what is the best HD DVD that you have purchased?

this is a difficult one for me, but i would have to say that 'chronicles of riddick' is the best looking.

but 'bourne ulitimatum' is the best all round movie

yours??????????

King Kong-(Best ive seen on BOTH formats as far as WOW...now THATs high def.)

Yeah. Liked the flick too.

My favorite is Band of Brothers if you count series, too. I'll be rewatching this many times over the years.

hd dvd: "spartacus" and "traffic"

blu-ray: "the fifth element" (first version) and "talladega nights"

Batman Begins - Best movie
Planet Earth - Best quality transfer.

[Post edited by spoonard on May 2, 2008]

For the love of Pete! I only own two HD titles and four Brooo-ray titles! Let me catch up first!

I've seen a lot of great transfers on HD DVD (Batman, Hot Fuzz, King Kong, Fast and The Furious, as well as all of the remastered Kubrick films come to mind), but Planet Earth blows absolutely everything away. There's no CGI to polish everything up - that's just how the planet is, and man is it incredible. I'm actually off to watch another episode now. I can't get enough of it. I believe I'll go with Caves tonight. If you have an HD player (HD DVD or Blu), get it! NOW! And if you have HD DVD, you can find some great prices. I paid $29 for mine.

Batman Begins
King Kong
Polar Express

I thought Aeon Flux is an underrated transfer. In fact, it's one of my show off disks of either format. Those colours are almost orgasmic in many scenes. Sure it's not the greatest movie, but it's a shear joy just looking at the damn thing.

Edit: I know many people like King Kong, but once the CGI starts when they get to the island and right to the end of the movie, I found it just too darn "edgy". By edgy I mean when you apply too much sharpening in photoshop to a JPEG at pbase.com and get crap for it. No, there weren't a lot of visible halos or ringing, but it had that edgy quality of over-sharpened JPEGs that I don't like so much.

[Post edited by Skyhawk on May 2, 2008]

Hey poster,
"I was led to believe that the first version of "The Fith Element" was suppose to be bad. That's why they remastered it???

"The Matrix trilogy also rocks on the format."

Skyhawk.
"Are you trying to say that "Kong" looks "harsh" to your eyes?"

[Post edited by bladerunner1 on May 2, 2008]

For Extras I'd have to go with the T2 German Edition. Transfer Batman Begins or Serenity. Sound, Transformers.

Bladerunner, poster has rather eccentric tastes, and perhaps the transfer of the first version of FE was the more preferable to him. For example, many audiophiles prefer the sound of LPs over CD, and could be the early Fifth Element had an element lacking in the polished rerelease.

[Post edited by BruceAmes on May 2, 2008]

here's a good list...

the Bourne movies
Transformers
Blade Runner
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (trust me, it's badass)
V for Vendetta
Sky Captain
TOTALLY 300 too!

I am trying to get Ultimate Matrix in my collection (it's $50 on amazon)

actually, i was just having fun by picking four of the worst titles to hit hd dvd and blu-ray. they all have shitty transfers ("traffic" is just an upconvert, believe it or not) and terrible extras.

Quote:
If you have an HD player (HD DVD or Blu), get it! NOW! And if you have HD DVD, you can find some great prices. I paid $29 for mine.

It's the first Broooo-ray I purchased! I'm very happy with what I've seen so far!

bruce ames,
iv'e been waiting for you. on another thread you said something about me hating this format. nah, thats not the case. you must have failed to read my first post. in it i said that i liked hd-dvd better than blu-ray. why? because it came out of the gate complete. and in the first year of it's competition with blu...it stomped it. then things changed and sony began to understand it's own format a little better. they put out better discs/tranfers.

however it is still not a done deal, in my mind anyway, because sony is just now starting to catch up w/what toshiba was doing all along. i pity the people who were early adopters of blu-ray. they got the shaft.

[Post edited by bladerunner1 on May 2, 2008]

Well, I will say the best out of the Hi-Defs I did purchase so far, "Stardust" HD is the best I've seen! However, it's just my opinion and I guess our eyes see things differently than others.

nevermind.

[Post edited by bladerunner1 on May 3, 2008]

I really enjoyed Stardust as well. PQ looked fine to me, but I was enjoying the movie too much to think about looking for PQ imperfections.

Eddie, I know your list was a joke. It's a pity about Spartucus, though.

Bladerunner, you just came across to me as a HD DVD hater in the other thread. Not so in this one though.

Quote:
nevermind.

What does an album put out by Nirvana have to do with this thread?

HD DVD titles i've been impressed with:
The Kingdom
King Kong
Aeon Flux
Chronicles of Riddick

with extras i've liked:
The Mummy
Blade Runner - its 5 disks
The Kingdom

TRANSFORMERS, V FOR VENDETTA, BATMAN BEGINS, SERENITY

I loved Stardust but it looked quite grainy to me compared to these four above. It could be that I have a 720p tv and Stardust only shows up great in 1080p.

Quote:
"Are you trying to say that "Kong" looks "harsh" to your eyes?"

Yeah I guess you could say that. Don't get me wrong - I do think it's a great transfer with lots of detail. But the effect tended to make the CGI look a bit more fake than it could be.

Stardust was the opposite end of the scale to me, looking rather soft and pillowy. I think this was the intended affect.

The one HD DVD that sold me on the format was King Kong...I darn near watched the whole movie in Best Buy one afternoon...and it was the first movie I bought after picking up my HD-A3. It started me on my little collection of 80 odd HD-DVD movies...

But the one HD-DVD, that if Toshiba had provided to each and every store to show off what HD-DVD could do, is the BBC version of Planet Earth...OMG...now that is what HD viewing is all about...no computer "enhancement"...just raw nature at it's best.

Oh and my favourite Blu-ray is The 5th Element...mind you I only own 3 of them

I like the Blade Runner 5-Disc set on HD DVD. The remaster looks great, although it's not the all-time best PQ, it's a MUCH improved transfer of a deserving movie and all the extras you get are phenominal. I love how they included the original theatrical version too.

The other HD DVD I really like is Planet Earth because it's just beautiful to look at. Also the Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift has some great PIP and other extras.

As far as picture quality there are several, most of which have already been mentioned.

Hey there bladerunner... FILM GRAIN is a natural part of cinematography, and is varying in degrees due to how the director intends for his image to look. It's just one part of how well the photographic quality ends up, along with resolution, color, contrast, motion elements, etc.

EXCERPT from the link above -

Film grain or granularity is the random optical texture of processed photographic film due to the presence of small grains of a metallic silver developed from silver halide that have received enough photons. Film grain is often considered an artistic effect, and can be found in some digital photo manipulation software such as Photoshop as something that can be added to an image after it is taken.


> Additional INFO - more explanatory (w/pics)
______________
-JIMI McLovin (the Voodoo Child)

[Post edited by Love Hendrix! on May 3, 2008]

hendrix,
where did i say anything about film grain? I know this already. but thanks anyway...

Sorry bladerunner... Must have been on another thread here recently where someone had made a complaint about visable film grain (and not you). Oh well, I'm sure the info (above) is beneficial to everyone.
______________
-JIMI McLovin (the Voodoo Child)

you and i could be the same person tim.

blade runnner suitcase edition....simply jaw dropping, matrix trilogy

Quote:
you and i could be the same person tim.

Bladerunner, you are one creepy dude.

i just watched "doom" (one of my five free for buying an hd-a35). i'll be honest--i opened it just so that i could watch rosamund pike. man, the movie sucked, sucked, sucked. terrible.

what's scary is that there are people out there who paid money for this in theatres, on dvd, and on hd dvd. people will buy it on blu-ray, too. wow.