mzupeman2

That's really too bad. This movie really would benefit from a near flawless transfer.

darkside

I enjoyed it as well. I had no major complaints about it. I was actually a lot less impressed with MI3.

BTW, I just finished watching Forbidden Planet and was very impressed with the transfer. Yet another classic that delivers in HD. Warner did ruin the release a big or me by dropping off the original mono soundtrack. I don't want a mono movie from the 50's in 5.1 surround. Casablanca was a bit more underwhelming visually, but still looked every bit HD and was definitely worth the upgrade.

Maybe someday DVD Planet will actually ship V and Excalibur to me so I can enjoy those in HD.

Josh Z

The image is soft upon soft upon soft. Very little detail. I realize that part of that is the movie's style (faces have obviously been digitally smoothened), but I have a harder time believing that even the opening credits and on-screen text are supposed to look so dull and filtered.

Colors were fantastic, though. I'll give it that.

Supermallet

I'm going to disagree with Josh on this one. I think Charlie looked great on HD, definitely better than it did on DVD.

mzupeman2

I've purchased this based on my original assumptions and finally got around to putting it in my player. I do agree to a certain extent that things look a tad soft, but that's mainly due to the films original style. I can say that pretty certain from my rememberance of seeing it in the theater. You're going from completely bleak and colorless to lots and lots and lots of color, which tends to be bright and vivid to a point where you would almost think things are over-saturated without really being so. I don't think the soft style is fault of this particular HD-DVD itself. Not everything has that same doll-like look as some of the other characters due that obviously had some digital enhancement. Willy Wonka for example doesn't have the same treatment, and anybody (including Wonka) or anything else that wasn't treated as such has plenty of detail. Granted, there's not a whole lot in this film that isn't digitally touched up in such a way, but you can certainly tell what has been, what hasn't been, and how the quality on the DVD fares overall.

Josh Z

I'm sure Charlie looked better than the comparable DVD edition, but I was really expecting more out of it. As I said, the colors were wonderful, but there's just no sense of detail or texture at all. The movie sets you up to assume that it's going to have a sharp and vivid style, but then everything winds up looking flat and dull.

I understand the digital smoothing, and don't have any objection to that, but even beyond that it really looks like the picture has been excessively filtered. Like I said, a diffuse photographic style still doesn't explain why the opening credits and all on-screen text are so soft.

mzupeman2

Eh, I chalk up the softness you talk of due to the overall look of the movie itself. Again, in the mild scenarious where there is supposed to be detail, there is. One complaint about this disc, is some minor noise that you can see if you're looking for it. Yes, you have to look for it a majority of the time, but it's there none-the-less.

Also, you want disappointing? Check out The Grinch. My local Best Buy had it early, and I was pretty disappointed. Noise, black levels not so black, I wasn't happy. The contrast wasn't all that great either. It should have been but it wasn't. It was like an upconvert in a really nice quality most of the time, of the original DVD.

tonyc3742

Couple questions and comments
Q1. HD-A1: Does Time Search actually work?
Q2. HD-A1: Does Bookmark/Scene Selection remain after the player is turned off? I miss my Position Memory from my Panasonic.
C1. Yes, this is quite possibly the worst-designed remote I've ever used.
Q3. General: My HDDVDs say 1080p. The HD-A1 doesn't transmit 1080p. My TV doesn't do 1080p, only 1080i. What exactly am I seeing, and what is it doing?

I hope I'll be happy with C&CF, I just sold my SDVD version, and I thought with the color palette this could be a reference disk for HDDVD. I don't recall any obvious softness in the SDVD, but it's been a while since I've seen it.

The Grinch: I have absolutely no interest in this movie, so I'm not worried about its quality except for the precedent it sets; did you buy it and watch it on your player or on an instore demo?

I was going to ask why the heck the site mentioned above with the half off code has the HDA2; but they also sell two allegedly HDDVD movies that are more in the theme of the site [and they're combo disks as well!]

Jay G.

A3: The movie is stored on HD DVD as 1080p24, meaning 24 non-interlaced frames. The A1 takes that image and transmits it to your TV as 1080i, basically breaking up the frames into interlaced fields.

This is different from DVD, in which the image was always stored as interlaced fields, even if the DVD was properly encoded and flagged to recombine the fields into the proper progressive frames.

Green Smurf

I thought the Chocolate Television thing on Charlie and the Chocolate factory was neat.

fataldog187

Would that be referred to as 1080i24 or 1080i48? Do interlaced sources get a framecount (or fieldcount) after the 'i' for interlaced? Seriously, I don't know and I've never seen anything referred to as 1080iXX.

Jay G.

1080i48 has been used:
http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/hd/specs/

However, there's also the designation "1080p sf24" which means "1080 lines progressive segmented frame 24 frames per sec," which sends each progressive frame as two segmented interlaced fields. That would seem to be the most accurate description of what signal an HD DVD player sends to the TV, although the term's slightly confusing since it used "progressive" instead of "interlaced" in the description. 1080i48 would work in a pinch, though.

Josh Z

The HD-A1 converts the 1080p24 data on the disc to 1080i60 for output. It will not output at 24hz or 48hz.

Jay G.

