Is Bluray Worth The Money?

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Northainan

Active member
I saw a movie that was on Bluray and it was shown on a HD flatscreen. I did not like what I saw. The footage was waaay too sharp. It look as though it shot with a broadcast news video camera. I came across this link< http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2379206,00.asp> and it explained pretty much about the refresh rates etc. Here is a line from the aritcle-


" In fact, many movies on Blu-ray even turn the frame rate down and display 1080p24, or 1,920-by-1080 video at 24 frames per second, to make the footage look as close to film as possible. The various refresh rate-increasing technologies on HDTVs destroy that effect.
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If that's the case why buy an expensive Bluray when this adjustment is made by the more expensive Bluray player while you have a DVD player that will show it as is from the source. So I think I will stick with my DVD player.
 
Maybe it's just me, but I quite like the smoothness the modern systems produce. I'm happy to concede it doesn't look the same as film, but the clarity of the 35mm film is there on Bluray, but missing on DVD. I can live with the difference in fast moving scenes. I've always viewed the picture you get in still mode as typical of what real detail exists in the image, so I think the images are actually better. When you edit and you go from frame to frame and see how far moving images can actually go in just a single frame, it's clear we have just become used to 're-joining' images with gaps, and if these systems can create a half way house frame from the information, this means (at least to me) that the movement is smoother. It's similar to the complaints we had with the first CDs when people realised error correction was actually producing data missing from the original. Maybe it's something we'll get used to, eventually?
 
Northainan said:
I saw a movie that was on Bluray and it was shown on a HD flatscreen. I did not like what I saw. The footage was waaay too sharp. It look as though it shot with a broadcast news video camera. I came across this link< http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2379206,00.asp> and it explained pretty much about the refresh rates etc. Here is a line from the aritcle-

" In fact, many movies on Blu-ray even turn the frame rate down and display 1080p24, or 1,920-by-1080 video at 24 frames per second, to make the footage look as close to film as possible. The various refresh rate-increasing technologies on HDTVs destroy that effect.
Click to expand...
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If that's the case why buy an expensive Bluray when this adjustment is made by the more expensive Bluray player while you have a DVD player that will show it as is from the source. So I think I will stick with my DVD player.
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That's not what it does at all. It doesn't "slow" anything down. It shows the movie at the proper, original frame rate of 24 fps.

Any TV which does the preposterous "tru-motion" or "smooth motion" thing and makes 60p-looking playback from 24p material, where you CAN'T turn that function off (and there are a few), you should not own.
 
Blu-Rays is just resolution, sound quality, bitrate... you're talking about TV auto motion plus/smooth motion/120-240hz/etc. as others said, turn it off.

It's the best format for movies ATM.

In the long term... 4K will replace it... streaming HD will replace it... but everything in tech is short term... I will say I doubt I'll be disappointed in the quality of my blu-ray library years down the road
 
Love my blu-rays, and dread the day things go streaming where I can't hold the content I bought in my hand but have to depend on my internet to get it. I don't like the thought of something I bought being somewhere else on the web and merely accessible by me. Perhaps downloadable content will still be around and not merely streaming, but even then the content is locked into a password protected system (like iTunes) and can only be played in a few locations without serious hassle.

Blu-ray's look fantastic and tru-motion is of the devil. Looks AWFUL.

I'll buy physical media as long as it's available. Really not looking forward to the day it starts to disappear :(
 
There are bad Blu-ray masters just like there were DVDs that looked only marginally better than laserdisc/VHS. Do your research and avoid these discs and you'll be blown away by the quality (i.e. Robocop, Patton, Predator are examples of Blu-rays that aren't worth your money for various reasons).
 
The issue of 'how good' also includes consideration for the display... About every other movie we watch the Wife and I get into a fight about whether the transfer was bad, or the now 'aging' LCD display we bought a couple of years ago is out of calibration, or just not 'up to it', and we need a new display... of course we don't have fancy equipment to really test the display... like we do for our computer monitors... so it's sort of make this adjustment, that adjustment... and for that movie maybe things are 'fine' for a while...

A while back I did down load a set of 'test' media, but even when I did that, the resulting 'image', didn't really look 'improved'... in fact there were still some whackness about it...

Some DVD's and Some BD disks include a 'THX' video calibration clip, but even then I've had issues with the result, for the film that was on the same disk...

Yesterday I was about ready to turn the color down to 'monochrome' and relive my youth of B&W only TV...

I personally can stand a lot of 'color shifts', but the Wife makes more of an issue. However, if there is 'shadow' detail, I do like to see it... and not have the shadows tinged with a 'magenta' cast...

