What is best BD DVD for "wow" factor?

[Peter Hodgins]

A friend just bought a 1080p and Blu-ray player.
What is the best BD DVD to impress her with her new systems capability?
She has no audio ... just the tv speakers .... (so not interested in audio)
What Blu-ray DVD in your opinion should I get to show off the potential of her new system?

thanks.

[Michael Ragen]

Baraka.

[Craig Ryan]

I'd check out the IMAX sequences from The Dark Knight; the 35mm transfer was pretty disappointing actually, but the IMAX scenes are incredible and definitely reference material.

For pure picture quality, "How The West Was Won" is perhaps one of the best looking images I've seen.

Also, check out No Country For Old Men; I watch it all the time. The photography was simply amazing to start with, and the transfer was flawless IMHO.

2001: A Space Odyssey is worth checking out too.

[Craig Ryan]

Baraka.

As much as I wanted Baraka to be flawless...for me it could have been better. *Shrug*. Perhaps I've become a bit more obsessive than I should, but considering the 8k or whatever DI it had, I was a bit disappointed.

[Craig Ryan]

A friend just bought a 1080p and Blu-ray player.
What is the best BD DVD to impress her with her new systems capability?
She has no audio ... just the tv speakers .... (so not interested in audio)
What Blu-ray DVD in your opinion should I get to show off the potential of her new system?

thanks.

Should ask, what size screen is it? Most the qualms I have with certain releases won't look bad on smaller screens, say below 50". But on larger screens, the post sharpening, noise reduction is a lot more apparent to the trained eye. It seems that most studios are optimizing the picture quality for people who buy the smaller screens..thus the over sharpening since most people are sitting too far away from their screens...so those of us who invest in larger screens have to suffer I guess :sad:

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Over-sharpening of Blu-ray releases seems to be very popular as the vendors try to differentiate the Blu-ray versions from the DVD versions for the mass audience, most of whom sit more than 3 screen heights away from their screens.

I just wish someone would come up with a truly superior source for the ever improving display tech. Maybe something 4K, maybe call it RedRay, yeah, that sounds good... :devil:

[Kenneth Elkington]

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

It's an unflinchingly gorgeous film.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Baraka and The Dark Knight are two BD releases that really left me disappointed. The transfers were just not good. Could have been amazing, but they just are not. The studios just have not got Blu-Ray figured out. Not sure why, but they don't... Same thing happened with DVD, it took them years to finally get it right to where most releases use the format to at or very close to its full potential. We're seeing this all over again with Blu-Ray. Frustrating, since much of the same issues with BD are issues many people expressed concerns over with early DVD releases: Over-sharpening, aliasing, halos, etc.. The over-sharpening is probably not something that will go away anytime soon. In line with what Blair said, part of that is the studios are tailoring their mastering to look best on the most common display in use right now -- The 32~42" LCD HDTV, which most people view at a distance of 10~12ft. Quite honestly, Baraka and TDK look pretty damn good in that situation.

The Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy are some very good transfers - # 2 being the best transfer of the three, IMO. All the Pixar and Dreamworks releases are perfect, same with Fox/BlueSky's Horton, but being animated, they don't really show the potential in the same way. No Country for Old Men was a pretty good transfer. I watched one other one recently that I thought was a very good transfer, but it slips my mind at the moment...

[David Mullen ASC]

There's a lot of nice shots on the Blue-Ray of "Planet Earth" -- I've just watched the first four episodes. Stunning location photography, some of it in Super-16, some on the Varicam, not sure what camera all the helicopter photography used.

I also would vote for "How the West Was Won", ignoring the opticals in the movie that haven't aged as well as the non-duped footage.

[Michael Ragen]

Well I thought Baraka looked good on my crappy 26 inch 720p tv... Not nearly the same as when I saw it projected in 70mm though.

[Craig Ryan]

Well I thought Baraka looked good on my crappy 26 inch 720p tv... Not nearly the same as when I saw it projected in 70mm though.

No doubt; your setup is pretty much a sweet spot for the majority of the releases. On a 60" 1080p screen you'd notice all the processing though.

