The Official Blu Ray Thread

[D Mac]

Keep this this thread updated with your Hi Def Collection and any new ones you buy. Including HD DVD if you have that. Also any noteworthy Blu Ray news that comes out.

Blu Ray:

The Rock
Con Air
Goodfellas
The Patriot
Evil Dead 2
Superman 1 and 2
Spiderman Trilogy
The Departed
Transporter 1 and 2
Troy
Blazing Saddles
300
Black Hawk Down
Shoot Em Up
Full Metal Jacket
The Fifth Element
Hellboy
Gridiron Gang


HD DVD:

Army of Darkness
King Kong
Face Off
Transformers
The Rundown
American Gangster

[PapaGeorgio]

Do you really have two copies of 300 or did you make a mistake!

[CSL]

My blu ray collection consists of the Indiana Jones trailer on my PS3. I'm too cheap to buy the DVD's :)

[D Mac]

Do you really have two copies of 300 or did you make a mistake!

oops

[PapaGeorgio]

DON'T YOU EVER MAKE A MISTAKE LIKE THAT AGAIN IN MY PRESENCE!

[D Mac]

Am I the only one here with new technology?

[PapaGeorgio]

I once owned Ratatioulle and Cars on Blu Ray. I ordered Trapped in the Closest but got that shit again, and was to lazy to return it online, so went to Meijers and pretended I bought them there. Got charged 20 bucks for the two blu rays, returned em for like 50. That is my experience with blu rays. Thank you and goodnight.

[Tazz Dan]

Blu Ray:

Cars
Alvin and the Chipmunks
Jumper
WM24
AC/DC Live in Donnington
Justin Timberlake Live
Korn Live
Good Luck Chuck
The Departed
Simpsons Movie
Open Season
Into the blue
Game Plan
Gridiron Gang
Saw IV
Rambo
RV
Surfs Up
Full Metal Jacket


HD DVD:
Transformers

[Kane Knight]

Am I the only one here with new technology?

Nope. I'll toss my list up later.

[ct2k]

What is Goodfellas on blu-ray really gonna offer me that improves so greatly on my dvd version that it warrants like quadruple the price tag?

[Kane Knight]

What is Goodfellas on blu-ray really gonna offer me that improves so greatly on my dvd version that it warrants like quadruple the price tag?

I bet you asked this about VHS, too.

[ct2k]

I did have Goodfellas on VHS actually, but when I first started watching DVD's with friends I realied how far superior the quality was on DVD, not to mention they don't deterioriate like VHS either. I've not seen the point in blu-ray yet mainly because of the price, because DVD is still great quality etc and cheap as fuck, I paid £3 for 25th Hour on dvd the other day, it'd be £20 on blu-ray without doubt. I mean if we're talking LOTR here then I can imagine its gonna be immense on blu-ray on a huge flat screen.

But I don't have a huge flat screen:(

[U-Warrior]

Planet Earth is the only BR I have so far. It is the most amazing documentary ever made.

[Kane Knight]

I did have Goodfellas on VHS actually, but when I first started watching DVD's with friends I realied how far superior the quality was on DVD, not to mention they don't deterioriate like VHS either. I've not seen the point in blu-ray yet mainly because of the price, because DVD is still great quality etc and cheap as fuck, I paid £3 for 25th Hour on dvd the other day, it'd be £20 on blu-ray without doubt. I mean if we're talking LOTR here then I can imagine its gonna be immense on blu-ray on a huge flat screen.

But I don't have a huge flat screen:(

There was initially a huge disparity in price between DVD when it launched and the reigning champion VHS.

VHS tapes were often ten bucks or so (Prices have been jacked significantly, because now they're a "speciality" market), while DVDs reached retailed prices of 40-50 bucks, which means they probably listed for more (whereas the peak list price for most VHS tapes was 15 bucks).

But as it is, I mostly agree. There's little point in buying most movies for exorbiant prices. I don't know if I qualify for a "huge" Flat screen (32"), but some movies are incredible. Shit, I just saw HD shots of Star Wars in one of the previews for the new Star Wars video game, and even that blew away the previous quality.

Some of the best reasons to buy BD are due to having a HDTV, though. Computer graphics and animation can look shitty, especially on older movies. Newer movies aren't so bad on DVD, but I stilll grab the Pixar movies on High Def when they come out, simply because, you know, they're computer movies, and I know I will watch the fuck out of them. Ironically, I usually end up paying about five bucks more for a BD disc than I do for DVD, so there's not a huge incentive (In the US, Most retailers sell DVDs for 20-25 bucks US for new releases, and 25-30 for BD).

