DVD Polizei

But there are comparisons to the Apple trailers, and in IMO, the trailers look better. So, what about that. The colors have also changed. What happened between the period where the trailers were on Apple's website, way before the point where Dark Knight was manufactured for consumers, and the point where it is now available for people like Xylon and others to take a closer look at.

The only answer I have is Warner got a hold of it and got some bright idea to change the original palettes and perceived sharpness of the movie.

Of course, when you have 24/30 frames going a second in front of you, you may not notice the apparently evident retarded sharpening Warner's stellar processing team did.

I'm gonna have to say I'm renting this first.

pro-bassoonist

Sure! There are also plenty of trailers and grabs from Chungking Express that look nothing like what Criterion delivered on their BD. Nolan did not supervise TDK? The ratio(s)? Comments?

I don't want to speculate here since, as I noted, either all of the reviewers are blind or one man, Xylon, has the sharpest eye we've ever seen. O, and on a related note, screencapturing significantly degrades the image you actually have stored on the BD. This in addition to the fact that film is not a static sequence of images. Digital photography is!

Yes, sir. You could probably dig a whole lot more if you wish, through screengrabbing, and claim that any print is flawed. In fact, I am this close to running a quick test for Xyon on a disc of his choice, considered stellar, and revealing to him some fascinating manipulative techniques.

You could certainly see things you want to see. Many people did with the restored version of The Godfather, and were only calmed down because they were told that the director's intent was very specific...yet, interesting recollections were, apparently and shockingly, still fresh.

Pro-B

DVD Polizei

Pro-B, the only time you're not seeing a digital image is IF BY CHANCE, the theater you're in has a direct copy-to-film of the transfer. Otherwise, what all the rest of see, including reviewers, is a digital copy, where the frames can be viewed individually.

I'm not sure where you get the idea a screencap is going to degrade the image. That's nonsense. Now we're talking about Analog Fairies who are in charge of super-sharp image quality, but somehow disappear when a digital version is made.

Blu-ray...is...a sequence of digital images which can be traced down to digital frames. When you grab a screen from a Blu-ray disc, you're not taking away any amount of information. If you're viewing the screencap on a 7" monitor, you might have something there.

I view all my screencaps on an Eizo 24" CE240W. It's fairly capable, and I've never wondered if my screencaps are taking away from a Blu-ray or HD DVD movie. Now, if my contrast is abnormally high, my colors are all fucked up to hell and back--such as my reds being pink, sure I'll agree with you then--my screencap was degraded. But only because my viewing hardware was in some way insufficient.

Now, I viewed the screencaps on AVS. I haven't noticed any issues which could be directly attributed to Xylon. I will certainly look again, and make sure. I'm sure he doesn't do any processing to an HD image (I know he upconverts SD DVD images however, which is a fair way to compare, IMO).

I watched the Godfather over the weekend and it looks great. Haven't watched Part III yet, but I'll bet I'll even be more impressed.

BUT.

I certainly did notice a lot more contrast and even borderline blow-outs in some daylight scenes in Godfather I. I'm going to go back and take a closer look, but I managed to watch it just fine without pausing the movie, so this was a good thing.

And director's intent be damned. I don't care if we had a certified approved label on a movie, if it looks outright wack-o, I'm gonna say so, and call the director an idiot for even thinking of doing what he or she did. If only the director likes the movie's presentation, and most of the fan base absolutely hate it, there's a problem. Director's can get lost in their own idea what their picture should look like and be extremely biased in their assessment.

SPRBD

I'm still confused about this. Did Warner crop the IMAX images to 1.78? That's how they look in the DVDbeaver screen captures. I've got a 1.33 TV and would have liked to see uncropped IMAX images. They were amazing in the theatre. The cropped versions might as well be cropped to 2.35 if they're cropped at all.

Nick Martin

fixed.

pro-bassoonist

I urge you to do some serious research on the issue

Then, we can talk.

Pro-B

Nick Martin

Nolan cropped the images to 1.78, not Warner.

Nolan planned this modified IMAX version Blu-ray even before the film was released.

The 2-disc DVD will present the IMAX ORIGINAL AR of 1.43:1 for the individual sequences on the bonus disc. Thing is, they're supposed to be 16:9 with side bars so they still won't fill a 4:3 TV screen.

Brent L

I have this on order from WHV, with the Austin Powers set, but since nothing has shipped yet I'm considering canceling.

berserker37

Just to be clear, I really have no problem with the shifting aspect ratios on a standard HD 1.78:1 display. I saw the film twice in IMAX, and although I usually noticed where it changed, I didn't find it distracting.

Before I widened the screen in my front projection home theater, this would be a non-issue. In fact, I think it's pretty cool that portions of the film would fill my screen. However, now that I have a 2.35:1 screen, I love the fact that I can utilize my full screen height on 2.35:1 films, and have gained about 30% image area in the process, without sacrificing any size for 1.85:1, 1.33:1, etc.

