I'll put in my recommendation for the Black Hawk Down blu-ray!

I calibrated my TV myself and yes, its 768p.

I do realize it makes a difference, but a lot of reviewers (including Josh Z) who reviewed it poorly were using 720p displays. I ignore those reviews anyway, for the same reason you mentioned above. My opinion may change when I get my 1080p display, but right now I'm happy with the disc.

Actually (and put this in the record books), it doesn't sound like BD's fault. It's just the way the film looks.

Like I said before, I think that when a cinematographer makes a decision that results in a picture that doesn't look like DiscoveryHD, the J6P's of the world aren't going to be impressed enough to upgrade. Btw...i'm not insinuating that you're one of them but, at the same time, when you're packaging a movie like this with all your PS3's to sell a format, it's not the wisest decision.

ISF calibration can make a huge difference over just calibrating it with DVE or Avia. I suggest you look into having a professional do it.

It can seriously make a huge difference in the picture quality.

I didnt take that from the review. I also dont remember seeing the problem they described at the theater when I saw it.

I guess we will see what some other reviewers say.

I've got it pretty damn near close to perfect, so much so that ISF wouldn't do much for me at this point (especially when its on its way out my door). When I get my new set, I plan on having it calibrated.

If your planning on getting rid of it soon, then your probably right about waiting.

As far as close to perfect, I dont know what display you have, but most displays cannot get near perfect without ISF calibration. Thats my opinion based on DLPs at least.

Your display might be different, but based on the procedures of most CE's setting tv's based on selling them and not viewing them, I would doubt it. Especially if yours is a Sony. ;)

My samsung sure wasnt set up accurately for viewing. Even after my calibration with DVE.

The difference was night and day (especially with HD broadcasts). Sorry, I digress.

In fairness, though, borderline-no one gave it a positive write-up, regardless of equipment. It's not as if the 720p camp tore into it while the 1080i/1080p users were gushing.

Who do you guys call to have your TVs professionally calibrated?

We should start a separate thread about ISF calibration (if one doesnt exist), but I recommend avical highly (see my sig).

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/showthread.php?t=483663

True. But I've never felt the need to conform, either.

Gee, that sure makes you credible. :rolleyes:

That's awfully obnoxious.

There have been a number of reviews I've written where my assessments of the technical quality were quite a bit different than what everyone else had posted, so I'm hardly saying you're wrong for being an outlier. I do think it's disingenuous to imply that 720p displays skewed the public perception of this particular title when the overwhelming majority owners of 1080i/1080p displays were making similar gripes. If 720p displays are at fault, why didn't these problems carry over to more titles? Quite a few of the gripes revolved around the state of the source material as well. Do 720p displays add more dirt and wear to Blu-ray titles? Why didn't the HBO-HD broadcast suffer from similar complaints for the people who compared both using the same equipment?

I have read plenty of reviews (and no, none that I can think of offhand) where a disc was panned just because everyone else panned it. You'll notice it when reviews from different people sound exactly the same.

And why must you take everything I say so personally, Adam? The business with 720p was brought up when Rock suggested I might not be seeing all the issues with the disc -which is true. I responded by saying that the majority of reviewers use 720p displays, so that's probably not the issue. I never said 720p was the issue, infact, I implied that the displays most likely weren't the issue.

I don't see why my personal opinion on the disc can't be different than anyone elses. I purchased Unforgiven without a blink because of the gushing reviews it received - none of which were deserved. I see all the hate for TFE, but I purchase it anyway and I'm glad I did. I guess all the negative reviews made the actual product that much sweeter.

I'm not.

I didn't interpret it that way. Oh well. Nevermind.

It's a moot point. I've seen Unforgiven and The Fifth Element. No way Unforgiven looks worse. So if josh is saying it does, then I'm just going to have to not give any credence to his opinions anymore.

Unless, wait, was Unforgiven a different transfer on BD than on HD?

Nope. Same transfer. The image is washed - almost a painted on look. It looks too clean. It felt like there was a lot of detail that was being lost. The bright scenes looked great, but the dark scenes look almost like they are being held back in terms of detail. Chad made some good points in his review, but gave it 3.5/5 where I would have given it 3/5 (below the 3.5/5 I would give TFE - he gave it 2.5/5). I kept watching the same dark scenes when I as demoing out displays, and the contrast just wasn't there. It was better than an upconverted DVD, but not by much.

