Widescreen video entertainment by dreamtrove

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Widescreen video entertainment

POSTED BY: DREAMTROVE
UPDATED: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 02:03
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Tuesday, December 23, 2008 6:48 AM

Thread For Frem

Godivas are good, but best with lady Godiva on your new HD widescreen.

Okay, so what's the best way to play blu-ray without buying a lot of large heavy and expensive equipment?

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Tuesday, December 23, 2008 10:56 AM

CHRISISALL

Buy smaller, lighter & less expensive equipment, duh...

The simplistic Chrisisall

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Tuesday, December 23, 2008 12:24 PM

DREAMTROVE

Um, not so fast Chris isn't all, Blue-Ray player is going to be the most expensive piece, we should really have a way to hijack it and play it on a home machine.

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Tuesday, December 23, 2008 12:33 PM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Um, not so fast Chris isn't all, Blue-Ray player is going to be the most expensive piece, we should really have a way to hijack it and play it on a home machine.

What you speak of is illegal, best to purchase said equipment & remain out of jail. Blu- Ray players are now under $200 making the HD TV the most expensive piece, BTW.

The Standard Chrisisall

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Tuesday, December 23, 2008 12:36 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Um, not so fast Chris isn't all, Blue-Ray player is going to be the most expensive piece, we should really have a way to hijack it and play it on a home machine.

Not the most expensive - I'd say the big honkin' flat-screen HDTV is going to be the pricey part.

I'm holding out 'til the price of the PS3 comes down some more. I hear it's a decent Blu-Ray player in addition to being a decent game platform. Problem I see is, there just aren't any games that are really grabbing my attention at the moment. Gran Turismo 5 looks like more of the same, Grand Theft Auto IV same deal, etc., etc. I was hoping for a new Splinter Cell or Ace Combat, but so far, no dice.

Get the PS3 down to $299 or less, and you've got my attention. Until then, I'm good with the HD channels I've got and my old stand-by DVD collection.

Mike

"It is complete now; the hands of time are neatly tied."

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Tuesday, December 23, 2008 2:27 PM

OUT2THEBLACK

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Um, not so fast Chris isn't all, Blue-Ray player is going to be the most expensive piece, we should really have a way to hijack it and play it on a home machine.

Not the most expensive - I'd say the big honkin' flat-screen HDTV is going to be the pricey part.

I'm holding out 'til the price of the PS3 comes down some more. I hear it's a decent Blu-Ray player in addition to being a decent game platform. Problem I see is, there just aren't any games that are really grabbing my attention at the moment. Gran Turismo 5 looks like more of the same, Grand Theft Auto IV same deal, etc., etc. I was hoping for a new Splinter Cell or Ace Combat, but so far, no dice.

Get the PS3 down to $299 or less, and you've got my attention. Until then, I'm good with the HD channels I've got and my old stand-by DVD collection.

Mike

http://ps3.ign.com/objects/902/902335.html

http://guides.ign.com/guides/902335/index.html

Clancy's ENDWAR...

Working on that cheaper PS3 player for you , too...

Word is , it's actually the best platform for playing Blu-Ray discs...

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Tuesday, December 23, 2008 2:55 PM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
and my old stand-by DVD collection.

U tell 'em, Mike! I LIKE my pixely, unclear, lack-O-detail stone age DVD's!!!

The 8-Track Chrisisall

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Tuesday, December 23, 2008 3:49 PM

ECGORDON

There's no place I can be since I found Serenity.

I can only speak from personal experience. The only places I have seen stand alone Blu-Ray players in use are Best Buy and Circuit City. I did quite a bit of research before deciding to buy a PS3, and after a couple of weeks I can tell you that I am very pleased with that decision even though I am not into games. I got it mainly for its Blu-Ray capability, and all reports indicate it is the best and most reliable.

A lot of reviews I read for Sony and Samsung players talked about the long load time for discs and the frequent need to update the firmware. I am sure I'll have to do that eventually with the PS3 but I think it will be easy because of the ethernet connection and the fact the PS3 is essentially a mini-computer. Also, the disc load time is no worse than it has been for me on any dvd player I've ever had (four different models over the years).

My 37" 1080p HD television cost me $699 + tax + $99 for a 4 year extended service plan, with 18 months of no interest.

I bought my PS3 directly from Sony on a deal where they were offering a discount if you were approved for a PlayStation Visa card. The total was $283.50 including shipping, billed to the card immediately after approval, and I received it via UPS in less than a week. I also got a coupon good for a free Blu-Ray disc with the purchase of another.

I now have five BR titles. I purchased the 5-disc Blade Runner set earlier in the year when amazon had it on sale for just $15.99, and I also have Firefly, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Gattaca (the two I got from Sony with that coupon), plus Season One of Mad Men, which amazon had on sale a couple of weeks ago for just $16.99.

Excuse me, but I'm gonna go watch "Shindig" now.

wo men ren ran zai fei xing.

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Tuesday, December 23, 2008 4:56 PM

FREMDFIRMA

I really did not notice much of a qualitative difference with the blu-ray stuff, and the load times, technical frustrations and in one case of some form of copy protecting making one disc unplayable in *ANY* machine...

One problem is that no matter how good your take on a master, it's only as good as the master ever was, and since those were not shot in Blu-Ray, till stuff gets filmed in that quality you will not see much improvement, and this is unlikely due to the extreme additional expense, and if they did, guess who THAT cost gets passed on to, along with even more super-psycho DRM crap that won't let you view your own movies, bah.

