Have you used the firmware yet on your player?

I have, but I haven't conclusively decided yet whether it affected picture quality at all or not.

Do you notice any difference, in terms of bug fixes, etc? Did it correct the judder with the LionsGate DTS tracks?

Did you call to get a disc or did you download it and burn a copy?

Absolutely. Sleepy Hollow is one of the best improvements from SD on the market and is a beautiful HD disc. Sleepy Hollow is a perfect example of a film that isn't supposed to be crystal clear and doesn't boast alot of the other characteristics people associate with HD. That doesn't mean that the HD transfer is not a great improvement over the SD which it very clearly is. It ranks my top 5 HD-DVD's thus far. If you were to change anything in regards to the transfer to make it more like the other HD titles you would only be killing the directors vision for the film.

Everything regarding the transfer was absolutely 100% done on purpose. Tim Burton did exhaustive tests with cross processing to get the exact look he was looking for. The washed out colors, the grain, the softness to the picture is all done on purpose and if they changed any of it, it would have absolutely destroyed what is without a doubt a breathtaking film.

Again this just goes back to the point I have brought up again and again. All films are not supposed to look crystal clear with bright vivid colors and perfect contrast. Its absolutely ridiculous to think that way. There is literally a 1001 different ways to make a film. Each different process used will have an end result that is very different from the rest. With these variations you end up with films that end up translating over to HD very differently. Again people need to educate themselves on what processes were used for each picture and only then will they have a clear understanding of just how the HD transfer should look.

LOL, I always go off on a rant about this topic as I feel it is one of the most important aspects to HD and one that is clearly overlooked by alot of people clearly seen by a lot of the reviews out there.

Sleepy Hollow is an absolutely gorgeous HD transfer, One that is 100% true to the directors vision and the original source print. A huge improvement over the SD and again in my top 5 HD-DVD transfers so far released.

PS...

The firmware seems to have corrected the DTS judder problem and will now pillarbox 4:3 bonus feature content on Blu-ray discs. In comparing MI3 on both formats, the Blu-ray is still softer than the HD DVD, so I'm inclined to believe that the NR is still turned on.

I downloaded the firmware off the web site.

I just finished watching House of Wax on HD-DVD and read Adam's new review. I was very impressed, he nailed how the picture seemed to go from being spectacular to crappy nearly every other scene. The audio was also severely lacking for a quasi-action flick too, the only scene that really had any juice for me was when they were playing the boombox during Paris' striptease. Not that I'm surprised, but I thought it was a spot on review.

I have only read a handful of his reviews so far but the ones I did read were spot on. The internet is flooded with people who absolutly do not know how to critique a film properly, both in terms of artistic merit and technical merit. They end up just recycling words over and over and really should stick to thier day job. With that being said I have come across a few diamonds in the rough and Adam's reviews definitly fit in that catagory.

PS...

Even though I'm not reviewing it for the site, I watched Spartacus today and thought:

Video - Presented in a 1080p, VC1 Encoded, 2:21:1 Widescreen Aspect Ratio, Spartacus actually looks pretty good for a film of its length and a film of its age.

Colors are bright and vibrant as we get bright yellows and whites of the sand and dirt while the night sequences feature darker blacks that seemed a bit washed out (take chapter four where the blacks on the wall seemed to be almost bleeding down the wall instead of being placed there). The level of detail in color is nearly perfect here though. Take chapter eight, a beautiful outdoor sequence that fully showcases the lush greens, vibrant blues in the sky.

Now a possible problem some may have here is the obvious noticeable level of grain present in the transfer. Even though the grain level was present, I never once found it to be a problem probably because one can expect a certain amount of grain from a film nearly 47 years old. Some may question that scenes like the bath sequence (chapter 9) look horrendous, but the scene looked just fine to me (at least when compared side-by-side to the SD-DVD original release back in 2001). Speaking of a side-by-side comparison, I noticed more detail in the HD-DVD version especially in the little things like the armor on Spartacus and the facial features on the soldiers.

Before I received this title, I had read that a few were calling this Universal’s worst effort to date. While the title certainly doesn’t cry ‘demo-material’, I was still very impressed with what Universal was able to do with the transfer especially considering the film’s length. This is a good sign that HD can handle longer films and still look good.

Audio - Given the standard Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 in either English or Francais or the optional Dolby Digital Plus 2.0, Spartacus sounds great, especially in the film’s principal battle sequence in chapter 14.

Dialogue is kept in check never becoming overly muddled (except in the battle sequences where some of the few words muttered can be hard to hear over the yelling and screaming of the soldiers fighting). Speaking of the battle sequence, this is really where the soundtrack comes alive. Even though the film is rather heavy in the dialogue field, the battle sequence give the front speakers a nice workout, as the clanging and banging of the soldiers’ swords sound great. I was also pretty surprised with the level of the bass in this sequence as well. The bass gave us a nice atmospheric experience to the battle creating a nice piece. The sub didn’t boom and shake, but added a good amount of background helping to complete the sense of the battle at hand. I also enjoyed the use of music by Alex North as the score, while never that loud and boasting, is the perfect volume to capture all the emotions of the themes in the film.