And thus, we diverge.

I actually agree with highdefdigest's review of Unforgiven HD-DVD. I was pleasantly surprised by the level of detail. I thought it looked good. Not reference quality, but very good quality.

That said, I watched it on my ISF calibated HLP6163p 61in sammy before I got my new 1080p set. I need to go back and rewatch it (at least some scenes).

http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/unforgiven.html

Too clean=detail being lost???

ok.

Yeah, im not sure what they means.

A good scene is the saloon showdown at the end. Ill rewatch it tonite and see what its like on my 1080p set.

Too clean = contrast lost.

Anymore?

Please refer to the other Josh as Joshd. I don't want to be lumped in with him. :(

Oh your not fooling us...we know joshd is your alter ego. ;)

More like Jekyll and Hyde.

joshd is Josh Z's own personal Tyler Durden.

Hey, you created me. I didn't create some loser alter-ego to make myself feel better. Take some responsibility!

:D

Ohhhh......it's just too easy. ;)

I rented it from Netflix & have to agree with everyone else, I was not impressed at all with the PQ, though the sound was nice... my SuperBit will do for now.

Now, Kingdom of Heaven DC, that's a good-looking BD. Sucks that I have to keep the SD for all the extras, but the movie looks & sounds great.

The Kingdom of Heaven BD doesn't have all the extras from the DVD? Screw that. That was the title I was most interested in of all the currently available Fox discs.

It's got the trailer! :rolleyes:

On a good BD note, I agree with ianholm, Black Hawk Down was tremendous... the lossless PCM 5.1 is the best HT audio I've ever experienced :up: , and the PQ is also solid. I still need to hold onto the 3-disc Special Edition cause all the extras are missing, but at least the SuperBit can be retired.

I just got done watching Fantastic Four and was disappointed. It didn't feel like HD to me. I even put in the dvd in my A1 and switched back and forth and couldn't tell much difference between the BD and upconverted DVD. Maybe it was the film's style, but the colors just looked drab and lifeless most of the time. The audio was terrific, but this is probably my first BD title where I was very underwhelmed with the video quality.

In the end a huge problem with reviewing HD-DVD's isn't so much the fact of 720p vs. 1080p. This does alter perceptions a bit I understand, but even if two people were viewing 1080p, there would still be very different opinions for many titles. Some people have different expectations. On DVD's, it's pretty clear cut... the color saturation, the artifacts that are easily seen, the digital blocking that comes up, the edge enhancement, so on and so forth. HD-DVD/Blu-Ray, different beasts that require a more trained eye and since the standard for high definition is to be 'flawless', there's definitely a lot more knit-picking that's bound to go on, and people will disagree.

I think it really depends on just what your able to do on your own when it comes to deciding wether or not to hire a company to come in to optimize your setup. I am sure that every single home theatre system out there can be improved in one way or another but the price these places charge for a full calibration is just too much money IMO. Prices usually run anywhere from 400 all the way up to 750 bucks at some places.

If your absolutely clueless on how to set up a home theatre system and you just spent a boatload of cash on a nice set up then it might be worth it to hire a company to do a calibration however if you understand the basic principals for these calibrations and have a few basic tools you can do an awesome job setting up your own system, well enough that the extra 450-750 bucks certainly wouldn't be justified. Given I own a few tools that most people dont like a color meter, but for the prices that these places charge you could actually go out and get some of these tools yourself and learn what to do yourself. Then you could optimize every system you ever upgraded to.

I just feel the same way about this as I do hiring someone to come in and set up your home theatre to begin with like the Best Buy packages and such. I just feel its much more rewarding to do it yourself and you will save a lot of cash that you can actually turn around and put right back into your system if you so wanted. I just feel that if your that serious about home theatre to where your buying really expensive equipment and your contemplating hiring a company to come out and optimize your system for a good chunk of cash that you would just be much better off learning how to do it yourself.

If you go out and buy a set of Kodak color correction filters (15-20 bucks), Get a set-Up DVD like the one from AVE (20-30 bucks), & an 18% grey card w/ a white backside and you can do a pretty darn good job setting up your own TV if you understand how to do it. There are some really good books out there that go over every aspect of professionally calibrating monitors and TV's as well as some great websites that do the same. And if your really serious about doing it on your own you can invest in the more expensive pieces of gear that can help you out like light meters and color meters.

