RAVE: Bluray

[cards2468]

I got my Blu Ray player (Samsung BDP-1500) yesterday using my credit card rewards points, and I must say, I'm very happy to now be able to watch movies in high def. I was pretty skeptical when bluray came out thinking it was going to just be a stepping stone, but if you have an HDTV, it's really worth it to be able to fully utilize the TV's capabilities when watching movies. I tried it out using Iron Man and Harold and Kumar go to Guantanamo Bay (Netflix). Iron Man actually didn't have that great of a picture, but the latter looked amazing (wasn't a big fan of the movie itself, however). My friend told me I just need to mess with the settings because Iron Man is supposed to be incredible in HD, and when I said the picture was a little fuzzy, they said that it's usually set to that setting to give it the theatric effect since many people freak out when a movie is perfectly crisp (defeats the purpose of bluray imo).

[AdmiralKird]

I got my Blu Ray player (Samsung BDP-1500) yesterday using my credit card rewards points, and I must say, I'm very happy to now be able to watch movies in high def. I was pretty skeptical when bluray came out thinking it was going to just be a stepping stone, but if you have an HDTV, it's really worth it to be able to fully utilize the TV's capabilities when watching movies. I tried it out using Iron Man and Harold and Kumar go to Guantanamo Bay (Netflix). Iron Man actually didn't have that great of a picture, but the latter looked amazing (wasn't a big fan of the movie itself, however). My friend told me I just need to mess with the settings because Iron Man is supposed to be incredible in HD, and when I said the picture was a little fuzzy, they said that it's usually set to that setting to give it the theatric effect since many people freak out when a movie is perfectly crisp (defeats the purpose of bluray imo).

What do you have it connected with: Component, DVI, HDMI?

The HD Camcorders I use for my Videography have settings to specifically soften flesh tones to reduce blemishes, however, I've never heard of Blu-Ray players purposefully displaying under 1080P/720p.

[Arthur Dent]

What do you have it connected with: Component, DVI, HDMI?

I don't think this makes much difference.

[cards2468]

HDMI, but like I said, Harold and Kumar actually looked very crisp

[ghostrunner]

My friend told me I just need to mess with the settings because Iron Man is supposed to be incredible in HD, and when I said the picture was a little fuzzy, they said that it's usually set to that setting to give it the theatric effect since many people freak out when a movie is perfectly crisp (defeats the purpose of bluray imo).

I'm one of those people. I saw Pirates of the Carribean on BluRay at a store recently and it looked no different than watching Sportscenter in HD. Didn't like it at all. If it's crisper than a movie theatre picture, I'm not sure I can hang with it. Plus it looked the slightest bit jumpy too. They had a computer animated movie on too, and you could see all the flaws.

[Arthur Dent]

If it's crisper than a movie theatre picture, I'm not sure I can hang with it.

I would think a movie theatre picture would be much crisper if projected on a TV sized screen.

[cards2468]

My friend told me I just need to mess with the settings because Iron Man is supposed to be incredible in HD, and when I said the picture was a little fuzzy, they said that it's usually set to that setting to give it the theatric effect since many people freak out when a movie is perfectly crisp (defeats the purpose of bluray imo).

I'm one of those people. I saw Pirates of the Carribean on BluRay at a store recently and it looked no different than watching Sportscenter in HD. Didn't like it at all. If it's crisper than a movie theatre picture, I'm not sure I can hang with it. Plus it looked the slightest bit jumpy too. They had a computer animated movie on too, and you could see all the flaws.

Perhaps my settings were messed up, because most of the time it looked no better than DVD. I'll look into it, because I can understand wanting to avoid seeing the flaws, but at the same time it should still be better than DVD

[ghostrunner]

If it's crisper than a movie theatre picture, I'm not sure I can hang with it.

I would think a movie theatre picture would be much crisper if projected on a TV sized screen.

I'm sure it would. I'm saying it's plenty crisp at the large size.

What i saw was literally like watching a live HD broadcast, only it was a movie. It was extremely weird to my eye. Maybe crispness is the wrong issue. Maybe it's the frame rate or something else.



Just found this forum topic in a search. It's exactly what I mean.

http://forums.highdefdigest.com/blu-ray ... 0p-tv.html

Originally Posted by Blinx123
Hm. Ok. I'll test it this evening when I'm going to watch "The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian". But all I remind so far it that the movies looked horrible with 120Hz Motionflow turned on (kind of pixelated in certain scenes and far from being 3D).
Yup. I you're using a Sony and throw on some combination of motionflow and cinemotion you will get the live look but see digital artifacts from the process. It does make things a "live" or "sitcom" quality.

If you have a pixar BD use it on that. It will make the animation move faster than you are used to but also add a sense of depth to the picture. It looks like crap though and makes the animation appear cheap.

[Arthur Dent]

What i saw was literally like watching a live HD broadcast, only it was a movie. It was extremely weird to my eye. Maybe crispness is the wrong issue. Maybe it's the frame rate or something else.

What's wrong with HD broadcasts? We're used to a certain level of fuzziness, I guess, so higher quality may be jarring in the same way some people didn't like CDs. I think it's for the best so long as producers get used to the format. Film still has greater resolution than HD, so those flaws should still be present in the theatre. It's just that the picture is so big that it doesn't seem as crisp even though the detail is still there. I never understood why people wanted big screen TVs in standard definition. It made the lack of resolution so much more obvious.

As far as the frame rate issue, the reason that soap operas somehow "feel" different than most TV dramas or movies is the frame rate. Soap operas are done with video at 60 fields a second rather than the 24 frames/s of film. There is really no good reason for the 24 fps choice in film. It derives from the average speed of hand cranking on ancient cameras and is really too slow. A truer sense of motion would be obtained if the frame rate were increased beyond the perception limit.

[cards2468]

What i saw was literally like watching a live HD broadcast, only it was a movie. It was extremely weird to my eye. Maybe crispness is the wrong issue. Maybe it's the frame rate or something else.

What's wrong with HD broadcasts? We're used to a certain level of fuzziness, I guess, so higher quality may be jarring in the same way some people didn't like CDs. I think it's for the best so long as producers get used to the format. Film still has greater resolution than HD, so those flaws should still be present in the theatre. It's just that the picture is so big that it doesn't seem as crisp even though the detail is still there. I never understood why people wanted big screen TVs in standard definition. It made the lack of resolution so much more obvious.

As far as the frame rate issue, the reason that soap operas somehow "feel" different than most TV dramas or movies is the frame rate. Soap operas are done with video at 60 fields a second rather than the 24 frames/s of film. There is really no good reason for the 24 fps choice in film. It derives from the average speed of hand cranking on ancient cameras and is really too slow. A truer sense of motion would be obtained if the frame rate were increased beyond the perception limit.

From experience of messing with frame rates for monitors, I must say you have to be careful with certain frame rates. There's some rates that tend to give people headaches (I'm guessing it was 60 hz since I think that's the frequency our eye processes what we see) but yea, the new trend you'll see in TV development isn't 1080p but rather what frame rates they can operate at