Hunt for Red Oct (DVD vs HD)
 

Yesterday I had the chance to do something fun, so I thought I would share this with everyone here. The Hunt for Red October came on HD-HBO yesterday, right after I bought the DVD, so I decided to see what kind of difference in picture quality was. What started me on the mission was when HfRO came on HBO the sound was only Dolby surround, not 5.1, so I popped in the DVD and synced it up with the DTS track. After a few minutes of getting the lips to look right I nailed it perfectly and couldnt tell I was running two sources. At first I was in heaven, HD and DTS what a combo. With the remote in hand I started to flip the inputs on my TV back and forth to look at any difference in the picture quality.

[B]So how did it look?
If I was in a blind survey, honestly it would take a few minutes to tell the difference in what your looking at. The HD picture did'nt jump out at me as I hoped it would. I actually had to try to look for the differences instead of them being obvious. The colors were more solid and a bit more detail in the picture was all I could tell. Other than that not alot to get excited about. I was surprised the DVD had such a good picture compared to the HD brodcast.

Final thoughts.
The HfRO is one of my favorite movies and I Paramount did an excellent job with this DVD, finally dts. I hav'nt been buying DVD's lately like I usually do, up to 300 now. I dont want to buy the same movie twice when HD-DVD comes out, on the other hand there are some titles I have to hold on to and dont want to wait years for the HD version, plus some current DVD's have some good soundtracks that I'm worried I'll miss on the second coming. The point I'm trying to make here is on prior CGI based movies will definatly not benefit from HD-DVD, to some extent. Now the Hunt for Red Oct DVD i'm going to be happy with for a long time. If Paramont releases this in HD-DVD later with DTS, I'm there, but If they drop the ball on DTS again, I'll stick with my copy. Dont get me wrong here though, HD does rock. I watched the Fifth Element a week ago and my jaw dropped. HBO doest do 2.35:1 often but they surpised me and I give them credit. Again no 5.1. so Im keeping the DTS superbit right now. Next month Attack of the Clones in coming on, scared they might crop it to 16x9, but if not, there's nothing thats going to touch the pic quality on that baby, same goes for Two Towers in a few months. Some older movies look fine on DVD and dont really need an HD transfer, right away. I kind of think the DVD transfer may look better with some films than HD-DVD, the lower resolution adding to the aura of the film.

I cant wait for HD-DVD in the next few years like everyone else here. I know I'll buy Gladiator the first day it comes out, again. The Hunt for Red October I'm holding onto for now, Paramont may not do DTS again on this. The HD-HBO transfer wasnt nothing to jump up and down about on this one. Plus I'm looking into a Faroudja scaler for a plasma display that will upconvert DVD's to better resolution. Samsung has a DVD player coming out soon that will do this much cheaper for others out there. So happy DVD'ing everyone, it will always be a wonderful format.

I'm not worried about the comming of HD. Maybe I'd rebuy some contemporary movies I really love, but I'm not going to rebuy an HD copy of THEM! or Carrie or Taxi Driver. These discs look good enough on DVD.

I thought that HBO cropped all 2.35:1 films to 1.78:1. Glad to hear that's not true.

All of their new transfers have been 16x9. The movies that one sees in OAR on HBO-HD were done some time ago. I recently saw GhostBusters and it was OAR.

I have to say this is a huge disappointment for me with HBO. How many people are watching HBO-HD and don't want the OAR???

same here.

I was under the impression that the upcoming Samsung Player uses a red laser and is not true Hi-def.

your right. the samsung player has a scaler and a dvi out. it will upconvert dvd to 720p or 1080i. not that this is tru HD, but will make dvd look as best as it can because of the source. IMO Hunt for Red Oct will hopefully look as good as HBO's HD broadcast last night.

In a high end AV forum I go to regularly, people have been raving about a new DVD player already out that does upscaling through DVI (the Bravo D1). The common consensus is that a DVD through this thing on a properly calibrated display is 80% of a good HD broadcast. Sounds impressive. I know DVD upscaled through my HTPC looks excellent.

Still, blu-ray or blue-laser HD-DVD will likely look better than your average HD broadcast (less compression if I'm not mistaken). How much better will depend on what you're watching it on.

Edit: Speaking of Gladiator in HD...

http://www.geocities.com/sircash13/Gladiator.html

Syncing lips is a hard job, I can't believe you did it in a few minutes.
It takes quit a while to set up like running a CD with TDTESStill Dolby Surround from silva screen records to the stupid stereo that sounded like monaural to me. Hear it in dolby surround unlike some pikers that don't know they're out there.

Since I knew when music was coming on the now synced CD would provide the Dolby Surround then after the piece, I would go to audio from the stereo disc only. Only way I know to hear Bernard Herrmans score in Dolby Surround, instead of that chintzy stereo soundtrack they have.


Proof: #D112660 off Silva Screen Records NY, NY "Bernard Herrman~Great film music"
National Philharmonic London, TDTESS had 11M39s of Dolby Surround music from the film.

the easiest way I synced up the voices was to have the analog audio going to the tv speakers. i first tried to catch up to the broadcast but that seemed harder. i scanned the movie foward and tried pausing the audio to let the movie catch up. tried it again later just to get practice. worked like a charm.

I have HD-HBO also and have not been that blown away by it. Most times my DVD's look superior to the broadcast, though there are some TV shows that really shine that I have seen on the HD ABC channel. I could be wrong, but it seems like a lot of the movies that are braodcast on the HD channels are not from HD source materials. This could explain why a lot of the time my DVD's look better or about the same. Or perhaps the problem is with my local Cable company or is a matter of the compression being employed. Doubtful it has anything to do with my system or hookups, since I use only the best cables and equipment. But is it possible that the broadcast of HfRO you saw was a 480i DVD source being broadcast over a 1080i HD channel? I can't imagine a high-def source exists for every single movie HBO broadcasts.

But wouldn't a HD-DVD disc look better than a broadcast HD channel?

I've done an A/B comparison to a few HBO-HD movies that I had on DVD. On the Matrix I couldn't tell much improvement. However on Shrek and Chicken Run the difference was starting. The additional detail was unbelievable. In Shrek you could see details of the knits in his shirt for instance.

And the cool thing was you were watching Broadcast TV, not DVD.

Just imagine the Super Bowl in HDTV.

This most recent Super Bowl was amazing. For some reason my entire family decided they would come use my living room to watch the game. Guess that's because I had the HD setup. I suspect they'll be here again next year.
But I digress, now back to your regularly scheduled thread.

Just out of curiosity, did you all also watch alias in hd that night. I want to know how much better if any then the broadcast version. I got tons of grain and my copy (I taped it) is in mono muffled sound) I sure hope disney speeds up the season sets.