Again the great thing about learning how to do it yourself is you can professionally calibrate every single display you ever buy without having to hire anyone to do it and thus throwing more money out the door for something you could have done yourself. Another reason why its better to do it yourself is everyone has different opinions on what looks good and what looks bad. What one guy thinks looks great another guy thinks is too dark or too light etc.. Everyone is different and you will be able to set your system up according to what you think looks the best.

Again if your completely clueless on setting up monitors and TV's correctly and you have invested alot of money in a sweet home theatre system then by all means hire someone to come out and tweak your system to work to its optimum potential. However if you have the desire to learn how to do this stuff yourself or you already know alot about this stuff then save your money. This stuff isn't cheap and you could do alot better things with 450-750 bucks like investing in equipment that will allow you to do this stuff yourself. It really isn't that hard once you get the basic principals down.

So to sum this long post up, save your money and learn how to do this stuff yourself. Sure you might not be able to do as good of a job as some company charging you an arm and a leg but if you learn what your doing and do it right, the difference between what you can accomplish and what they can accomplish wont be worth the money spent.


PS...

Good post, I agree... different strokes for different folks. I recently watched V For Vendetta and Reds back-to-back, and I may be the only one who would say this, but I was much more impressed with Reds. Nowhere near as flashy as V, but the picture looked more like film to me.. the sound was not as bombastic either, but still rock solid. As a movie, Reds was so much better though, that may have swayed me a little.

I disagree.....Companies setup televisions for selling, not for viewing. Its a fact unfortunately. There is only so much that you can do with the user settings.

There are some things that are just too hard to change (in the service menu) without professional help (greyscale, color temp, iris settings and more).

Yes, you could buy a service manual and try experimenting on your own, but really its not worth the time/effort. The pros have the experience and know what to do.

In my opinion, people should take the cost of professional calibration into account when buying a television. I would spend money on calibration before buying a warranty.

DVD Talk now has 100 HD DVD software reviews. (101 reviews if you count Josh's detailed write-up about the HD-A1 player.)

Nice. Here's to the next 100! :beer:

How is Casablanca? Are there any audio synching issues like in Robin Hood?

I just dont see this at all unless your somehow unhappy with the picture your television is giving you. I can only speak for myself and what my personal experiences are and for me, there is no way I would spend that kind of money for someone to come in and calibrate my TV for me. Take now for instance, the picture I am getting now after calibrating my Pioneer by myself is simply stunning. There is just no way I would ever spend that kind of money to bring a company in to calibrate my own monitor or TV when I am this content with the picture I am recieving.

Maybe a day will come when I no longer can get that quality picture on my Pioneer and feel obligated to call someone in to see if I need to have it professionally calibrated to bring it back up to where I am content but I have yet to ever see that day. Again if you understand how to properly calibrate a monitor and you have the proper tools, you can do an awsome job doing it yourself. I am not saying you can do everything by yourself and I stated that up above. I just said that if you know what your doing you can get very close to what a professional will get you.

You would be surprised how good you can calibrate a monitor without going into the factory settings and only using the user setting along with the proper tools. Unless something was done improperly at the factory for the TV's initial settings then there is no need to go in and adjust them unless you personally see something wrong. The user settings are powerful enough to get you a picture that satisfies almost everyone.

Again this is a personal preference and its up to each user to judge for themselves if its worth it or if its not. I would much rather go and spend 400-750 in HD-DVD's then spend it on a professional who might tweak my TV to look a little bit better, thats just my preference but I have also had professional instrustion on how to calibrate monitors and TV's properly so I am able to get a damn good looking picture using just the user settings with a calibration DVD and my tools.

In the end its just a lot of money and I just dont see many people today running out to spend another 400-750 on a TV that just cost them thousands so they can get a little bit better of a picture. You have people that wont spend that to even enter the HD DVD formats at this time cause its too much money. If it was around 100-200 then it might be a different story but that is not the case. Until the day professional calibration comes way down in price, I just cant justify spending that kind of money on a TV that isnt broken and with a picture that is absolutly stunning every time I watch it.

PS...