I have very few BD discs on my own: Batman begins, Blade runner, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Hellboy. My wife has: Iron Man and The Bridge To Terabithia.
I was blown away by the PQ of Batman and Indy. Blade runner and Hellboy are quite close to the DVD. And Road Warrior, despite the precise amount of detail, is totally wrongly color toned.
TWISTER is the only Blu-ray (out of 35 so far) that I really don't like much. The movie itself is silly as hell (bad acting and dialog), but for this type of movie that doesn't need to matter as long as the image quality is superb. Personally, I find the color shifting distracting as hell. Flesh tones don't seem to be stable for more than two or three shots in a row. I compared the BD to the SD and find the latter more satisfying. I will be selling this Blu-ray. But you would have to pry the rest of my BD's out of my hands. Love the format! (but I have made it a point not to spend more than $20.00 on any single-disc release).
Mine would be "Stealth". I have compared, at length, the sd dvd and Blu-ray and can not see one damn bit of difference. It's seems like when studios first put out Blu-ray some titles got ported over from sd dvd masters with no other upgrades. I may be way off with this assumption, but, I can't see how this title wouldn't have been superior on Blu. With so much color and detail in the film, you would think this would have been a reference title. Far, far from it.
We watched this last night for Halloween -- I got it as part of an Amazon buy 2 get 1 free sale. While I wouldn't quite describe the BD that harshly , the transfer was rather disappointing. I may sell it off and keep my Superbit DVD copy.
As you're probably aware, this transfer was a subject of much controversy when the Blu-ray was released. I happen to think it's superb, but to each their own.
If I remember correctly, Robert Harris has stated that the transfer is accurate according to an "answer print", which is the reference standard for films of that era.
Well I'm not saying they are bad. They are actually pretty good but so are the DVDs for these two movies. I have an excellent PQ with the Blade Runner and Hellboy DVDs on my Oppo 983 in SD DVD, and the BDs in HD are not groundbreaking I think. This said I must precise I only have a 42 inches HD Ready plasma TV. No Full HD in house yet.
Completely agree. This BD is dark, but, stunning. I think people were up in arms because they had seen it so many times on two different formats (LD and sd dvd) that they never knew how it was supposed to look. That one factor is at the heart of all this uproar when a new title comes out that doesn't quite look as we remember it. When it comes to hi-def, it shouldn't look as we remember it as much as it should look correct.
If you're talking about the Blade Runner 5-disc collector's edition in Blu-ray, it is indeed groundbreaking, with 4K remastering and significant enhancements in image quality that should be obvious even on lesser equipment, assuming you're watching the right version (the one known as "The Final Cut").
I finished it ahead of schedule, thanks to a practically barebones release (and Michael's incessant nagging
).
I didn't score "Kit Kittredge" quite as low as the High Def Digest reviewer, but I agree with the point that we've seen DVDs look better. The only question is whether the DVD for this film does in fact look better or comparable. But at a price difference of almost $10, it might not matter.