Grading Blu-ray on the eve of its third anniversary

I still prefer to buy DVDs (especially previously viewed at Blockbuster!), but unless the movie is a high quality title like The Dark Knight, Akira, or eventually Star Trek....Blu-ray is still TOO expensive, and much of the other things James mentioned above are all true. I won't start stocking up on BD titles until the prices drop down a bunch.

Still too expensive in my opinion, and I don't have the patience for the extremely slow load times, not to mention the inability to stop at a point on the disc and resume later immediately at the same point. I have an Oppo 983 and a pro-calibrated Pioneer Kuro, 50". The Oppo upscales with the ABT chip solution to a beautiful 1080P. At a seating distance of 8 to 10 feet, the slight improvement in picture quality of Blue does not justify the large price increase, IMO. Combine the costs and load times/no resume issues with the marginal improvement (on my setup), and Blue doesn't cut it for me. I guess there are a lot of consumers out there with inferior or poorly set-up home theater systems. Blue Ray probably looks like a marked inprovement for them. Also, if I had a larger display or projection system, then Blue would surely begin to show it's benefits. I realize very few will pay the price for a DVD player like the Oppo, nor tweak out their system and have their monitor calibrated, but if you do, it becomes hard at a reasonable viewing distance to justify the costs of Blue. I constantly have friends who are blown away by my picture quality, and always, without knowing, remark how good the Hi def looks. Most are shocked when they find out it is regular DVD.

John

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I guess there are a lot of consumers out there with inferior or poorly set-up home theater systems. Blue Ray probably looks like a marked inprovement for them.

And representing the defense, I would argue that the better one's home-theater setup, the more likely one will notice the improvements in true high-definition playback as opposed to simulated upscaling. I would say that it is only on inferior equipment that one would notice few or no improvements.

I have had the opportunity to compare Blu-ray and HD DVD discs with their standard-definition counterparts in hundreds of instances now, side-by-side, played in separate machines for almost instant analysis (using a Toshiba HD-A35 for upscaling the SDs), and in no case have I ever experienced a comparison where the high-definition disc wasn't significantly superior in picture and in sound.

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I have an Oppo 983 and a pro-calibrated Pioneer Kuro, 50". The Oppo upscales with the ABT chip solution to a beautiful 1080P. At a seating distance of 8 to 10 feet, the slight improvement in picture quality of Blue does not justify the large price increase.

With this I can wholly agree. Since the recommended viewing distance for high definition is 1.5 to 1.75 times the diagonal size of one's screen, a person with a 50" set should be sitting between 75" and 87.5" away. If one is sitting at 8 to 10 feet, that would be 96" to 120" from the set and much too far away to notice the significant improvements I mentioned above.

John

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[Post edited by John J. Puccio on May 16, 2009 - CDT 1:37 AM]

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[Post edited by antennahead on May 16, 2009 - CDT 1:39 AM]

John,

Please repost your reply. I accidentally deleted it when I went to reply to you. I'm sorry.

John

LOL, not sure I remember exactly what I said now..... butter fingers

I think it was something along the lines of Blue Ray being "substantially" better is a subjective comment, as to the percentage amount of better. As we've covered, I sit about 10 feet from the 50" Kuro. In my opinion, using the Oppo 983 and upscaling to 1080P, I would only say Blue Ray would yield about a 10% improvement in picture quality for me. I think people misunderstand my argument. Blue ray is DEFINITELY superior to DVD, with the improvements most noticed the larger the screen goes and or the closer one sits to the screen. People are amazed at the quality picture I get with my combination... easily equaling Directv HD "lite". The problem right now for me John, is in many cases I can get a movie I want for under $10, with many titles in my collection being purchased for $5 to $7.50. These are good movies, not bargin bin junk. Does most of the public get as good a DVD picture as my system does? I doubt it...... not saying that to brag, just that most won't spend the money on a player like the Opoo nor to calibrate a display. I think when this group buys Blue and plays it through their 42" monitor sitting 5 feet away they do get a better picture than a regular DVD on a $50 player. I am all about higher quality, and one day will probably add Blue ray to my collection, but right now, I think they are still priced too high, especially in this economy. BTW, thanks for the great reviews you do, I have been a fan for years, and have been reading the site for years as well. Glad to see you haven't abandoned SD DVD reviews also, like some sites!

John

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[Post edited by antennahead on May 16, 2009 - CDT 3:12 AM]

SSSSSSLLLLLLOOOOOOWWWWW loading times and subpar navigations on a lot of titles. Some studios figured it out, and some have a lot of work to do. WB, Universal, and Paramount tend to be my favorites, but mayber that's because of the other format. Speed has improved on the new machines. What drives me crazy is there is only a handful of titles that really require or deserve BD. Some not all of the upconverted remasted stuff is woth buying. The Star Trek stuff does look a lot better. You can actually see the strings!

The thing that kills me with blu-ray is the varying degree of transfers. There are some amazing looking transfers (Youth Without Youth, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Lives of Others, Wall-E) while others are just bland almost dvd quality (Batman Begins, Michael Clayton). That's what I wish would become more stable. Warner Brothers almost always disappoints me. I hope they get the Lord of the Rings transfer right and don't over manipulate the image.