But on the flipside, with a couple of rare exceptions, I'm not updating my old library any time soon. I have three movies on HD I owned on DVD, and two of them were lost or stolen.

[Kane Knight]

HD DVD


Transformers
Serenity
The Last Starfighter
Batman Begins
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Shrek the Third
Hot Fuzz

Blu Ray


Dogma
Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End
Ratatouille
Meet the Robinsons
Cars
They All Came Down to Montreaux: Deep Purple Live
Sky High
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Alvin and the Chipmunks
Spider-Man 3

I could swear I had a couple more BDs, but fuck if I can find them.

[D Mac]

What is Goodfellas on blu-ray really gonna offer me that improves so greatly on my dvd version that it warrants like quadruple the price tag?

Do you have the dvd that you have to flip over in the middle of the movie?

Not on Blu Ray you don't. And the picture looks bad ass for an older movie. The colors really stand out.

[ct2k]

There was initially a huge disparity in price between DVD when it launched and the reigning champion VHS.

VHS tapes were often ten bucks or so (Prices have been jacked significantly, because now they're a "speciality" market), while DVDs reached retailed prices of 40-50 bucks, which means they probably listed for more (whereas the peak list price for most VHS tapes was 15 bucks).

But as it is, I mostly agree. There's little point in buying most movies for exorbiant prices. I don't know if I qualify for a "huge" Flat screen (32"), but some movies are incredible. Shit, I just saw HD shots of Star Wars in one of the previews for the new Star Wars video game, and even that blew away the previous quality.

Some of the best reasons to buy BD are due to having a HDTV, though. Computer graphics and animation can look shitty, especially on older movies. Newer movies aren't so bad on DVD, but I stilll grab the Pixar movies on High Def when they come out, simply because, you know, they're computer movies, and I know I will watch the fuck out of them. Ironically, I usually end up paying about five bucks more for a BD disc than I do for DVD, so there's not a huge incentive (In the US, Most retailers sell DVDs for 20-25 bucks US for new releases, and 25-30 for BD).

But on the flipside, with a couple of rare exceptions, I'm not updating my old library any time soon. I have three movies on HD I owned on DVD, and two of them were lost or stolen.



This is the thing, I'm not anti BR at all I just can't afford it and don't have a tv worth a shit to watch it on. I'm not bothering buying any Pixar movies on dvd for precisely the reasons you mentioned though:D

[#BROKEN Hasney]

HD DVD (growing, due to it being CHEEAAPPP ASSS SHIIIIITTTT)
TMNT
Van Helsing
V for Vendetta
The Bourne Supremacy
The Bourne Ultimatium
300
King King
Batman Begins
Hot Fuzz
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Shaun of the Dead
Matrix Trilogy

Blu-Ray (Growing slower, damn price)
Hostel Part 2
X3 The Last Stand
Casino Royale

[Kane Knight]

I'd buy stuff on HD DVD still, but I'm not going to replace my HD Drive once it craps out, so I don't want to have to replace it later. There may eventually be combo drives or whatever, but since My PS3 isn't a combo player...

[D Mac]

There are Blu Ray/HD DVD combo players already out, by LC.

[#BROKEN Hasney]

Do you mean LG and not Loose Cannon?

I've got a combo drive in my PC, with blu-ray writing built in too, which is pretty sweet.

[D Mac]

Amazon.com is having a buy 2 get 1 free Blu Ray sale. I always take advantage of those. You can get free super saver shipping.

[D Mac]

Took advantage of the buy 2 get 1 free offer.

Resivoir Dogs
The Untouchables
Broken Arrow

And I bought Gangs of New York on Blu Ray for 15 bucks.

[#BROKEN Hasney]

And I bought Gangs of New York on Blu Ray for 15 bucks.

Is it any good? Not the film, I mean picture quality. The DVD was terrible for quality and I've seen a few reviews saying that's it's still pig ugly.

[Kane Knight]

There are Blu Ray/HD DVD combo players already out, by LC.

The LG ones are terrible. I nearly bought one.

Amazon.com is having a buy 2 get 1 free Blu Ray sale. I always take advantage of those. You can get free super saver shipping.

Yeah, I bought like six movies:

Shinobi: Heart Under Blade
Sleepy Hollow (I had it on DVD, but my Mom lent it to my Aunt, and I'll never see it again)
Edward Scissorhands
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The Transporter
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

[Kane Knight]

HD DVD


Transformers
Serenity
The Last Starfighter
Batman Begins
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Shrek the Third
Hot Fuzz

Blu Ray


Dogma
Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End
Ratatouille
Meet the Robinsons
Cars
They All Came Down to Montreaux: Deep Purple Live
Sky High
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Alvin and the Chipmunks
Spider-Man 3

New Additions (BD)


Shinobi: Heart Under Blade
Sleepy Hollow (I had it on DVD, but my Mom lent it to my Aunt, and I'll never see it again)
Edward Scissorhands
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The Transporter
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

I could swear I had a couple more BDs, but fuck if I can find them.

