Aylmer
07-28-2007, 07:26 PM
I originally had no intention of replacing/upgrading any of my DVDs with a BluRay version, but I ended up doing so since the BluRay was only $20.
The movie is Kingdom of Heaven, a historical epic directed by Ridley Scott (btw a BluRay conversion of Blade Runner is in the works).
I have the special two disk DVD set released a couple of years ago. It is state of the art dual layer DVD. I got the BluRay version in the mail today. I've been wanting to compare two actual versions side by side, away from Best Buy and any other possibility of hype, but I was waiting to rent a BR. So it goes.
Anyway, since I am fairly conversant in these things, I thought I'd relate my impressions.
Note that I did not watch the BluRay all the way through, and the following comparisons are restricted to the first five minutes of the film.
Very first scene, white text overlay that says "France, 1184". On the standard DVD, you can plainly see what is known as 'compression artefacting' around the white letters. This is typical in compressed video due to the algorithms breaking down. They cannot handle the abrupt color change. It shows up as a blurry outline of the letters. The "Sin City" DVD has it right in the first scene as well, you can plainly see it as a cross hatch pattern on the girl's red dress. The color change between the b/w background and the red dress is too much for the compression algorithms.
But, back to Kingdom of Heaven. The artefacting is totally absent on the BluRay. In that movie, the opening scene is dark with an overcast sky and snow is falling. It is either early morning or dusk. Either way it is a low contrast scene.
What appears washed out and lacking detail on the DVD is crystal clear on the BluRay disk. One thing that really popped for me was the fine texture of the gauze wrapping the dead woman about to be buried. It was like I could almost touch it. On the standard DVD you could see the gauze, but you could not see the delicate wisps of threads present within the gauze.
Another thing was the blowing snowflakes. On the DVD you could see snowflakes ok, but on the BluRay version you could see many more. The reason is simple, more pixels mean more resolution and more tiny objects that can be seen.
Finally, as the group of travelers arrive in the town, a distance shot is shown and some farm animals can be seen in the lower right hand corner. On the DVD you can see them, but they all appear to be blurry globs of about the same color. On the BluRay you can make out the individual animals clearly, some are gray, others are tan, you can see motteling, etc.
There is a lot of discussion around about how bluRay is mostly hype, but that simply is not true. The difference is astounding.
Both versions are 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio. The bluray version is the Directors cut with added scenes, tho it does not have all the goodies the DVD has, like being able to look at scenes through different peoples eyes, and there are no extras on the Br version.
I heard that Sin City is coming to BluRay, and I will definitely be getting it even to I have the DVD, especially after doing this test.
I'll be getting a lot more use out of my PS3 besides gaming.
As an aside, I picked up a video camera specifically for use with my PS3, a hand held HD cam (1240x720p). It's a Sanyo Xacti HD1A. I love it. It fits really small, and is used with one hand. Other than the zoom lens, it has no moving parts because it writes the video to a SD card! I was hoping I could just pop the SD into the PS3, but Sanyo is very protective about it's HD encoding (as is everyone else) so I have to run it though the Sanyo software before I can save it to my PC. However, the cam comes with component cables that work great with the PS3 for viewing the video straight from the cam. One thing I noticed tho, with HD, everything is HD, including f*ckups like camera shake and stuff :(
The cam was $600.
The movie is Kingdom of Heaven, a historical epic directed by Ridley Scott (btw a BluRay conversion of Blade Runner is in the works).
I have the special two disk DVD set released a couple of years ago. It is state of the art dual layer DVD. I got the BluRay version in the mail today. I've been wanting to compare two actual versions side by side, away from Best Buy and any other possibility of hype, but I was waiting to rent a BR. So it goes.
Anyway, since I am fairly conversant in these things, I thought I'd relate my impressions.
Note that I did not watch the BluRay all the way through, and the following comparisons are restricted to the first five minutes of the film.
Very first scene, white text overlay that says "France, 1184". On the standard DVD, you can plainly see what is known as 'compression artefacting' around the white letters. This is typical in compressed video due to the algorithms breaking down. They cannot handle the abrupt color change. It shows up as a blurry outline of the letters. The "Sin City" DVD has it right in the first scene as well, you can plainly see it as a cross hatch pattern on the girl's red dress. The color change between the b/w background and the red dress is too much for the compression algorithms.
But, back to Kingdom of Heaven. The artefacting is totally absent on the BluRay. In that movie, the opening scene is dark with an overcast sky and snow is falling. It is either early morning or dusk. Either way it is a low contrast scene.
What appears washed out and lacking detail on the DVD is crystal clear on the BluRay disk. One thing that really popped for me was the fine texture of the gauze wrapping the dead woman about to be buried. It was like I could almost touch it. On the standard DVD you could see the gauze, but you could not see the delicate wisps of threads present within the gauze.
Another thing was the blowing snowflakes. On the DVD you could see snowflakes ok, but on the BluRay version you could see many more. The reason is simple, more pixels mean more resolution and more tiny objects that can be seen.
Finally, as the group of travelers arrive in the town, a distance shot is shown and some farm animals can be seen in the lower right hand corner. On the DVD you can see them, but they all appear to be blurry globs of about the same color. On the BluRay you can make out the individual animals clearly, some are gray, others are tan, you can see motteling, etc.
There is a lot of discussion around about how bluRay is mostly hype, but that simply is not true. The difference is astounding.
Both versions are 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio. The bluray version is the Directors cut with added scenes, tho it does not have all the goodies the DVD has, like being able to look at scenes through different peoples eyes, and there are no extras on the Br version.
I heard that Sin City is coming to BluRay, and I will definitely be getting it even to I have the DVD, especially after doing this test.
I'll be getting a lot more use out of my PS3 besides gaming.
As an aside, I picked up a video camera specifically for use with my PS3, a hand held HD cam (1240x720p). It's a Sanyo Xacti HD1A. I love it. It fits really small, and is used with one hand. Other than the zoom lens, it has no moving parts because it writes the video to a SD card! I was hoping I could just pop the SD into the PS3, but Sanyo is very protective about it's HD encoding (as is everyone else) so I have to run it though the Sanyo software before I can save it to my PC. However, the cam comes with component cables that work great with the PS3 for viewing the video straight from the cam. One thing I noticed tho, with HD, everything is HD, including f*ckups like camera shake and stuff :(
The cam was $600.