I’m surprised at the lack of talk regarding High Definition films.
We took the plunge and decided to go for HD-DVD as it is cheaper and at the moment is superior to Blu Ray. We recently got a Toshiba HD E1 and it is pretty sweet. It was for £230 and is well worth the money. It’s upscaling capabilities are fucking awesome. Coupled with our HD-TV, watching the Kill Bill: Volume 1 DVD on it for example, was like a whole new experience. There is a lot more detail, there are more colours and it’s more vibrant.
Thus far, I haven’t got very many HD-DVD’s. I have Superman and King Kong (2005), the latter of which looks absolutely breathtaking. There aren’t that many films out in the HD format, but it looks promising. At the moment, I can’t afford to buy loads of HD’s and particularly not of those films I already have on DVD. They cost between £15-£30!! But it’s great watching my old DVD’s on it.
So has anybody got into HD/Blu Ray? What are your impressions?
I have a Toshiba XA2 and love it. So far I have:
American Werewolf in London
A Scanner Darkly
The Breakfast Club
Casino
Children of Men
Clerks II
Dog Day Afternoon
Enter the Dragon
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Forbidden Planet
NIN: Beside You in Time
The Fountain
The Matrix Trilogy
The Road Warrior
The Thing
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Can’t wait to get The Whole Bloody Affair and Grindhouse on HD DVD.
[quote=“Baby Stomper”]
I have a Toshiba XA2 and love it. So far I have:
Casino
The Matrix Trilogy
[/quote]
I wouldn’t mind having those two. I don’t think they’re even released here. The catalogue so far in the UK for HD-DVD’s isn’t very big. I want to get Superman 2 (Donner cut), Full Metal Jacket, Superman Returns and Batman Begins. The others I either have on DVD or are just crap films.
I dunno…I’ve been debating whether or not to buy a HD-DVD player. I’ll probably just stick with regular DVDs.
Me too, I’m gonna stick to the regular dvds. I have a HD-TV but I don’t feel the need of HD-DVD or Blu Ray. But we already started a discussion about Blu Ray, which makes us turn to this general question about HD-DVD and all. Kinda lazy to look for the link tonight, but if you wanna look for more discussion, Ify, look for that other topic. 
Damn, I searched, but I didn’t see another topic. Oh well. Now we have a more general High Definition one.
i think its gonna be a flash in the pan like laser discs.
the thing is, an HD player is not enough, then you need an HD tV and a new HD surround sound system. you do the math…
my problem with HD is, that although it looks great, it looks kinda horrible with old movies. there’s only so and so much you can get out of old source material. look at 90% of the spaghetti westerns on DVD. they already look horrible on DVD…
it sure kicks ass to see a modern film on HD, but to me, part of DVD’s attraction is to collect old and classic films in acceptable quality knowing that not too much more improvement is possible as those products don’t even reach DVD’s quality anyway
[quote=“Sebastian”]
the thing is, an HD player is not enough, then you need an HD tV and a new HD surround sound system. you do the math…
my problem with HD is, that although it looks great, it looks kinda horrible with old movies. there’s only so and so much you can get out of old source material. look at 90% of the spaghetti westerns on DVD. they already look horrible on DVD…
it sure kicks ass to see a modern film on HD, but to me, part of DVD’s attraction is to collect old and classic films in acceptable quality knowing that not too much more improvement is possible as those products don’t even reach DVD’s quality anyway
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yea i personally dont even like watching old films on plasma tvs because it makes to quality even worse.
I have only seen The Good the Bad and the Ugly DVD on my HD-DVD player, which looked pretty awesome, so I don’t really know about my other westerns. I prefer the scratched up look too in a Western, but when they have made the DVD all cleaned up, what can you do? I’ll watch a few old DVDs on it and see what you guys are talking about.
Furthermore, they have already messed up a load of old films by “cleaning” them up on DVD such as The Terminator and The Searchers.
But so far, I am pretty impressed with my HD player. Watching new films on them are kickass. And I’ll always have my DVD player should I need to watch them at a lower quality.
well you watched the GBU DVD on an HD DVD player. that’s not high def, that’s upscaling. and do you have an HD TV to watch that on?
what puzzles me is how they’ll make a really good lucking BluRay disc from the GBU source material. i mean, as said before, it already looks atrocious on dvd, in high def you’ll be able to see every little speckle and scratch even more.
that’s why i have doubts about HD when it comes to old flicks
[quote=“Sebastian”]
well you watched the GBU DVD on an HD DVD player. that’s not high def, that’s upscaling. and do you have an HD TV to watch that on?
what puzzles me is how they’ll make a really good lucking BluRay disc from the GBU source material. i mean, as said before, it already looks atrocious on dvd, in high def you’ll be able to see every little speckle and scratch even more.
that’s why i have doubts about HD when it comes to old flicks
[/quote]
That’s why I said I have only watched the GBU DVD on the HD player, so I can’t really say at this moment whether old films look crap in HD or not.
I have the Superman HD-DVD and although not as impressive as Kong HD, it still looks pretty good. But it’s very inconsistent. Some scenes look brilliant, whereas others look just like a normal DVD.