Again, while not screaming ‘demo-material’, Spartacus sounded great giving the audience a real sense of the brutality of battle.

Looks like I will be reviewing Spartacus (yay!) and The Interpreter.

Just watched this today and completely agree. I thought this was an overall great HD transfer. Overall detail was excellent and skin-tones especially were handled very well. Very colorful in the Miami scenes and very drab in the Detroit scenes, all of them looked fantastic. They actually used a Tungsten based film with only a partial conversion filter for the scenes in Detroit to give it that blue hue. Very effective in making my hometown look like a drab and decayed city :-)

To top off all the excellent technical details is the fact that this is a great film. Lopez and Clooney have amazing chemistry in this movie. I love caper movies and this one combines comedy, romance and crime so well that the few flaws it does have are easily overlooked. The fct that it was filmed in my hometown of Detroit is a nice bonus as great movies filmed in Detroit are pretty damn rare. There is just something about seeing places that you yourself visit frequently on film that just brings you into the film that much more. I used to go down to the State Theatre every weekend for Fight Night so it was really cool to see them use that as one of the backdrops esecially because they stopped having fight night years before the film was made.

All in all a great film, great acting and a great HD transfer. I was really hoping this one turned out well as its one of my favorites and Universal definitly came through on this one.

PS...

Just saw Corpse Bride with some friends that were over. Wow! It looks and especially sounds spectacular. This is one of the best sounding discs I've heard and the transfer is flawless to my eyes. Highly recommended.

I've been watching The Interpreter to review it, and damn is this movie much better than I remembered it being. The scene on the bus is taught as a tightrope. Great stuff.

The AVC is actually giving quite a good picture, although there are a few slight but noticeable flaws. I would like to see how it does on a less stylized picture, but overall, I'm more than satisfied with the transfer.

My review of Spartacus has been submitted and should be up shortly. The short version: It barely looks HD. While the image is currently the best out there, that's not saying much. Get the Criterion version if you don't already have it, or wait for the eventual Criterion HD/BD release.

I'm curious here Suprmallet, did you read my comments a few posts above? Do you disagree on the whole or just a bit?

I received The Great Raid from Netflix and managed to get through about 45 minutes. It was a yawnfest of what I saw so I couldn't take anymore. However, this is one of the better looking transfers on BD. It did have that "Saving Private Ryan look", featuring a slightly washed out picture. But it was crystal clear. The PCM track was outstanding. There were a couple of sequences early which featured action and you definitely feel like you are caught in the crossfire. From what I watched, this felt like a made for tv movie. For demo purposes, this is a good choice.

Just bought Reds on HD DVD. Looks a lot better than I thought it would, very sharp throughout the majority of it. It is split over two discs, but I've heard that was because Beatty wanted it so (to maintain the intermission). Even so, it's become my first 2-disc HD DVD title, and it looks really nice. Great movie, too.

Completly agree with your overall take on the movie. I watched this twice, The first time I fell asleep like 3 times before giving up and turing it off and crashing out. Decided I would give it another try and even tho I didnt fall asleep, I was extremely bored the entire time. I usually like films of this type but it just couldnt hold my interest at all. I ended up turing it off like half way through and returned it to Blockbuster. Not sure about the HD picture as I watched the SD version.

PS..

Ditto with your take on The Great Raid (the film). There's a lot of attention to detail there, but they seemed to have forgotten to include a compelling narrative.

I remember the WSJ review calling it "more dutiful than dramatic". That just about sums it up.

Take a look at the actual review (up now). I think the problem with the disc is the 1991 remaster just isn't cutting it anymore. I do mention this is the best the disc looks currently on home video, but it's such a slight improvement over the Criterion DVD that it's not worth the upgrade. What they need to do is remaster the actual film elements before we'll get a really good looking version. This is definitely a case of the HD DVD showing the flaws in the source material.

I was actually beginning to wonder when something like this would have finally popped up. This is something that unfortunatly I expect that we will see from time to time as I dont expect the studios to always side with quality over an easy release. This is where the double dipping will most likly come into play in this generation. A studio releases a HD transfer from a sub standard master only to go back and remaster the actual film element for a higher quality transfer down the road. With the studios battling right now for the most number of HD films on the market, its easy to see where they might take the quick route on releasinig a few movies here and there.

PS..

I expect we probably won't see a double dip on Spartacus from Universal. They seemed to essentially ignore it on DVD, and this is the exact same print and sound mix from their DVD release. I think Criterion will be the ones to release a newly remastered version with all the extras from their DVD edition.

My reviews of 12 Monkeys, The Interpreter, and Out of Sight are all up.

And my review of Lethal Weapon 2 is up, which completes this batch of discs. Let me know what you guys think of all of them, I'm always looking for constructive criticism.

P.S. Out of Sight is one of the best looking HD DVDs yet.

On your 12 Monkeys review, you say that the disc has the same Dolby Digital track as previous editions on it and complain about them leaving off the DTS track.

Isn't it actually a DD+ track, encoded at 1.5Mbps (the same bitrate as the original DTS track)? That track should sound about as good as the DTS track or maybe even better, unless something went wrong. Did you directly compare it to the old DTS track?