD demo clip... I can't wait to see how the BD of the film turns out!

 

[TedD]

I will withhold my final opinion until I actually see the transfer, but it is worth noting that all (Including Supebits) Columbia transfers wider than 1.85:1 appear to carry a wierd non-symmetrical EE with the vast majority of it being visable only on horizontal edges.

If I were a betting man (I'm not), I would side with Michael on this one.

Ted

 

[Robert Harris]

Michel,

The transfer is fine. It is what occurs After the transfer that has created problems.

RAH

 

[MatthewA]

It's sort of a shame that Lawrence isn't on the list of the first wave of BD titles.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

RAH,

I thought it was confirmed (by you?) way back when that the mild "ringing" we see in the SB DVD was inherent in the transfer and could not be removed barring another film-to-digital conversion?

 

[Michel_Hafner]

Well, I hope so. What I saw on a high bit rate MPEG2 HD tape from Japan was not mainly compression related, though. First it was soft compared to newer transfers (could be filtered before MPEG encoding so not conclusive), second it had the usual Sony high frequency boosting (could have been made worse before/by MPEG encoder so not conclusive), finally there was electronic noise and a weird look of textures in motion. The last point looks very much transfer related to me and not an add on artifact later on. We'll know for sure in the next 12 months, I hope.

 

[Dan Hitchman]

Thank God Lawrence is not in the first wave of Blu-Ray releases. 50 GB discs aren't ready to go, and the HD transfer, at present, is not that good.

Sony desperately needs to get back with Robert A Harris (who's this Harnes fellow?? ) and do a proper 4k scan of the newest 65/70mm negative restoration with Mr. Harris supervising. He did say he had pieces of original stock that still maintain the correct color timing. Also, something about the original 65mm trailer? And Blu-Ray allows for 8 channels of 24/96 resolution audio... what a perfect way to get the original soundtrack back to its full directionalized form (and enhanced stereo surround to boot)! Ahh, Lawrence of Arabia in high resolution lossless audio!

I'd also like Sony to finally pony up to get that last complete sequence still not included in the film finished with the right impersonators to shore up the missing dialog stems! If it has Peter O'Toole or Omar Sharif in that scene, they better do it while they're still alive!!!

Dan

 

[Robert Harris]

Mr. O'Toole looped his dialogue in 1988. Perfect.

RAH

 

[RobertR]

I just read that the demo apparently fills up almost an entire disc, and is less than 30 minutes long. That tells me they could afford to have 3 or 4 times the bit rate they would be able to devote to a full length movie.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

RobertR,

where did you "just read" that the demo disc fills the entire 25 gig disc? No sony salesman knew anything about how full the disc was or the bit-rate and to my knowledge no one has a BD drive to read the disc to verify the storage used. I have yet to hear anything but conjecture about the space used on the recordable BD disc anywhere (here or at AVS). Even the salesman could only offer conjecture.

Besides,

The first-release HD DVDs use the *full* 30 gig (or close to it) space available too. Does that mean that they *need* to in order to acheive high PQ? No... it means that since the space was there, the video engineers just opened up the VC1 bit-rate to use all they had to make their job even easier. Why not.

For all we know, the BD demo could be using CBR (contsant bit rate) pegged at 34 or something. Or if it's VBR it might still be pushed higher than necessary just to ease the mastering chore... just like HD DVD titles. BTW, even "pegged" at the max, you're not looking at 3-4 times the bit rate for full-length movies: rather, what you're looking at is a higher *average* rate since movies will be encoded VBR which will vary greatly during disc play given on-screen content (but both full-length movies and the demo clip will have the same max bit-rate...the demo clip possibly using it more often... but we still don't know even that!).

 

[RobertR]

But similar logic applies to the Sony demo disc. Why wouldn't they take advantage of the 3 to 4 times higher space-to-material ratio, VBR or no VBR? All I'm saying is let's see what they come up with when no such luxury is available to them. We know HDDVD delivers on actual production discs and players. Now it's BD's turn to show it.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Oh, I agree (I said that too).


I would agree. But since we haven't had any clear indication of how much space was actually used, any comments are mere conjecture regarding the demo-disc in question (versus HD DVD titles which folks at AVS have actually checked file-size to confirm).

Naturally, no demo disc is a clear indicator of final quality of full-length titles. And that goes for demos that look great *and* look bad (look how bad the HD DVD demos looked and how good the actual production titles looked by comparison).

Yes, BD needs to prove itself when released. I'll be there waiting to judge!

 

[Jean-Michel]

A thirty-minute video with a constant bitrate of 54Mbps would occupy less than half the space available on a 25GB disc.

 

[RobertR]

That means it doesn't fill it up, but it also emphasizes how high Sony could crank the bit rate.