The thing is, we didn’t get an HD-DVD player to watch old films on. I wouldn’t buy an expensive piece of kit, technology which will no doubt become very popular in the future and will probably take over normal DVDs just to watch old films on. I obviously want to watch the newer films on them like Superman Returns, Batman Begins etc which look superb.
I do have a HD-TV and a very good one at that. I am looking forward to buying more HD-DVD’s. It’s looking very promising.
Yeah, it really isn’t fair to judge the HD on how it portrays older movies - It is what it is. It would be like judging a 500 horsepower race car on its fuel economy - who cares?
I have a PS3, so I kind of figured I should check out Blu-ray.
So far I have only got stuff that doesn’t especially stand out over dvd. Like Full Metal Jacket and Blazing Saddles. Blazing Saddles looks better than it ever has (and the sound was nice and clear) and the thing that struck me the most about Full Metal Jacket is that they made really good use of surround sound. The sound was great. But other than that it was really similar to dvd.
I really only got those two because I didn’t yet own copies of them and they cost the same as dvd copies of the film. So, I thought, it’s probably going to go that way relatively soon, so I may as well have some seeing as I can watch them with the PS3.
I wouldn’t mind seeing a Michael Bay film on it. You can laugh, but although Bay’s films are hollow, they have ridiculously clear cinematography. Sometimes it’s like an advertisement for Coca-cola. They’d probably be the best for testing out the picture quality.
[quote=“Angel”]
I have a PS3, so I kind of figured I should check out Blu-ray.
So far I have only got stuff that doesn’t especially stand out over dvd. Like Full Metal Jacket and Blazing Saddles. Blazing Saddles looks better than it ever has (and the sound was nice and clear) and the thing that struck me the most about Full Metal Jacket is that they made really good use of surround sound. The sound was great. But other than that it was really similar to dvd.
I really only got those two because I didn’t yet own copies of them and they cost the same as dvd copies of the film. So, I thought, it’s probably going to go that way relatively soon, so I may as well have some seeing as I can watch them with the PS3.
I wouldn’t mind seeing a Michael Bay film on it. You can laugh, but although Bay’s films are hollow, they have ridiculously clear cinematography. Sometimes it’s like an advertisement for Coca-cola. They’d probably be the best for testing out the picture quality.
[/quote]
Do you have a HD-TV?
I heard and read that the Full Metal Jacket HD-DVD was the worst looking HD-DVD on the market. I kinda figured that without even reading up on it. It isn’t one of them type of films that makes you awe at the beautiful imagery.
I don’t know about Blu Ray, but never films, preferably those shot in HD are brilliant to show off the new hardware. Stuff like Kong, Superman Returns, Batman Begins etc. I would assume Casino Royale, The Departed, the Pirates films, Superman Returns, Kingdon of Heaven and Fantastic Four would look pretty sweet on Blu Ray.
Haha, oh man, you mentioning surround sound brings a tear to my ear. Currently I’m in the long, annoying process of researching all these surround sounds and speakers and amps and interconnects and what have you. It might be that I wan’t afford a good quality kit afterall. And my home theatre system in all the way in Uni. Tut, not happy.
I bought this for myself last year on my birthday:
<LINK_TEXT text=“http://www.bose.com/controller?event=VI … _dvd_index”>Bose | Headphones, Speakers, Wearables</LINK_TEXT>
It’s fucking amazing. And it’s so much easier to handle than having 5+ speakers.
[quote=“ThaDuke”]
I bought this for myself last year on my birthday:
<LINK_TEXT text=“http://www.bose.com/controller?event=VI … _dvd_index”>Bose | Headphones, Speakers, Wearables</LINK_TEXT>
It’s fucking amazing. And it’s so much easier to handle than having 5+ speakers.
[/quote]
Never actually tried one of those pseudo surround sound systems, but I’m all about old school surround so just want to stick with the normal 5 speakers. I would like ot hear how they are though, the Bose are being contantly advertised in the magazines here. I’m currently looking at this:
<LINK_TEXT text=“Sony UK | Latest Technology News | Electronics | Entertainment. … rround+Kit”>Sony UK | Latest Technology News | Electronics | Entertainment</LINK_TEXT>
[quote=“Ify”]
I’m currently looking at this:
<LINK_TEXT text=“Sony UK | Latest Technology News | Electronics | Entertainment. … rround+Kit”>Sony UK | Latest Technology News | Electronics | Entertainment</LINK_TEXT>
[/quote]
Nice…but I don’t think I could live without DTS-ES. Or EX for that matter.
[quote=“Ify”]
I heard and read that the Full Metal Jacket HD-DVD was the worst looking HD-DVD on the market. I kinda figured that without even reading up on it. It isn’t one of them type of films that makes you awe at the beautiful imagery.
[/quote]
Oh yeah, exactly. That’s what I meant. The only real reason I bought it is that I didn’t have a DVD copy and it cost the same as a copy on DVD. I figured beforehand that it wouldn’t be a too noticable improvement. But I didn’t particularly care. I want Casino Royale though. I want something to show me the difference.
[quote=“Ify”]
Do you have a HD-TV?
[/quote]
I have fucking HD everything. lol.