I did a quick survey of the web yesterday, and I got too different views of 'backlight'... one view was to turn it down... and of course given the web, there was the equal and opposite advice.

Since we view the TV in a room that is somewhat darker than an open living room, and if we have one 100W bulb at night, It seems I should turn down the backlight.

As it was, that seemed clear up the magenta cast shadows... for that film... (one of the Harry Potter BD installments...).

The next film in the HP series, had sort of a green cast, where the 'white' people tended to have a violet twinge. But then I noticed in scenes with 'green' as in 'forest', the faces of the 'white' people did pick up a green twinge... Since Green/Magenta are complementary colors, I suspect that the grading was in fact using such a contrast... and perhaps my TV is just a bit off and with a little more dialing down of 'saturation' it may be 'ok'...

But really, what a hassle just to watch a movie...
 
If your tv is rubbish it doesn't matter what media you use. Any half decent tv will allow you to optimise the settings for whatever input format you are using. My TV is only 720p and bluray looks fantastic but it took me an hour to fine tune it. DVDs look better played in a bluray player too, it does a much better job of upscaling than the TV. I generally buy FX-heavy, action and landscape vista movies on bluray and still buy talking heads and comedies on DVD.

A thing to note: when I first got bluray I wasn't that impressed. I watched 3 or 4 movies and couldn't work out what the fuss was about. It wasn't until I put a DVD on that I realised how good it was. I then played the same movie in each format at the same time and switched between them, it's a lot better. And it's not just the picture, the hi-def sound is killer. If your sound system is capable of reproducing it, 'Akira' plays with the original Hypersonic frequency score - the composer actually recorded much of the music outside of the human spectrum. Makes hairs on your neck stand up and excites the blood!
 
David Jimerson said:
And Ghostbusters is an extremely disappointing transfer, especially as the DVD was fantastic.
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I thought it looked fine. As good as I remember it looking in the theater anyway...Same with Robocop. The Last Starfighter was the worst I've seen recently, DNR'd to death. Universal in general issues poor Blu-rays. Jaws is an exception as it looks incredible.
 
Northainan said:
I saw a movie that was on Bluray and it was shown on a HD flatscreen. I did not like what I saw.
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That's OK, but don't blame blu-ray for it. Blu-ray is outstanding if, IF, your electronics are up for it. But you've got to have a decent blu-ray player that can handle the lossless sound streams, you've got to get all that good signal to your TV, and your TV has to be able to show you all of that signal without screwing it up. And that includes that both the player and the HDTV must be set up correctly. If it's primary use is gaming and that's what it's set up for, blu-ray will undoubtedly look like crap.

I'm running blu-rays through a cheap Panny blu-ray player, HDMI to a low end Denon A/V receive that can handle the lossless sound tracks, and HDMI pass through to a small Panny plasma. The HDTV has one preset assigned to the HDMI feed that turns on THX mode, and native 24p (120 Hz 5:5 pull down, no 3:2 pull down judder). This is way modest compared to most that I've seen. But it works well. So well that my wife has all but given up theaters in favor of waiting for the blu-ray disk from Netflix.

You might not like blu-ray, but I surely do.
 
The problem with Robocop isn't so much that it looks terrible, but that it's an old master used for cable HD channels. Better to stick with the DVD until a better transfer is made for a remaster, like Jaws.
 
Well if they are going to sell it in the stores they better have somebody that know how to make the connections and aware that you have to turn off true motion in the stores. But see how many average Joe Blow and Jane Doe would know how to do this. Maybe next time that I am in BestBuy I will ask them to turn off true motion etc.
 
Northainan said:
Well if they are going to sell it in the stores they better have somebody that know how to make the connections and aware that you have to turn off true motion in the stores. But see how many average Joe Blow and Jane Doe would know how to do this. Maybe next time that I am in BestBuy I will ask them to turn off true motion etc.
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It's called the Internet. If you don't do your research before buying any big ticket item, then, frankly, you only have yourself to blame.
 
If you buy a preassembled computer system it will cost close to twice what it would to select, buy and assemble the parts yourself. If you pay an audio visual consultant to select, buy and set up your entertainment system it will cost more than doing it yourself. You can either get the knowledge yourself, pay someone who has the knowledge or as Gary suggests go the inbetween measure of the internet. When I don't know something I seek out the guys that do (not the salesman). Put 'videophile' into google and then pick something they would pick and you can't go wrong. There are a couple of sites where they even provide you not only with calibration instructions but also a profile for every setting of every tv for those that find the calibration instructions too difficult. Some tvs even have a wizard that walks you through the calibration. Mine actually did a pretty good job, got me 90% the way there.
 
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