[Kane Knight]

Oh Hell, that was supposed to be an edit. Whatever.

[D Mac]

Is it any good? Not the film, I mean picture quality. The DVD was terrible for quality and I've seen a few reviews saying that's it's still pig ugly.

Haven't got it in yet. I'll let you know. It's supposed to be not very good for Blu Ray, but still better then DVD and the the movie is all on one disc as opposed to 2 discs for the DVD.

[Kane Knight]

Is this the original or the remake we're talking about? Because I couldn't picture a reason for a bad transfer for the newer version. Well, unless the money-graubbingasses didn't want to spring for a true HD transfer.

[#BROKEN Hasney]

The remake. Money grabingness indeed. From what I've read, it's just the DVD transfer upscaled.

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/409/gangsofnewyork.html

Overall, Disney has had a pretty good track record on Blu-ray, even taking pains to remaster certain titles (such as the first 'Pirates of the Caribbean') they'd previously ruined on DVD to make sure they got a proper High Definition treatment. Hopes were high that 'Gangs of New York' would similarly benefit from some fresh attention and care. The movie does have very nice photography by Michael Ballhaus, after all. Sadly, no such luck. The studio has simply recycled the old DVD master. Thus history repeats itself and a movie with one of the worst-looking DVD releases because one of the worst-looking Blu-ray releases available.

If I have anything positive to point out, the 1080p/VC-1 transfer (presented in the film's original 2.35:1 aspect ratio) has bold colors and rich black levels with good shadow detail. Its opening couple of close-up shots impressed me with their popping detail and dimensionality. That will do it for the positives.

Things start to go south as soon as the movie cuts to a rather edgy medium shot, and then everything goes utterly to hell when we get to the first wide shots during the Battle of Five Points. The entire picture is smothered in grotesque edge enhancement artifacts. Further, Digital Noise Reduction has been slathered on to reduce grain, which kills all textural detail and causes smearing during camera pans and fast movement. When it is present, film grain looks noisy due to the electronic sharpening and regularly freezes in place or swims in unnatural patterns due to the DNR. There's also something wrong with the gamma in the transfer. Whites (like the snow) and bright reds and oranges frequently bloom and crush detail. Posterization artifacts are visible in bright portions of the frame. The result of all this is an image that looks extremely dupey and electronic, and never gets better during the entire three-hour run.

Certain scenes also have colored vertical stripes at the extreme left and right edges of the frame. I don't know whether that's a photographic flaw on the original film negative or a fault of the video transfer. I don't normally advocate cropping, but in this case shaving a tiny bit of picture off the sides might have been less distracting.

All in all, the 'Gangs of New York' Blu-ray is a travesty. It might look acceptable on a small screen -- in fact, I played it on a 17" LCD monitor while I was listening to the audio commentary, and it looked pretty good there; the edge enhancement was still visible, but not quite as distracting at that size -- but any decently-sized home theater display will magnify its flaws. The disc may look better than the old DVD edition, but that's damning it with faint praise. By High Definition standards, it's just terrible. Blu-ray is capable of better than this.

However, going through the site I did notice that they reviewed a French import as the French distribution company ordered a new video transfer for their blu-ray, which is apparantly better, but still has some of the same problems.

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/1649/gangsofnewyork_fr.html

Now this is a conundrum. The American Blu-ray disc looks just awful. It's smothered with heavy-handed Digital Noise Reduction that wipes away detail and leaves the picture frequently smeary, then coated with nasty edge enhancement that causes electronic halos around nearly everything. In importing the French release, my fear was that M6 Video might have simply licensed Disney's poor master and the results would be identical. While that doesn't appear to be the case, 'Gangs of New York' still doesn't look very good at all.

First things first, there are several tell-tale signs that the French disc is not sourced from the same video master as the American Blu-ray. For one, the movie has French text overlays during scenes that require on-screen descriptors. Where the American version says "16 Years Later," the French version says "16 ans plus tard." The text is not player-generated, and very clearly appears to be part of the film source. In addition, there is a scratch on the print at time code 14:56 that's not present on the U.S. edition, yet the American copy has more speckles and other minor film damage. Color quality is very similar overall, but flesh tones in Disney's transfer are a touch pinkish and those in the M6 transfer a bit more yellow (of the two, I'd side with M6). Finally, the French disc has a miniscule amount of image cropped around the edges of the frame; I'd never have noticed without a direct comparison of the two copies, and minor framing difference like this are not unexpected when two separate telecine transfers are involved. All of this would seem to indicate that M6 did their own video transfer from film elements created for the French theatrical release.


