Anybody else underwhelmed by Blu Ray ???

[velillen]

And then if you have a properly equipped sound system the LFE tracks and rear channel effects are much more pronounced than many DVD's are.

Unless its Master and Commander

 

[redgtxdi]

Vi Edit......You definitely won't hear any argument from me on sound. As I mentioned earlier, I think I was more impressed with the audio improvements than I was the video. There's a point when Alice is flying around in that plane where the thing sounded like it was flying all over my family room and I recall it being more noticeable than usual.

Another thought I have is that because the PQ on this set is so good on ANY material, I think regular broadcast 1080i TV looks REALLY good on my set already. I watch a lot of sports and motorsports and the color, contrast & clarity are jaw dropping sometimes so I wonder if that doesn't contribute some to the "less than astounding" difference not as much between 480p upscaled DVD's compared to BR as with the great handling of 1080i broadcast stuff that I watch that's already pretty darn nice. (shrug)

 

[HardcoreRobot]

i dunno, watching normal dvds on my setup is just painful to me now.

<--- not underwhelmed

 

[dpodblood]

You don't appreciate Blu Ray until you watch them for a while and get used to it. And then go back to DVD. They look dull and colorless in comparison.

Just putting one in and trying to expect it to be night and day different on a smaller screen (which a 47" I'm assuming you are using, is).

And then if you have a properly equipped sound system the LFE tracks and rear channel effects are much more pronounced than many DVD's are.

I had a different experience with BR entirely. I noticed the difference right away. IMO if you can't notice a dramatic difference between BR and regular DVD you are either blind, sitting too far away, or just watching a crappy transfer.

 

[redgtxdi]

OH and I should also say.........

The last DVD I watched upscaled before I bought the BR player was TRON Legacy. That movie was impressive even just in upscaled DVD!!!!!

I know that technically it would be better in BR as it would have more resolution available, but to think that it could look better to my eyes would be surprising. The upscaled DVD of T/L was very nice.

 

[vi edit]

Upscaling is a joke IMHO. You aren't adding any extra color, *true resolution*, or sharpness. Too many people get caught up in resolution and not the real improvement in Blu Rays - bitrate.

That being said, a high quality DVD can still look as good, if not better than a bad BR transfer. But it's still not going to beat an excellent BR release.

If you have access to a projector you need to check out a BR vs DVD on that and really see where the format starts to shine.

 

[gorb]

Upscaling is a joke IMHO. You aren't adding any extra color, *true resolution*, or sharpness. Too many people get caught up in resolution and not the real improvement in Blu Rays - bitrate.

That being said, a high quality DVD can still look as good, if not better than a bad BR transfer. But it's still not going to beat an excellent BR release.

If you have access to a projector you need to check out a BR vs DVD on that and really see where the format starts to shine.

Truth.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Personally, I suspect he has a few settings wrong for the video on his player still. I would double check that it is outputting the correct color-space for your TV (i.e. deep color and whiter-than-white if your TV supports it, the proper output resolution, and the proper refresh rate).

I also suspect that the Panasonic player has some issues. Really the "best" player on the market in terms of audio/video is the Oppo BDP-83SE. It has been tested by various places in which the actual HDMI output signals were verified against the input signals on the blu-ray disk (custom calibration disks were used) and it received perfect output results (i.e. the output did not vary from the source, testing 4:2:2 and 4:4:2 for Y, Cb, Cr values from 1-254 and RGB from 0-255). Many, MANY, players fail at this. They will do some strange things with the Y output. Take the Sony BDP-S570. The Sony actually adjusted the Y output down to 232 (when it received a signal of 255!!!!), which is blatantly wrong in MULTIPLE ways. The highest whiter-than-white signal it sends isn't even WHITE (which is 235 under the old standards). And forget about what it considers for white (i.e. when you give it 235), it actually gives a gray (224!!!!!).

These are kinds of things that a CNet reviewer just simply won't know. You are talking about people who can not even tell the different between a calibrated and uncalibrated TV, and you are expecting them to tell you what a good player is? The "good" player for them is one that makes their uncalibrated, middle or low end TV look "best" to their brains, which means it is doing all kinds of things at the output end which it shouldn't be doing to try and correct for their TV settings. This is not the player to use on a high quality, properly calibrated TV.