Jeff pretty much summed it up better than I did; we're going to have to wait patiently for the studios to "get it right" and full itilize the potential of 1080p on a 50GB dual layered disc. My guess is that the New Line release of the Lord of the Rings trilogy will be quite good; apparently it's been in the works for a while.

[Andrew Ceperley]

Wow, seeing that 'Baraka' was the first response just made my day...though, I'd have to say it really needs good sound. That soundtrack is magnificent.

'm quite saddened to hear its transfer is a disappointment (I haven't seen the BD yet)...it was one of the two movies on Blu Ray I was most looking forward to.

[Josh Negrin]

Wall-E is both a fantastic film and a fantastic transfer. Blu-ray.com gives "Baraka" the highest (5 out of 5) rating and gives the same rating to "I, Robot" and goes on to say that "I, Robot" is reference material. Gizmodo.com says owners of Blu-Ray aren't getting the full experience unless they own the Planet Earth collection. You can't go wrong with any of these.

[Craig Ryan]

Wall-E is both a fantastic film and a fantastic transfer. Blu-ray.com gives "Baraka" the highest (5 out of 5) rating and gives the same rating to "I, Robot" and goes on to say that "I, Robot" is reference material. Gizmodo.com says owners of Blu-Ray aren't getting the full experience unless they own the Planet Earth collection. You can't go wrong with any of these.

Yeah, the general consensus tends to be that Baraka is reference quality, however I just don't agree. Take a look at the thread on AVSforum.com here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1082785&highlight=baraka

There are plenty of screens showing the effects of over processing. Considering the 8k scan, it's a real shame.

[Lewis-M Soucy]

You get the most of your experience with CGI films at the moment. They're just perfect for HD. Ratatouille and Wall-E are the 2 best I can think of...

[Justin Kirchhoff]

BladeRunner actually looks pretty amazing. All the 65mm photography looks absolutely amazing...you know, the shots that you thought were animated?

[Paul Leeming]

No one's mentioned the obvious one for this forum.... create your own BD demonstration disc with pristine Red footage!!!! :)

That way you have full control over the mastering process and KNOW it's reference quality....

HTH

Paul

[kidrobot]

I still haven't watched a BD movie on my PS3/46" Bravia setup. I'll wait either for 'Let the right one in' (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1139797/) or 'Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain' (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0211915/), which ever makes it first. Both films are visually amazing. I never paid attention to lighting in a movie, until I saw 'Let the right one in'. It's just unreal how good it looks at times.

[PatC]

+1 on Baraka/and 2001: A Space Odyssey

[Jeff Kilgroe]

People give the Baraka Blu-Ray too much credit and I don't understand why. Amazing film, but some of the aliasing and pixel artifacts in spots are just unacceptable. The edge sharpening is over the top. It's been discussed here in the OT section quite a bit too. Same with The Dark Knight... Even the scenes shot on IMAX. The opening shot moving toward the building when the window gets shot out looks amazing on many TVs. But the over-sharpening and aliasing is very obvious on my 71" 1080p DLP, even at about 14ft. away where I tend to sit.

I think to date, one of the worst transfers I've seen is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The totally over the top edge sharpening that causes pixellation in the opening shots in the desert is just completely inexcusable. So is the film itself, but that's another discussion altogether.

For me, Blu-Ray brings a lot of possibilities to home theatre and I was originally excited over the format more so for its audio abilities than the video aspect. Unfortunately, it's one more area where the studios can't seem to get it right. Most films suffer from lackluster surround mixes, once again tailored to sound best on $250 box-set surround hardware. It's been this way for years with DVD, every now and then a true gem will appear (attack of the clones), but most titles just do little to exploit any audio abilities these formats have to offer. The sound encoding on The Dark Knight was pretty decent, but the remastered audio mix for the home release is kinda dull compared to the theatrical release mix. It's also a complete pain in the ass to navigate the BD menu to turn on HD audio, which is practically a hidden feature.

Anyway, enough ranting...

And Planet Earth is amazing! There is some compression artifacting and overprocessing, but it's just an amazing piece of work. So many different cameras used, many of them with capabilities less than that of Blu-Ray, so there's that to consider. But a great BD set to own.