Marty Chinn
Member
I say soundbars are a waste of money. Better to use that towards a real setup.
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Holy crap do BluRays look good
- Thread starter ClayKavalier
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Always-honest
Banned
Yes, i agree.
Rec 709 and h264 are holding us back though, so even disregarding resolution ... we needed a new format and displays anyway.
Just frame 4K as a bonus on top of the more important IQ improvements the move to UHD will yield.
Robot Pants
Member
Can't wait for 4K blu ray
Who's been claiming iTunes is better?
Unknown Soldier
Member
Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio are both mathematically lossless, though they reach that goal in different ways. There's an argument about if DTS-HDMA is actually truly lossless but that's an argument for another day.
The real reason people think DTS tracks sound better than Dolby tracks, on movies which offer both, is that the DTS track tends to be mixed with higher surround and LFE channel levels. This was a common thing on DVDs which offered both types of audio track. These days Blu-rays only offer one or the other, because as I said they are mathematically lossless anyways so you don't need to waste bits duplicating lossless audio tracks.
It's more likely what you're hearing then is simply that every movie is mixed differently. Some movies feature LFE channels that shake your house, like Godzilla. Others have positively anemic LFE channels, Avatar is one notorious example of this.
Two recent example where the difference in how the movie was mixed is quite apparent are Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Avengers: Age of Ultron. TWS has earthshaking LFE in some parts and excellent use of surround channels. AoU has neither and you can easily hear the difference if you are bored enough to watch them back-to-back.
It's all about the guys who made the movie, by the time it reaches your amp it's been long after the sound engineers were doing their magic during post-production. If your amp is properly configured and your sound system calibrated, you're hearing exactly what the sound engineers intended. There's nothing more you can (or should) do, that's just how the movie was intended to sound.
The Fury (Arrow 2K restoration)
Cinema Paradiso (Arrow 2K restoration)
Y Tu Mama Tambien (4K remastered)
Aliens. Aliens has been accused of being "tealed". While that's true to some extent, the color grading isn't that far off from a nice 70mm print I saw earlier this year.
Playtime (4K restoration)
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (4K restoration)
Pacific Rim
Lawrence of Arabia
Tron Legacy
Anything Pixar and modern day Disney
SunhiLegend
Member
Absolutely. Watched Dark Knight on blu ray earlier today and it looked fantastic, IMAX scenes in particular looked so goddamn amazing. I wish more movies shot in that format.
If you spend good money on a display, don't settle for less. You're not maximizing your investment. It's like spending money on a high end gaming PC and not maximizing the graphics settings to be optimal and just going with default medium settings. That would be foolish. Streaming has its time and place and there are times when I settle for it, but I didn't spend this much money on a home theater to watch major releases using inferior content.
skLaFarebear
Member
Fate/Zero on blu ray is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Expensive, but the quality of the show/animation/sound work/etc. in blu ray quality was so worth it.
Jin
Member
Braveheart. The clarity makes it look like it was filmed recently.
DJ_Lae
Member
I kind of figured they were, which is why I assumed my amplifier maybe handles the Master Audio signal better - or it's mixed a little louder, or something. I could have sworn I have a couple of movies that have both and I switched away from the Dolby track as it sounded a little weaker.
I can't see why they would be mixed differently, though.
PrimaNocta
Member
Damn you OP!!! You had to create this thread right before Black Friday huh? My wallet hates you right now.
Septimus Prime
Member
I don't disagree, but it's still far and away better than TV speakers and good for people who don't have space or don't want to setup discrete speakers.
Gnome Scat
Member
Fury Road was so beautiful it brought a tear to my eye.
jetsetnickradio
Member
Yes, the BD release of Akira is stunning!
It's been a while since I watched my Casino Royale BD but I remember it looking pretty good. I was taken back by the heavy film grain the first time I watched it, but I later realized that was intentional and not a flaw.
Wowfunhappy
Member
And this is why I think 4K is stupid. If you're willing to up the bandwidth required for streaming, you might as well stay at 1080p for the same benefit.
PhoncipleBone
Banned
Not many discs have both Dolby HD lossless and DTS-HD lossless, so it will be hard to test the differences. I know on some older DVDs the DTS and Dolby tracks sometimes had different mixes, like U-571. The LFE levels on the DTS track on that were cooked compared to the Dolby. But it was glorious.
AstroNut325
Member
For the people just beginning to scratch the surface of Blu-Ray capabilities, I very strongly recommend that you invest into a budget sound system. Here are some examples:
Receiver: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HZE2WW8/?tag=neogaf0e-20
Speaker option 1: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001AVRD62/?tag=neogaf0e-20
Speaker option 2: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001XURGSK/?tag=neogaf0e-20
Speaker option 3: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IK8I9K2/?tag=neogaf0e-20
You haven't experienced Blu-Ray until you see it on 50"+ TVs and a surround sound system. That is an experience that is truly jaw dropping.