 

[fire400]

perhaps the entertainment world, indoors, has taken your brain and stretched its limits way too far.

time to think outside the panel and just go outside and enjoy nature, that is more 3D than watching three-D TV with the 3D glasses, plus you get the smell and the sunlight.

reliance on being overturned by movies is over rated. take a year off.

oh yeah, for sound, try enjoying the bass feedback with a sony Xplod or car sub. turn up the bass, all the way...

 

[Aikouka]

That being said, a high quality DVD can still look as good, if not better than a bad BR transfer. But it's still not going to beat an excellent BR release.

That's one of the things that tends to annoy me about Blu-Ray releases... you really have to look up reviews to find out whether the release is actually good lest you get Gladiator'd! Usually when I find an interesting blu-ray on sale (in a store), I will take out my phone and look it up to check the video/audio transfers.

 

[Anubis]

That's one of the things that tends to annoy me about Blu-Ray releases... you really have to look up reviews to find out whether the release is actually good lest you get Gladiator'd! Usually when I find an interesting blu-ray on sale (in a store), I will take out my phone and look it up to check the video/audio transfers.

i was always hesitant on buying BRs but since the orig glad release if its not at least Tier 1 i don't purchase it

 

[videopho]

Remember what DVD did to VHS in PQ
is now what BR did to DVD.

 

[vi edit]

Remember what DVD did to VHS in PQ
is now what BR did to DVD.

Maybe in nothing more than video quality in the most pure of instances but many of us were so overtaken by the additional benefits of DVD that it has biased our opinion on how revolutionary the DVD was.

You got a better picture, and one that stayed that way forever(baring scratches to the disk which were infuriating on rental). There was no tracking adjust.

Audio was a massive jump with true digital soundtracks and multi-channel discrete sounds.

You didn't have to rewind them when you were done

You had extras, bonus features, mutliple versions on the same track, ect.

Oh...and they were even easier to copy ()

Blu Ray on the other hand doesn't offer that added convenience and massive leap in function. If anything, they went backwards with miserably slow load times, firmware versions, BR live jacking around with things, ect.

I love the format at it's purest form, but the packaging and delivery leaves a lot to be desired.

 

[Kaspian]

T

As for bluray a good place to start might just be this thread over on AVS (warning large pictures
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=811102

Gives you an idea on a side by side comparison of the dvd vs blurays.

Thanks for the link to the side by side comparison thread.

 

[KeithTalent]

No, but there are definitely some underwhelming transfers; same goes for DVD really, it just seems to be easier to see a bad transfer on Blu-ray due to the resolution and the expectation created by the amazing quality of some discs. Of the 253 Blu-rays I own, I'd say half of them look absolutely fantastic and the remaining half goes anywhere from very good down to terrible (28 Days Later for example, which looks worse than the DVD; I know it is due to how it was filmed, but it still struck me as odd how it actually ended up looking worse than the DVD.).

I buy films that I like and do not worry too much about the PQ, unless I know it's a terrible transfer and a new one may be coming then I will wait and I never buy a Blu-ray just because it's supposed to have great PQ; for example I will never own Avatar as I very much dislike the film and do not care how good it looks on Blu.

It sounds like you are looking for eye candy though, so just go to the thread at AVS linked above and take your pick.

KT

 

[BurnItDwn]

47 inch at 4-5 feet you should be able to tell difference between bluray and dvd, but yea, it wouldn't be very obvious.

Jump up to a 60+ inch at 4-5 feet, or a 100+ inch at 8ish feet ... and the difference becomes quite distinct .... as others are saying.

As far as the sound, I only have a 5.1 setup (reciever can do dts 6.1, but that's worthless for a room only 10 feet wide), so I don't notice much of a difference ...
When I eventually upgrade my reciever and ahh 2 more speakers though, I expect the effects to sound better .... (room is 27 feet long, so 3 pairs of speakers makes sense) ...