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Unlike the first one, this one will actually play audio CDs! What a concept!Too bad the Blu-ray version of Fifth Element doesn't look as good as the regular DVD...
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from video junkies was said to be horrible. And that was too bad, because that is one movie I'd go out of my way to see on Blu-Ray. If you've heard differently -- and recently -- that would indicate to me someone went back and reworked that title.
nt
The new Perfect Vision (available online for free) had this to say:With The Fifth Element, one of the
first Blu-ray discs to be released,
everyone expected a reference quality
title like the DVD. Instead,
enthusiasts were shocked to find
that the Blu-ray version of the movie
was mastered from a sub-par print
full of dirt and scratches—all clearly
visible when watching the disc.Hmmm. Not a very auspicious beginning, eh?
And that's not all. Here's what they said about another popular title:
House of Flying Daggers, another
early Sony Pictures release, was
similarly pilloried for looking very
soft.The track record isn't looking so good, is it? More from the same article:
Sony is now examining the
masters of all new titles to verify that
image quality is up to snuff before
approving the transfer; masters that are
found to be sub-par will be redone.
(Why the studio didn’t do this in the first
place remains a mystery.)It doesn't really sound like they know what they are doing does it? Or maybe they just don't really have their hearts into it. One final quote from the article:
As for the ongoing complaints that
many Blu-ray movies look soft and have
more artifacts than HD DVD titles, video
guru Joe Kane points to a number of
contributing factors, including the way
film-to-video transfers are performed
and problems with the MPEG-2 codec
itself.So maybe Blu-ray has some inherent problems. Maybe HD-DVD would be better. But in the end, it doesn't really matter because they will both flop in the general marketplace.
Well, I have both the DVD and Blu-ray of the 5th Element, and the Blu-ray even with the problems of the release is far superior. The colors are more saturated, contrast is improved, the soundtrack while not perfect (it's a bit bright) is lossless and veyr detailed. On my 720p set, I cannot really see the scratches and dust they mention, but I'm sure it shows on a 1080p.The House of the Flying Daggers Blu-Ray looks exactly like the theater release. I saw the theater release twice. The first time I saw it was not in a first rate theater, and my friend and I both commented on how we thought the print must have been inferior (possibly a bad chinese film duplication company?). I went the second time at the Metreon here in SF (A State of the Art Sony facility at the time) and the film was marginally better. It looked soft, lacked detail, washed out, lack of contrast, a unpleasant green cast to the film, muted colors. The Blu-Ray looks exactly the same as the two prints I saw in theaters. So garbage in garbage out I guess.
I don't hang out with any videophiles, but the techies I hang out with all want a Blu-ray or HD-DVD player, they are just waiting for prices to drop.
Tonight I'm going to watch Bullit on Blu-Ray, gotta love Netflix.
Like SACD and DVD-A, both hi-rez video systems will fail if all they have going for them is slightly superior quality replay because the vast majority of consumers do not have systems fully capable of exploiting the difference and even the most popular 37" and 42" plasmas aren't up to the job.The parallels between audio and video hi-rez formats are endless, but I don't believe the market is there for either apart from enthusiasts.
At least with SACD the first generation of players were over engineered, underpriced behemoths meant to demonstrate any superiority as clearly as possible, but with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD we had under-engineered, over-priced pieces of junk which were an insult to enthusiasts and a measure of the contempt in which 'we' are held.
Best Regards,
Chris redmond.
Chris,i have Toshiba's new HD-XA2 and it's the best SD DVD player i've seen as well as amazing in 1080p HD. both HD-DVD and Blue Ray look great to my eyes and are a big step up if you have a proper display device.
below is a link to a shootout between the HD-XA2 and a hot-rodded SD DVD player thru a SOTA Video proessor, the Crystalio II (which i also own).
at $995 retail the HD-AX2 is a fair value for what it does.
I recently saw what I believe was a Toshiba as the source for a projector and the picture was superb, even though the projector was 'only' capable of 720p.On the other hand I've seen quite a few HD-DVD and Blu-Ray sources feeding various 37" and 42" plasmas in local retailers, and the picture on my own 42" Panasonic with a Denon DVD-A1XV as source is superior.
Granted I carefully selected my plasma, power cords and HDMI lead to get optimum performance and the DVD player has the very best upscaler, but I'm in no rush to get any of the Hi-Def options just yet although a 50" LG plasma fed a hi-def signal via some kind of 'Hi-def streaming' source (no model number or indication of the manufacturer) provided the best images I've seen.
Once the hardware and software are up to scratch - and SKY HD gets it's act together - I'll be opting in for sure but at the moment I'm largely unimpressed.
If your video system is anywhere near the standard of your audio rig however I might just have to dig out the goose-fat again, smear myself from head to foot and set off on another cross Atlantic swim......
Best Regards,
Chris Redmond.
Best Regards,
Chris redmond.
< < At least with SACD the first generation of players were over engineered, underpriced behemoths meant to demonstrate any superiority as clearly as possible, but with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD we had under-engineered, over-priced pieces of junk which were an insult to enthusiasts and a measure of the contempt in which 'we' are held. > >In the case of Sony, this is certainly true. The first Sony DVD player (DVD-7000?) was an excellent piece of gear that set the standard for years (at least until progressive-scan was introduced). And the over-built Sony SCD-1 was clearly a loss-leader for Sony.
And on the software side of SACD, they went overboard to ensure a quality product -- hiring Ed Meitner to design and build the converters to make sure that the product was showing everything that the medium was capable of.
But it is truly baffling that the Blu-ray software releases have been sub-par. It wouldn't have taken much effort to make sure things were done right, but apparently nobody cared. And on the hardware side, the first players won't even play audio CDs! What a mess!
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