The Bus

I searched and didn't find anything. I think it would be helpful to have a "Reference" thread for people just getting into HD-DVD and Blu-Ray so they know what discs to get to really maximize their investment.

I'd like to focus on three things: video, audio, and special features. Video and audio is obvious, but for special features I'd like us to recommend movies that have new features that you can't get on DVD or movies that take advantage of the new formats by incorporating never-before-seen extras (video commentaries for example).

Certainly, the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD review sections are a good start.

I'm open to any other suggestions. I know I've heard Enter the Dragon and Blazing Saddles mentioned but they didn't seem to have very good reviews. I think it would be nice to show what compression codec was used on the video and/or audio... would that help?

I'll update this as needed.

Adam Tyner

The only completely unique features so far have been the In-Movie Experiences on The Dukes of Hazzard, Constantine, and The Bourne Supremacy. (I believe that's a complete list.)

For audio quality, my kneejerk reaction would be The Rundown, even with the dialogue dialed down a touch more than it probably should've been.

For video quality, I'd still probably lean towards Constantine, although I'd pull out Blazing Saddles to show off the fact that older movies can still look incredible in high definition. (I think Enter the Dragon looks nice relative to my expectations, but I don't think your average moviegoer would be bowled over by it.)

Every Warner and Universal release has used VC1. Paramount used H.264 on the U2 disc and VC1 on everything else.

RockStrongo

Is there any reason to believe that an MPEG4 encoded movie will be poor quality?? Why are the major studios not using it??

The japanese releases seem to be MPEG4 and according to Josh's review, Finding Neverland's image quality wasnt all that great.

I should be getting Equilibrium to check out sometime next week (release is Friday), but im just curious about others thoughts.

Mr. Cinema

I'm extremely impressed with Training Day's audio and video quality. It's also a favorite for many on AVS.

Adam Tyner

I think you'll see it on Blu-ray very soon. I think the real difference right now is that Microsoft is closely involved in the authoring of VC-1 content, and they've been pretty aggressive in refining their tools. H.264 doesn't have a "champion" in that same way, and the studios that have used it in Japan may not have invested the same time and effort that went into the early VC-1 encodes.

Eric D.

I started a thread here, but it only covers HD DVD.

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/showthread.php?t=470362