Receiver: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HZE2WW8/?tag=neogaf0e-20
Speaker option 1: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001AVRD62/?tag=neogaf0e-20
Speaker option 2: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001XURGSK/?tag=neogaf0e-20
Speaker option 3: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IK8I9K2/?tag=neogaf0e-20
You haven't experienced Blu-Ray until you see it on 50"+ TVs and a surround sound system. That is an experience that is truly jaw dropping.
Unknown Soldier
Member
Blu-rays of TV anime are super good at letting you see the low original production resolution.
You wanna see something amazing, check out remastered films like Akira on Blu. Or anime films made in the modern era for theatrical release, the Makoto Shinkai films will blow your mind.
The Place Promised in Our Early Days
5 Centimeters Per Second
Children Who Chase Lost Voices
The Garden of Words
Yeah I love my plasma
Though that brings up a good point. While 4k may not matter in most viewing situations, the temporal resolution is inherently higher. So they're should be improved motion handling for LCD / OLED on those grounds.
Marty Chinn
Member
I'm not sure I buy the space argument since you can buy compact speakers. I've had a 5.1 setup even in a bedroom. I even had one in my dorm room at college.
Warm Machine
Member
I have the Yamaha YSP-3300 soundbar. It is pretty excellent as soundbars go. My room cannot support even 5.1 due to its seating orientation so the soundbar was the best option.
the_sun_king
Member
Word. TDK was the first Blu-ray I bought when the medium was new and my jaw dropped whenever those IMAX format scenes came on. And I'd seen TDK in an IMAX theatre!
Sound bars have their time and place. I gave my parents one of my old home theaters, a full 5.1 set up, and I installed it as well. It was too complicated for 2 retirement age people to use and they rarely if ever utilized it. So I replaced it with a decent sound bar and they use it every day and enjoy it. Sometimes you can over do it, even with good intentions!
We were watching Harry Potter some time back, and I brought the PS4 out to the dining room because there's a decent sized if not spectacular HDTV out there. My mother could notice the quality difference between the TV broadcasts/streaming and the blu-ray copy almost immediately, and she's not one to usually have an eye for this stuff. It really does make all the difference in the world.
Sometimes, the sound bar is the best solution for the setup. Especially if the people aren't audiophilies. or accustom to technology. When my parents make the jump to an HDTV, I will likely suggest a soundbar solution for them simply because it's simpler than explaining and putting a 5.1 setup for them. Also requires me to do less tech support over the phone.
Sometimes, the sound bar is the best solution for the setup. Especially if the people aren't audiophilies. or accustom to technology. When my parents make the jump to an HDTV, I will likely suggest a soundbar solution for them simply because it's simpler than explaining and putting a 5.1 setup for them. Also requires me to do less tech support over the phone.
Speaking of which, there are some really good blu-rays of old shows that they found the original 35mm for.
Outlaw Star:
Record of Lodoss War:
Of course, late 90s/early 2000s anime was CREATED at a low resolution in the infancy of digital production, meaning there's almost no way they could make a blu-ray out of it without upscaling the shit out of it. An oversight that plagued a lot of stuff from the advent of using computers to create shows, since there was a max resolution they worked at instead of using actual film.
....
are they really that bad? I haven't watched a Blu-ray from the disc in years. I just rip them and put them in Kodi
DVDFab and MakeMKV
The problem with DVDFab is the government went after them, their latest versions wont let you rip AACS locked blu-rays, bunch of bullshit. I have an older version that still works though.
Because the theater going experience is bad, especially for big movies like that. Between assholes on their goddamn phones, between assholes talking the whole movie and most movie theaters wont do shit about it.
I know right, for mine I have to sit on a bicycle to spin the drive around.
which is A) very sad B) unfortunate because streaming vs Blu-ray isn't even close.
And when it is close most of us are on bandwidth caps anyway and its only getting worse before it gets better.
Maybe some of the earliest ones, but most of the ones in my collection either start playing the movie automatically, or you can press square/menu to bring up the menu and start playing after the usual logos.
Death Metalist
Member
Yup, most animation films especially when it comes to Disney or Pixar always shine on blu especially in 3D. However, that goes for films too. These are just very few examples from my favorite blus. *All images are 1080p in their original size*
2001
Interstellar
Mad Max: Fury Road
Gravity
Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro
Long story short, if you have a TV that is worth a damn and a home theater setup then what the fuck are you doing streaming? Unless you want to save money or watch something on the quick but other then that it's always BLU ALL THE WAY.