You can still do quite well with the big screen, a stock 5 speaker dolby capable sound rig and a high quality conventional DVD player, we just recently watched Formula51(aka The 51st State?) on Donnies rig and it was quite comparable in quality as far as I could tell to anything we had on Blu-Ray.

Don's about to send that player (it's a Samsung) of his out the window, especially since he's out the cost of a Blu-Ray DVD that just will *not* play thanks to paranoiac DRM and compatibility issues.

We tried one HD-DVD, but didn't seem to notice much of a quality difference in the picture, and for some reason the sound on the dolby track seemed muffled or muted.

So we're stickin with conventional DVD for the time being, cause the expense and hassle doesn't justify the minimal improvements, in any - I think folks are seeing what they desire to see, unwilling to admit that they've shelled out so much money for a negligable increase in performance.

I think Blu-Ray is gonna wind up like DAT or Laserdisc, a superior format that shot itself in the foot by not having enough jump on existing formats to be worth the bother - and the DRM strangle isn't helping, when looking up how to fix it, we ran into pages and pages of the same problems with that and the Samsung players, so it's far from an uncommon hassle.

-Frem

PS. Formula51/51st State ? Awesome flick - first time I've ever felt sympathy for a skinhead, lol.

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Tuesday, December 23, 2008 6:01 PM

DREAMTROVE

There's no such thing as international law.

As for the tech. I have a 42" screen which needs repair, but really, i'd rather just play it on my laptop. The big screen is not real portable. I think some file compression would probably put these on a standard dual layer drive. Failing that, I'll just wait for the stream to catch up.

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Tuesday, December 23, 2008 7:22 PM

KWICKO

Frem: If you're getting the full 1080 (as with an HDMI cable), you should absolutely see a big difference in picture quality and detail. Watching broadcast television on the high-def channels, it looks MUCH better than my DVDs, no matter which player I run them through (I've got three DVD units hooked up right now - a JVC that's getting really old, an RCA home-theater unit, and a Phillips DVD burner with 160GB hard drive). The high-def TV picture shames them all.

Fact is, the real reason I'm sorry to see "Dirty Sexy Money" and "Eli Stone" get cancelled is simply because they are the two most gorgeous shows on television right now. They really nailed it, early on, on how to shoot an HD show and make it stand out. You can see it in every shot - they really worked on the details, and it shows.

From what I gather, the Blu-Ray player brings that level of detail and clarity to disks, which is great, but I'm not likely to buy new Blu-Ray versions of the DVD sets I've already got.

One movie that absolutely could benefit from the Blu-Ray experience - and only because it's been so limited in the past by broadcast television, DVD abilities, and VHS limitations - is 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's simply stunning to see it in HD, because that's the closest you can get to how it originally looked in all its 70mm glory in theaters. I recently got to see it on one of the HD channels, and it was like seeing it anew all over again.

Mike

"It is complete now; the hands of time are neatly tied."

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Wednesday, December 24, 2008 1:33 AM

FREMDFIRMA

I dunno Mikey, maybe it's cause my eyes just ain't what they used to be, but I really wasn't impressed.

Stuff i'd like to see all hi-def on a big screen with a full Dolby surround set kickin it ?

Hands, down - Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan!

LoTR trilogy
Pan's Labyrinth
Nausicaa of the valley of the wind*
Das Boot
Apocalypse now

Any of the Clint epics, especially...
The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly.
(But the audio track desperately needs remastering, I have the standard DVD and the music is set too loud and there's some fade and distortion in the voices)

-Frem
* I actually idolize Nausicaa for the same reason I do Yuna from FFX/X-2, because they love life, and do not give in to hate, ever.

In a day and age when most of the "role models" held up by society are reasoning psychopaths, it's hard to find good ones, but those two fit the bill quite well, I *highly* reccommend renting Nausicaa for your kids.

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Wednesday, December 24, 2008 1:52 AM

ECGORDON

There's no place I can be since I found Serenity.

I can definitely tell the difference with my new tv and the PS3. I'm not saying Blu-Ray is the be all, end all of home entertainment, since I am sure they will be another format one of these days. But for this time and place it is superior to anything else I've seen.

I already had a 720p set and a good upconverting dvd player, and my Firefly dvds looked better than they had on my SD set of course. But then I got the PS3 and the Blu-Ray dvds and I did a visual comparison of the standard dvds and the BR set, and there was a significant improvement. Now with my 1080p set the difference is even more startling. Granted, Firefly is not the best test of Blu-Ray, since there's a lot of dark interior scenes that are a bit grainy, but anything that is well lit is much sharper with more vibrant colors.

I'm not about to replace all my dvds with Blu-Ray due to cost, and the fact that for a lot of films the visual aspects are not the highlight, but rather the story and the acting. But Kubrick is my favorite director and I can't wait to see 2001 and Clockwork Orange in the new format. Motion picture film has always had a higher resolution capability than conventional broadcast television or previous video formats could transfer to screen. This is as close as we're gonna get to true theater quality for a long time I am sure.

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Wednesday, December 24, 2008 2:03 AM

FREMDFIRMA

And without the ringing cellphones, jabbering teens and the little old lady kicking my seat for half an hour straight....

I generally won't go no more, ppl are just too rude, nasty and ill-behaved for it to be a good experience.

You know what'd be real cool for home players though ?

Something like a plug in VR helmet, with hi-res video, full surround sound and all that, hell you could prolly even rig it for 3D with current tech...

Although it might make eating the popcorn a little difficult.

-F

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