The 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 transfer (again presented in the movie's 2.35:1 theatrical aspect ratio) seems to have less DNR problems than its American counterpart. (Note that I said less; I didn't say that it had none.) This is evident from the Miramax logo at the beginning, which is displayed over a gray background with a faint crosshatch pattern. That pattern is more distinct in the French transfer. When we get to the very first shot of the movie, a close-up of Daniel Day-Lewis' nose, there is mild film grain visible there on the French disc, but no grain at all on the American. Throughout the movie, the M6 transfer has better detail, with facial features that appear less mushy. However, detail overall is still only mediocre, and the image continues to be plagued by smeariness during fast action and camera movements. Once again, there are weird artifacts where background grain will freeze in place while the rest of the objects in the frame continue to move normally (which real film grain would never do). These issues occur in the same places on both copies.

Most distressingly, the edge enhancement artifacts are still there, and in all the exact same spots. The amplitude of the ringing may be slightly less on the French disc during some scenes, but for the most part it looks identical. When Amsterdam hugs the priest before leaving the Hellgate House of Reform, there's a thick, glowing halo around the priest's hat on the American copy, and the there it is again looking just the same on the French copy. It's like that all through the movie, the same on both editions.

I'm at a loss to explain how these two separate transfers could be so different in some respects, yet have many of the same problems in the same places. It's just too much to be coincidental. My first assumption might be that these artifacts were endemic to the source, perhaps introduced during a Digital Intermediate stage of post-production (before the text overlays), in which case they're a permanent part of the movie and not the fault of either home video transfer at all. Before I could get too comfortable with that theory, I was informed by a reliable source that 'Gangs of New York' didn't use a DI, and that the 35mm theatrical release prints were free of this sort of edge ringing.

At present, I have no idea who's really at fault. All I can say for certain is that the American Blu-ray looks like garbage, and the French import Blu-ray looks slightly less like garbage, but still not particularly good.

[#BROKEN Hasney]

The LG ones are terrible. I nearly bought one.

Are we talking home equipment or PC drives here? I've got the PC drive (Reads HD-DVDs, writes/reads BD) and it's pretty much perfect, but I suppose half of that is down to the decoding software that's used.

[#BROKEN Hasney]

On a side note, if you have an HD-DVD player, I'd grab some HDs while they're cheap. Some of them with limited (or none) print values are already starting to go up in price.

Bee Movie went for $400....

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/13/bee-movie-hd-dvd-slips-through-cracks-goes-for-400/

EDIT: Just seen Band of Brothers go for $300....

[Kane Knight]

Are we talking home equipment or PC drives here? I've got the PC drive (Reads HD-DVDs, writes/reads BD) and it's pretty much perfect, but I suppose half of that is down to the decoding software that's used.

Every LG Player I've seen reviewed has been highly flawed.

[#BROKEN Hasney]

Hmm, not seen a bad review on the first 2 pages of Google (GGW-H20L). *shrug* it works for me and it was only £70.

[D Mac]

http://www.highdefdigest.com/

Yeah this is the place to go for Blu Ray news and reviews.

[#BROKEN Hasney]

Yup, they're so anal it's fantastic

[Kane Knight]

By the way, I picked up Short Circuit on Blu Ray. Another disc lent to another family member, another disc I'll never see. So I bought it for like ten bucks on Blu Ray.

The movie looks spectacular in high definition. Don't know if the transfer could be better, but man, that is fucking sweet, even with dated technology.

I don't expect the same standards from an old movie as I do from a newer one, but this really did exceed my expectations.

Also, there were a couple moments in Sky Captain where "I think I filled the cup."

[D Mac]

If you haven't heard already, the Godfather trilogy is coming to Blu in September. :y:

[D Mac]

Just bought the Mummy and inside was a ticket to Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. :cool:

[#BROKEN Hasney]

Just bought Knocked Up on HD-DVD. Not a fantastic film by any stretch, but it has it's moments and for £3 I coludn't argue.

EDIT: I think I'm buying HD-DVDs and Blu Rays at the speed my original DVD collection. I think half of it is just novelty still :D

[D Mac]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000257861&tag=panandscathed-20&linkcode=ur2

Amazon Blu Ray sale. Most of them for $20.95. They have Jay and Silent Bob Strikes back for 10.95!

[#BROKEN Hasney]

Clerks 2 HD-DVD. £3 :D

[D Mac]

Yeah I'll probably get that and Serenity HD DVD. Who knows when they'll be on Blu.