Will the A2 do so?

lizard

I believe it only works if it is enabled by the disc, and most do not, thus far.I miss that feature of Panasonic DVD players also. It was especially nice for TV on DVD: going directly to the next episode to watch the next time one put in the DVD.

The HD DVD bookmark feature does retain the position when you next insert the disc. But you have to wade through the intro stuff to get to the menu and then go to bookmarks, unlike PM in the Panasonic. Worse, only WB seems to be using bookmarks thus far. Universal and Paramount haven't enabled the feature, so far as I have seen. Yes, it is pretty bad but I have become accustomed to the remote. The right cursor function becomes easier with practice. The lack of backlighting or button labels that can be read in dim light is a nuisance though.

The HD DVD format has some annoyances, such as not resuming play from a stop. I think that might be a disc encoding option thing, however. If so, it might be fixed on future discs.

Josh Z

The HD-A2 will have the same 1080i60 output as the HD-A1. The HD-XA2 adds a deinterlacing chip capable of outputting at 1080p60, similar to what current Blu-ray players do.

The only upcoming machine scheduled to have 1080p24 output is the Pioneer Blu-ray player.

Keep in mind that next to no HDTV displays will actually accept a raw 1080p24 input. Keep in mind also that a 1080i60 signal can be deinterlaced and frame rate adjusted to accurately reconstruct the 1080p24 data.

Jay G.

That's odd, since it's one of the ATSC standards:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATSC#Resolution
http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ISSUES/what_is_ATSC.html

How would the TV know that the source was originally 1080p24 though, as opposed to 1080p30 or 1080p60?

Josh Z

There's no mandate that an HD set must accept all of the ATSC standards.

Most HDTVs are going to display at 60hz regardless.

Jay G.

I assume all ATSC tuners must be able to decode all the ATSC standards though.

So, in other words, an HDTV isn't going to reconstruct the film to 1080p24, but just combine the 1080i60 fields into progressive frames, with the 1080i60 sent from the player probably constructed from a 3:2 pulldown of the original 1080p24 image.

Spiky

Guys, don't get caught up in "standards". That is a ephemeral word that we have conveniently defined as we see fit. The only real "standards" for ATSC are what your local station is broadcasting, and that is 720p60 and 1080i60. As we discussed a week ago, the discs do not exactly qualify as ATSC anything.

Yes, 1080p24 is part of the ATSC documentation, but that does not mean there are any requirements for anything to be able to use it like this or like that. I would say it is "listed" in the specs, but not a "standard".

I just checked for fun. My TV will only accept 1080p24, no other 1080p. But of course, it only displays 720p60.

Jay G.

I think you're wrong. In the case of ATSC, that is a standard, a broadcasting standard, and the resolutions and framerates specified within that standard would be required to be able to be decoded by any ATSC tuner.

Look at this page under "Monitor Interface":
http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ISSUES/what_is_ATSC.html

It specifically states how a ATSC receiver will convert the standard 18 formats to one the monitor can accept. It also says:

"Presently there are only four defined interface formats: 480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i. There could be more, and there can be monitors that can benefit from something else. But presently such a monitor will have to have a built-in receiver. (1080p60 is a probable future monitor interface format.)"

It's a bit dated, but to me it's basically stating that an HDTV with built-in ATSC tuner may be able to take other formats as inputs, since it has to be able to covert all 18 ATSC formats to something workable on the screen. That's not to say that the TV will display 1080p24 as 1080p24 though, it could easily be 1080i60.

Josh Z

Very doubtful you'll see that very often, regardless of misleading documentation you'll find on the internet.

For most sets, yes. For those that are capable of 48hz or 72hz display, you'll see some sort of manual setting to activate that. It won't be an automated process, because as you said the set has no way of determining whether the signal was originally sourced from 24fps content or some other framerate.

mzupeman2

It's hard to assume what may look great and what may not. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory for example. I can understand the complaints of the softness but I don't remember it really being an incredibly sharp looking film in the theater, not to the extent that was expected and discussed about in Josh's review. But yeah, there were some issues. Some scenes did look flat but on account of what I felt was some less than magnificent contrast in certain scenes, and yes, the digital artifacts/noise as well. Mostly it looked good, but once in a while... and with HD you shouldn't have inconsistancy on any level. This will improve with time.

The Grinch, I'll have to wait until I watch the whole movie but damn... watching some select scenes at home, it looked like there was noise in dark areas, sometimes black wasn't really that nice, it looked a little washed out... eh. I'll have to wait though, as I've said.

I'm excited about some upcoming releases that I know should look great if done right, such as The Mummy. Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, as well. Whenever that's actually being released that is. I am a little concerned though, because some of the titles you would expect to be flawless, aren't. At this point, if the lengthy King Kong can look as good as it did on HD-DVD, I don't see why other recent releases wouldn't look so spectacular as well. I guess that's my whole point for this post, is that I'm a little shaken by what I've seen in quality between some six or seven titles I already own.

Adam Tyner

From another forum I read:

mzupeman2

Thanks for that info. I had seen some of Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire on HBO the other night... but of course with an HBO-HD broadcast and a ratio of 16:9, I know it's not an accurate depiction of what the HD-DVD will hold but... damn. I wasn't very impressed. I'm sure they won't mess up THAT HD-DVD.