Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems The one of MANY HD-DVD threads (No bashing Blu-Ray)

I thought Serenity was a Universal release?

You are right. Hmmm. Now I need to go search and find out why I thought it was mastered -10dB...

[edit]Yup, seems I was mistaken about the Serenity audio. The UK version however does have a new VC-1 encode which apparently improves upon the US release, so it's not a total wasted purchase.[/edit]


Mark

Thanks Mark - I'll buy the UK one instead. Incidentally, I've just bought the following from MovieTyme:

Apollo 13
HP and the GOF
Dune
Ray
Rattle & Hum

Are any of these better with the UK release? (I still have time to cancel).

Is there a site that does non-US reviews or HD DVD comparisons?

Thanks,
Joel

No site that I know of does comparisons. The comments about UK Serenity were made by Amir on AVS. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the format.

Mark

I'm looking forward to thinking my thoughts on the format thanks to you!

No doubt such a web site will spring up soon...

Stacey Spears was the first to confirm the new Serenity encode for the UK release (another pass at it was required to make room for additional language tracks, and as a consequence they got to use later generation VC1 encoders).

As far as I am aware it is the only one a new encode was created for.

DVD Times reviewed both the US and UK releases.

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=63484 (UK version review)

Nice- See what I was talking about when I raved about this disc. I am ordering the UK release as I really enjoyed this movie.

best regards,
Jerry

I thought this post would take several days or weeks in arriving...

For those picking up this thread, I was the third recipient of the remarkable and unexpected generosity of Mark_H who bought me, kenliles and JerryL each a Toshiba XA1 HD DVD player. Mark is a self-proclaimed movie lover and HD evangelist and, in return, only wanted each recipient to post back on this forum a fair evaluation of their HD experience.

Mark wanted to address two categories of HD waverers - those who think that SD is "good enough" and those sitting on the fence whose mere sitting (not buying discs and thus not generating a virtuous circle of demand) could contribute to the failure of both HD disc formats. I never needed convincing that HD would be better than SD, but I was most definitely a fence-sitter, not wanting to buy into the failing format. I should say that I was beginning to think I should commit, though I'm not sure if I would have if Mark hadn't pushed me off the fence.

My player arrived today, courtesy of Ken who relayed it from Florida to the UK. A the moment, I only have a single disc - Blazing Saddles, also courtesy of Mark. I'd seen a little HD sport on plasma screens, but I had never experienced HD on a projected screen until tonight.

At the moment, my projector is a "budget" 720p Panasonic AE900 LCD projector. It was bought as a stop-gap solution until I get a 1080p projector. Since I've gotten it, I must confess to being surprised and slightly disappointed with the projector, thinking that the image from a Faroudja-scaled digital SDI SD source wasn't as sharp as it could be.

I turned on the XA1 player and my first thought (once I'd figured out that I had to select HDMI manually :rolleyes: ) was that the on-screen menus, at 1080i into the PJ, looked superb - simultaneously smooth (no jaggies, etc.) and sharp (no blurring or apparent lack of focus, particularly at the edges of letters).

I then put the Blazing Saddles HD DVD into the player AND WAS SIMPLY BLOWN AWAY LIKE I HAVE NEVER BEEN BEFORE IN THIS HOBBY.

What can I say? I expected HD to be better than SD, but I could not believe that this was the same projector. The FBI warning looked great! The Warner title page looked superb. Then followed a HD DVD teaser montage (presumably at very high bit rate) which looked as natural as anything I have yet seen projected.

I only had time to flick through the chapters of the movie. All I'll say is that experience is similar to that of Ken. The picture is so natural and believable that you are just drawn into it. It involving! And remember, this is on a 720p projector! Another word to describe it is quite simply "filmic". And I mean it.

I'd love to spend more time on both watching the movie and writing this post tonight, but I can't. I'll do both in the coming days and weeks. What I will say is that I ordered seven more discs earlier today before this knock-out experience and now cannot wait until they arrive.

I've been planning to replace the AE900 with the JVC HD1 (RS1 in the USA) and actually started wondering whether it is worth it! In fact, I'm sure it will be, but I want to bring across the magnitude of the impact HD DVD had on me tonight. Simply fantastic! Thank you Mark. This is unbelievable!

No good then?

VK,
Yes- you too now have been ruined by Mark. I wonder if Mark is really secretly a rep for the studios? lol.

Get Serenity unless you dont like the movie. The image will blow you away. Also keep the player in 1080i output mode because even though your PJ is 720, the player does some nasty things when outputting to 720- at least in my experience.

Happy watching.

best regards,
Jerry

and another one bites the Milky Bar dust....

ken

Jerry. The player defaulted to 1080i which looked magnificent downscaled by the AE900. I thought I'd try 720p and realized immediately that the XA1 downscaling is poor to say the least...

I'm a big fan of Joss Whedon and already have Serenity and the Firefly box-set on DVD. I had ordered the Serenity HD DVD from MovieTyme, but cancelled it and have now ordered the better (!) UK version.

Apart from being blown away by the naturalness of the image, my biggest shock was how good 1080 sources could look downscaled to 720 lines. And I do sit very close to the screen (about 1.4x screen width). The implication for flat screens (up to 50" say) is that, unless you are a gamer and sit very close, 1080 lines are probably a complete waste when viewed at normal distances and 720 or 768 lines should easily suffice.

I watched about 15 minutes of various chapters of the movie and was just grinning from ear-to-ear. I hadn't watched Blazing Saddles for a long time (and had never seen it on a big screen) and had forgotten just how funny it was. What the HD experience did was allow me to simply enjoy the movie. It looked beautiful.

I guess describing the image as a "window" is a good explanation, if slightly corny. As mentioned, from a resolution and sharpness perspective, the AE900 was extremely capable. From a colour saturation perspective, the outdoors railroad construction scenes (in bright sunlight) did look somewhat washed out, but this could be as intended, due to deterioration of the image before it was digitally transferred, or a poor transfer/mastering. On the other hand, the AE900 does have limitations in a number of areas. I imagine that the massively increased contrast, better blacks and greyscale of the JVC will pay dividends, particularly with dark images from sci-fi sources. It is quite frightening to think that a significant improvement in image quality is still possible with a better display device.

It's a shame this thread is confined to a sticky as it seems like only the usual suspects are contributing. I hope that, as Mark intended, others will read these comments.

One other thing - apart from a ludicrously slow disc loading time, I actually found the disc navigation quite responsive. But then again, I'm used to a Meridian DVD transport!!!