2001
Interstellar
Iron Man
The Seventh Seal
Taxi Driver
Lawrence of Arabia
Samsara
Mad Max: Fury Road
Gravity
The Terminator
The Twilight Zone
Sunshine
Mary Poppins
The Lion King
The Evil Dead
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro
Long story short, if you have a TV that is worth a damn and a home theater setup then what the fuck are you doing streaming? Unless you want to save money or watch something on the quick but other then that it's always BLU ALL THE WAY.
AVS Forum comparisons, mostly.
Skyfall
Django Unchained
Argo
Interstellar (Vudu actually came out a bit ahead in this one. rip amazon though)
I mean, it's not exactly a giant difference in any circumstance, but it doesn't seem like Vudu is a particularly standout performer compared to the competition, aside from offering 7.1 audio.
Unknown Soldier
Member
Speaking of which, I picked up the BD set for Cowboy Bebop awhile back but haven't had a chance to pop it in and check it out. I'll need to do that soonish.
TV anime today is still made mostly at sub-HD resolutions, that's the nature of their production pipelines I guess. The budgets that TV animes are made at are amazing in how small they are relative to what you actually get to watch.
It's actually funny how easy to see that most TV anime uses sub-HD elements by watching Crunchyroll's 1080p streams, the credits overlaid over OPs and EDs are always full resolution but the animation itself clearly isn't.
TheChewyWaffles
Member
How do you preserve subs when ripping them into your MKV's? I use stuff like MakeMKV but can't seem to get my subs to ever work right.
Wowfunhappy
Member
iTunes 1080p is pretty darn great for my money. They aren't BluRays, but for 4-7gb, they're pretty darn impressive. And they're a heck of a lot better than Netflix.
Although, the main reason I buy stuff from iTunes is because of how easily it can be decrypted into un-DRM'd formats.
Wowfunhappy
Member
Lol, why on earth do they offer 1080p streams then? They ought to be offering higher-bitrate streams at native resolution. Especially considering that they're a streaming service that specializes in anime.
I snagged WoZ from Walmart's 2014 post Black Friday sale leftovers, for the princely sum of just $3 and as you say, the restoration they did on it is truly stunning, and despite being from 1939, the movie holds up very well too. It has many great moments, such as Judy Garland's "Somewhere over the rainbow" rendition and the Witch skywriting "Surrender Dorothy" is super-cool. Not sure about Lion's OTT solo in the Emerald City, though.
Earlier this year I went to a TCM cinema screening (as have lifetime pass to my downtown theater) and it was atrocious, with horribly faded colors and poor sound...
Using Amazon reviews (I search for blu), I've been pretty lucky avoiding poor video transfers, except for Carrie; holy hell, you could use the grain in that print to sandpaper satan's ass! Thankfully Christine was fine (just recently went on general release), with some reasonable extras.
supernormal
Member
Honestly the only reason I pay the high internet prices on my country is so I could stream at the best quality possible (mostly for shows not available on blu ray yet) and even that looks pretty bad compared to disc. I could see the awful macro-blocking from a mile away specially in a dark scene.
The thing is that for most people that really isn't that important. My girlfriend watches Netflix on her iPad at barely 480p with her 2Mbps connection and she couldn't be happier. Even if you had a really good connection the streams available are just not comparable at all the quality of blu rays. Sad to think that everything is going the way of streaming pretty much stagnating the quality of the actual media much like mp3s vs CDs.
The thing is that for most people that really isn't that important. My girlfriend watches Netflix on her iPad at barely 480p with her 2Mbps connection and she couldn't be happier. Even if you had a really good connection the streams available are just not comparable at all the quality of blu rays. Sad to think that everything is going the way of streaming pretty much stagnating the quality of the actual media much like mp3s vs CDs.
I'm not saying it's bad, that isn't what I was responding to. Just that VUDU is on average the best online service in terms of A/V quality.
I remember not knowing what the big deal about blurays was until I purchased a PS3 and picked up a few cheap movies along with it. I don't even recall what I got, but I remember being floored by the visual and audio quality. It's the only reason I invested in good soundbar with a separate subwoofer, and why I am finicky about TV's.
Edit: and listen to JeffZero, the Game of Thrones blurays are amazing. The quality is so far beyond what's on-air or on HBO Now.
Edit: and listen to JeffZero, the Game of Thrones blurays are amazing. The quality is so far beyond what's on-air or on HBO Now.
Star Trek TNG's Blu-Ray remaster is a thing of beauty. Game of Thrones looks fantastic too, as is expected. I own those two shows (all seven seasons of TNG; all four currently-released Blu-Ray seasons of Thrones) as well as Star Trek (2009), Star Trek Into Darkness, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. They all look so damned good.
Death Metalist
Member
Indeed it is. Here's just a small example of how much they do to remaster a film or show depending on what they have of course.
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