The 40-Year-Old Virgin Blu-ray; different transfer than HD DVD?
#1
DVD Talk Limited Edition
Thread Starter
The 40-Year-Old Virgin Blu-ray; different transfer than HD DVD?
I kept waiting, hoping that specs or information would come out stating if the Blu-ray "40-Year-Old Virgin" would have a new transfer (read: not DNR/EE'd to heck like the HD DVD), but haven't found such information yet. I know it'll have the option to watch the theatrical version (Woo!), which indicates that maybe it won't be a claymation type image, but has anything official been said?
#4
DVD Talk Legend
Universal hasn't actually struck new masters for any of the titles they've ported to Blu-ray. All they've done is re-encode the compression, in some cases mildly improving and in other cases mildly worsening them.
Unfortunately, 40 Year-Old Virgin has edge enhancement caked into the master. It's going to look just as bad on Blu-ray unless they remaster it from scratch.
Unfortunately, 40 Year-Old Virgin has edge enhancement caked into the master. It's going to look just as bad on Blu-ray unless they remaster it from scratch.
#5
Suspended
Reviewers should be getting it next week....and if past Universal BD catalogs hold true, don't expect anything nicer than whats on HD DVD. The Theatrical version though...I don't know.
#7
Same here.
#10
DVD Talk Reviewer
Why does Universal have to do this? Doesn't high definition seem like it's the best we'd get at home without having to do anything to the master to make it look prettier? Edge enhancement is terrible, and so is DNR. Ugh.
#12
Suspended
I was more curious to see if the Theatrical cut on the BD (40 YO) did not have EE...but it does
#13
Suspended
I'd much rather see intended grain then wax-like crap on 40 YO and Scary Movie. A little bit on DNR is fine with me...a little, but not like what happened to Pans Labrynth.
#14
DVD Talk Reviewer
Well, I sort of wrote an 'open question' to Universal in my upcoming review.
That's the thing, I understand they're trying to sell blu-rays to a crowd that wants their high def, and a majority of this crowd thinks grain=bad. Grain CAN be bad, if it's due to compression issues, which this movie has. But when you take FILM grain, and you put a filter over the image to remove that, you're taking away detail, and doing other funky things to the image.
But when it took so long for many to understand the difference between full screen and widescreen, I think this is going to be an enormous uphill debate that will be talked about for years and years to come.
That's the thing, I understand they're trying to sell blu-rays to a crowd that wants their high def, and a majority of this crowd thinks grain=bad. Grain CAN be bad, if it's due to compression issues, which this movie has. But when you take FILM grain, and you put a filter over the image to remove that, you're taking away detail, and doing other funky things to the image.
But when it took so long for many to understand the difference between full screen and widescreen, I think this is going to be an enormous uphill debate that will be talked about for years and years to come.
#17
Suspended
#18
Nope. Unless your HD DVD player goes poopy.
#19
Suspended
#20
Banned by request
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Universal using seamless branching on these discs (40YO and Sarah Marshall)? Why would the theatrical cut look any different in that case? I highly doubt they're putting two full encodes of the movie on it.
#21
Suspended
As for seamless branching...I don't know if its used or not in 40 YO, Knocked Up or FSM. Though in FSM case, I think it was (some slight macro-blocking appears at the same time in both versions of the film).
#22
Banned by request
I'm pretty sure they're using seamless branching. IIRC, seamless branching was enabled on the format from launch. There's no reason not to use it, and many good reasons to use it (don't have to put two separate encodes on the disc, two separate lossless audio tracks, and do a new encode of the theatrical cuts).
#23
Suspended
I'm pretty sure they're using seamless branching. IIRC, seamless branching was enabled on the format from launch. There's no reason not to use it, and many good reasons to use it (don't have to put two separate encodes on the disc, two separate lossless audio tracks, and do a new encode of the theatrical cuts).
#25
DVD Talk Legend
That doesn't necessarily mean they put two different complete video encodes on the disc though. I know of situations where, due to seamless branching, one cut has certain audio options the other cut doesn't.