Which is another thing (I think) that adds to people saying Blu-Ray is only marginally better than DVD. They see a bad transfer, which can look like a DVD quality image, and think that's how all Blu-Ray's look. Another thing I've noticed (I don't know how prominent this is) is that some HDTV's have a built in noise reduction filter. With mine I am able to turn it off, but other HDTV's you can't. So essentially you have a permanent filter that tries to take out the film grain (something I love. I can't think of another home format that allowed me to see the film grain like Blu-Ray does. ) but really it winds up flattening the image and blurring textures. Mostly skin textures. So even HDTV's can work against Blu-Ray making it look like a DVD.

I will admit that when I first got my Blu-Ray player I was worried I wouldn't notice a big difference after hearing people say they couldn't. Especially since I have limited funds and was hoping I didn't just wastes my money. Once I hooked it up I saw a huge improvement in picture quality. Then even more so once I tweaked all the visual settings. More or less turning off all the things that degraded the image from my HDTV.

Then I noticed the audio (Which is the main reason I wanted Blu-Ray) and I was dumbfounded and giddy with how it sounded. Now I'm so used to Blu-Ray audio that when I watched a DVD recently the sound just disappointed me. It was just too hollow sounding, especially the bass.

Which leads into a thought I had. Audiophiles complain about how bad MP3s sound because of their low bit-rate. So when you think of a 5.1 Dolby Digital bit-rate of 640 Kbps. That's for 6 speakers. So divide those two and you have 106.6 Kbps for each speaker...ya not perfect logic. It is amusing (if there is any truth to that logic) that 5.1 Dolby Digital has close to the same bit-rate as a 256 Kbps encoded Mp3 does. It would explain the hollow sound. But this is probably just bad logic.

As for the long load times and no player book-marking. I've adapted to that. It annoyed me at first, but being the human I am, I've adapted to it. I click the player on a few minutes before I'm ready to watch the film (if it's one of the studios with a bunch of previews or what have you). As for stopping in the middle of a film I don't have a work around. I just got used to having to go through the menu again. I try not to do it too much of course.

Haven't had any playback issues with my Panasonic. So I can't say much on that. I looked at a lot of reviews and opinions on players. So I knew to stay away from some Samsung models after hearing a bunch of bad playback stories involving them. While other brands took too long to load or couldn't handle the hi-def image very well.

I guess the one thing I know about Blu-Ray for sure is that it seems to be a mine field at the moment. A lot of things are working against the consumer to get a good picture. From the HDTV's to the players to the Blu-Ray transfers themselves.

Oh and as for price I average about 10 to 20 dollars for each Blu-Ray I buy. You just have to look for good deals/sales/promo codes. I shop online more than at the stores. Also patience is a plus. Waiting a bit after the film has come out for the price to drop helps.

I also like the scratch resistance of Blu-Rays. Which is nice if you rent from Netflix. I haven't seen a scratch on a Blu-Ray yet from shipping. Unlike the DVDs I've rented. A lot of older DVDs are horrible. As I'm sure everyone has a story on that front.

I'm not a professional in this area. It's just observations of mine from goofing around with my Blu-Ray player. I could be wrong on a lot of things.

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[Post edited by Revolution21X on May 16, 2009 - CDT 1:48 PM]

I agree with 90 percent of what James says. It is a HORRIBLY OVERHYPED product by people such as Bill Hunt on Digital Bits. When I first read about it I was excited....as much as I was by the announcements of DVD. BUT....in practice, the results are often barely discernible. I have a Mitsubishi 73 inch DLP and also a Magnavox 30 inch LCD. Blurays are virtually indistinguishable on both....most of them. I have a HD-DVD set as well and cannot tell the difference between Bluray and HD-DVD. It takes an INTERMINABLE time to load....worse than Bill Gates' PCs. And yes, it freezes occasionally or hiccups on certain discs. The BD-LIVE (for which I bought a SECOND player) is the most useless feature of all. I am so turned off by it that I never bother to look at it anymore. The sound may be slightly better than DVDs but not enough to waste money upon. The much VAUNTED pre-debut advantage over HD-DVD of having sooooooo much extra space has come to nought. There aren't that many extras on the damn things and I suspect that they need all the extra gigs for the movie. They may need the 500 gigs of the newly developed method posted here recently. As James says.....the difference between VHS and LaserDisc was phenomenal. And the difference between LaserDisc and DVD (once they worked out that first generation wobble when the camera panned up) is even MORE phenomenal. BUT....the difference between Bluray and DVD is negligible. I suspect it will forever remain a "niche" product and will survive only as long as the companies are willing to take a "bath" on it. With Sony losing money for the first time in 14 years....I wouldn't count on it being around forever. A good upconverting player produces almost identical results. It is a GROSSLY overhyped product. Granted, I am a disappointed lover who feels rejected by this latest High-Tech hyperbole. For someone who is buying their FIRST DVD....it might be exciting.....but for most of my friends and myself it is just a marketing gimmick.

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...others are just bland almost dvd quality (Batman Begins....)

--Revolution 21X

"Batman Begins" in high definition is "bland"? Oh, dear.

I guess it's all in how you look at it. As I've said over and over, unless you have both a SD player and a BD player to play an SD and counterpart BD disc side by side for almost instant comparisions, you will never be able to see how much more improved even the poorest BD discs are over their SD counterparts.

On the other hand, in my experience almost everybody I know with a high-def television sits much too far away from it to appreciate any differences or improvements in BD (9-10 ft. from a 50" set is way, way too far away, almost twice the recommended distance for optimal HD viewing, but it's how most people I know do their television and movie watching). So be it. I only write up what I see here, and it's becoming ever more painful for me to watch movies in standard definition.

John