Blu-Ray (original) (raw)

May 13th, 2012

05:54 pm - Blu-RayI just got my first Blu-Ray disc, Terminator 2. My reactions to it as technology:• A note in the package warns that if the disc is newer than my player, I might need to get a software update for it to play properly. Not a problem in this case, but it could be in the future.• The player tried to connect to the Internet when I started playing the disk. When it failed, I had to go through some extra steps to start the movie.• The video quality isn't noticeably better on my TV than DVD is. Maybe it would be if I had two identical sets side by side, but I don't really care.• This isn't specific to Blu-Ray, but why are so many movies on disc produced so that if the music and special effects are at a reasonable volume level for a home, the dialogue sounds whispered?Wherever I have a choice, I'll stick with DVD.Current Music: Judgment DayTags: tech, tv

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	From:billroper Date:May 13th, 2012 11:45 pm (UTC) (Link)

Are you running the sound through your home stereo? If so, do you have a center speaker? If not, is there a setting that will emulate a center speaker or, alternatively, which will set a preference for speech or dialogue on your TV or stereo?

The problem is that the music and special effects are strongly coded for stereo, but the speech is strongly coded for a center speaker. If you don't have a center speaker or the center speaker is balanced too low, you'll have trouble hearing the dialogue.

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	From:madfilkentist Date:May 14th, 2012 12:53 am (UTC) (Link)

Maybe that's it. I'm using my stereo for sound but there's no center speaker. I'll look at the audio settings on the disc.

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	From:lisande Date:May 14th, 2012 06:20 am (UTC) (Link)

We have a Blu-Ray player for about a year now, and we think carefully about which movie is worth having as a Blu-Ray. So far we've found that animated movies are always worth the higher costs of a Blu-Ray, "normal" movies aren't unless they have a strong emphasis on the pictures (like Lord of the Rings).

And old movies aren't worth it because the technology just wasn't what it is today.

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	From:madfilkentist Date:May 14th, 2012 09:36 am (UTC) (Link)

Terminator 2 was from the $5 rack, so cost wasn't a problem.

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	From:lisande Date:May 15th, 2012 08:46 pm (UTC) (Link)

Agreed. :)

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| From:eyalmozes Date:May 14th, 2012 01:02 pm (UTC) | | | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | (Link) | |

And old movies aren't worth it because the technology just wasn't what it is today.

That's interesting. I don't own a Blu-ray player, so I can't comment from experience; but friends of mine who have seen Metropolis on Blu-ray say it really is a noticeable improvement over the DVD.

Of course, the question is what exactly you mean by "old movies". For movies from the 1980s and 1990s, you're probably right. But for movies from the 1910s thru the 1960s, probably even the 1970s, the analog film that was used then actually had an extremely high resolution, even higher than the best digital video technology of today. The high resolution was wasted on the projection equipment available at the time; but it makes sense that these films might gain a lot from being viewed with the high-resolution technology we have today.

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	From:madfilkentist Date:May 14th, 2012 01:15 pm (UTC) (Link)

Digital movies in theaters are a 21st-century phenomenon. I don't know what their resolution is, but I'd expect that it's even higher than Blu-Ray. Digitizing analog film of any era without loss requires extremely high resolution; again, I don't have the numbers right at hand, but archiving experts have noted that digitizing film at full resolution is an expensive proposition even with today's terabyte disk drives.

It's possible that the difference is more noticeable with old black-and-white movies because they have high contrast. JPEG compression is optimized for natural color. Artifacts in JPEG are much more noticeable with bitonal images, and movie compression uses similar techniques.

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	From:lisande Date:May 15th, 2012 08:51 pm (UTC) (Link)

Right, I should have defined "old". As Gary was talking about Terminater 2, my mind was set in the 1980s. :)

Really old movies can be completely different, I haven't seen one of those on DVD yet. I just got an old 1950s movie, but I decided for DVD and I was absolutely satisfied with the quality - there's no need for more. A co-worker always calls it the GE-standard (Good Enough). :)

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	From:ron_newman Date:May 14th, 2012 10:05 am (UTC) (Link)

Why did it need to connect to the Internet? Does it try to download trailers or other supplementary material?

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	From:stevemb Date:May 14th, 2012 11:18 am (UTC) (Link)

I'm guessing it has to do with "A note in the package warns that if the disc is newer than my player, I might need to get a software update for it to play properly."

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	From:madfilkentist Date:May 14th, 2012 01:09 pm (UTC) (Link)

Since I didn't connect, I don't know, but it implied that I'd get better, or at least different, menu options if I were connected.

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| From:eyalmozes Date:May 14th, 2012 12:50 pm (UTC) | | | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | (Link) | |

Wherever I have a choice, I'll stick with DVD.

Are there any cases in which you don't have a choice? I'm not aware of any movies available on Blu-ray and not on DVD; are there any?

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	From:madfilkentist Date:May 14th, 2012 01:09 pm (UTC) (Link)

I don't know of any today, but it's likely there will be in the future.

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	From:sodyera Date:May 15th, 2012 03:41 pm (UTC) (Link)

I have TWO(2) Blu-Ray DVDs and the computer runaround associated with getting a playable DVD hard copy for "STAR TREK" was SO bad that I spent money on a strictly DVD-format copy, which plays with no problems. I'm with you, DVD all the way.

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