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

Shame about the film, I doubt even Daniel liked this one

Are your player output settings correct? I've not noticed this sort of difference before. Any chapter in the film we can check?

Mark

*waves fist* Can't say it's even on the list of film's I'd ever want to see in all honesty. The recent leak of its budget details actually left me hitting my head against a brick wall. Their walkie-talkie and bottled water budget allocation alone is half of what I'm trying to make an entire film for.

VK,
I don't think Ben is lying to Luke but its all depends on your point of view

Im with you guys on the high bit rate stuff. IMHO having really good speakers and gear is more important than lossless for movie soundtracks. Lossless will add some icing on the cake though.

So the real question- how many more releases and redos of Star Wars will we have before we get it on HDDVD/BRD? Perhaps there will be enough changes to make episodes I&II good! lol

best regards,
Jerry

It seemed to be lacking rears for most of the film with DD+ enabled. They were there but very low. I had to crank the rears and sides up several dB. It may have been the mix. I just started using my XA2 and other than one episode of Planet Earth this was the first movie I watched. I'll have to try different movies and see if there is a common drop in the rears with DD+. The front three channels and LFE sounded better with DD+ compared to DTS. Explosions were stronger and the dynamics were better.

Last year when I tried an HD DVD player I thought it didn't look much better than SD DVD. I had an HD-A1 and the Last Samerai was the only title I could watch. Now with my XA2 and watching Sahara and Planet Earth I can say its a night and day difference. Last Samerai must be a soft transfer. The VC-1 codec is just amazing! I did not see one artifact in Sahara or Planet Earth. I have a copy of Natures Colors that uses Mpeg2 video and although it looked very good I could see classic Mpeg artifacts in some scenes. VC-1 rocks!

I have seen great looking results with all codecs now but I still feel that VC-1 delivers more consistently than the rest. It's rare to see an average VC-1 encode, but quite common with the MPEG variants.

Mark

v2.2 firmware now out for the XA1 and A1. Posts on the Lumagen forum suggest the problems with the short-lived v2.1 are gone.

http://www.convergent-av.co.uk/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=837&start=0

I'm holding off a while longer just in case other issues crop up. Let others be the guinea pigs where firmwares are concerned...

Mark

Agreed, especially when they can be risky things to do with an imported machine. I received my new 850VA UPS today (�26 delivered!!!) for safeguarding my projector. I'll make sure the XA1 and all related networking is protected before attempting my next firmware update. After testing the UPS first of course .

For those using a Lumagen scaler with 1080p displays please check this thread:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=836253&page=1&pp=20

It seems that the Lumagen may, by default, damage the horizontal resolution of the source by adding 1.5% overscan to the scaling. I have been working my way through this and found that I have been watching this way for the past 6 months :| And now that I have fixed it, using HD DVE to verify, the difference is very obvious. Worthwhile checking your setups...

Mark

Yeah. I've been following that one Mark for when I get my Radiance...

On another scaler-free note, I jerry-rigged my ND2 filter on to my JVC HD1, did a quick DVE calibration and, after a glass or two of the red stuff, watched Riddick on HDDVD. In a word, the PQ was breathtaking. Really stunning. Damn good sets and CGI too, though a pity about the script and pithy story. Still, I guess it's just a bit of harmless violent fun.

The most surprising thing was hearing Judy Dench's voiceover at the beginning and then actually seeing her in the film. Very odd. Oh and trying to figure out for half the film where I'd seen the dark haired Lord Vaako before (doh!). Karl Urban's range doesn't seem to be particularly wide, does it, but to be fair I've only seen him elsewhere in LOTR.

I love Chronicles of Riddick (and so does Daniel, I'm sure!) - I could watch it over and over - and such a good HD DVD too. I've seen Karl in a few films (he's also in the Bourne Supremacy for you to check on HD-DVD). He has a strange haircut in each film - I think it must be in his contract.

Mark