Now, with The Dark Knight, the IMAX scenes will fill the height, but not the width, which is OK. But the 2.35:1 scenes, which I assume account for at least 75% of the film, will not fill the height OR the width of my screen. I may, in the end, decide that this is the best way to watch the film, but I wish I had the CHOICE to watch the entire film in 2.35:1 without having to resort to downgrading to DVD, or letting the IMAX scenes overspill above and below the screen. Especially since, when Nolan cropped the IMAX scenes for the 2.35:1 only version, I'm sure he didn't use the exact middle of the frame 100% of the time (which is what I'll see if I choose the overspill method).

See this thread at AVS forum:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1070910

I understand that this problem affects only a small portion of home theater owners: specifically, those with 2.35:1 Constant Image Height front projection setups and, even more specifically, those who achieve a CIH setup using the "poor man's" zooming method. Unfortunately, I fall into that group.


Here are some pics I took a while back to illustrate my setup. Basically, I'll have to watch The Dark Knight like the first pic if I want to see the entire IMAX image.





If anyone's interested, this thread explains my theater conversion:
http://perfectmancave.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7587

The Bus

The shifting ratios is awesome news! In the theater, IMAX seemed to me closer to 1.33, (or at least 1.66). I saw the IMAX presentation twice, and it was far, far superior to the regular theatrical presentation. As someone before me mentioned, the IMAX shots at 2.35:1 seemed very cramped.

RocShemp

I never saw this in IMAX (since there are no such theaters here in Puerto Rico ) so I'm really curious about the shifting aspect ratios. Tuesday can't get here soon enough!

DVD Polizei

First of all, if you have evidence to counter my argument...then present it. I think it's rather uninformative of you to not present evidence. But I'm sort of used to this from you in particular arguments. At least throw me a link to Bill Hunt's website.

You don't rely on me for my thoughts on image captures, but you are just fine with me getting presenting evidence on image captures? Ok, well, here it goes.

When I say no information is "lossed", I'm referring to the better techniques of grabbing an image. Not merely saving it to a highly compressed JPEG. How about an 8MB BMP 24-Bit color image of a 1920x1080 Blu-ray frame. Now, I realize there is an amount of compression which does occur, and is unavoidable. But this does NOT mean you're going to misinterpret the movie as sharp when it is NOT, or the colors are off when it is NOT, or interpret the movie as "soft" when it is NOT. If you argue otherwise, then every single movie reviewer better find something else to do, because they are ALL getting the same information from the same source, just like the rest of us.

If the colors are off, you're going to see it. It's not mystically hidden in the Blu-ray disc itself and not available in my screencap. Sorry, I don't buy your inference.

I will agree, if a person is not familiar with movies at all, and is capturing for the first time, and only uses one frame of a movie to make an opinion on the entire movie, then we certainly have a problem. Many more screen captures should be taken at key intervals in the movie.

But Xylon is rather predictable at taking several screencaps. And he's done it many times, as The Dark Knight is not his first movie he's commented about.

When I look at a movie, I look at a problematic/ideal frame, then look at the previous several frames and next several frames. Why? It's because of something you know about, which I'm surprised you didn't mention, because it would have shut me up earlier.

While I will agree, there is compression at some point along the video content path, this certainly does NOT negate myself taking a screen capture and making a notation on what is on the screen at that particular time.

You were inferring that a Blu-ray disc has much more information than what could be viewed on a single frame and therefore, a person making an observation the movie was inferior, would be incorrect. Well, I don't think so. Inevitably you would be right on technicality as there is always compression at some point, but you would not be necessarily correct on commenting that screen captures are not indicative of a movie.

But like I said earlier, when you have dozens of "frames" passing you by every second, a picture can appear sharper than what it really is, and possibly could lead to a different interpretation of the movie, if you've never seen the problematic frames individually. Of course, your eyes will be more discriminating as well.

So, bottom line here is you can get a great deal of information from obtaining screencaps. Even if there is compression in obtaining those screencaps. Because the compression is representative of the whole. As I said earlier, if it's not, then all movie reviewers should look for something else to do.

Also, I'm not suggesting removing this movie from anybody's movie list. But I'm personally going to rent it first. I'm forced to. It's the way the movie studios work. I can't return a movie if I don't like it. Shitty picture or not.

Gizmo

Why couldn't we just get both versions instead of a stupid Digital Copy, Warner?

fumanstan

I think i'll take the word of all the other reviews that have come out giving the picture quality high marks.

RichC2

Jesus there is a lot of bitching out there over small details.

This is a great movie with great transfer. Is the transfer perfect? No, but it is overall extremely nice.

Honestly, and this will sound like blasphemy to a lot of people, I would just resize it to fit the screen for a majority of the movie and let the IMAX scenes run off the screen, black it out if you can (velveteen or whatever you kids are using these days).

Reasoning - While shot for IMAX with scope in mind, the picture is still very much centered. While you won't get the massive scope that the 1.78:1 scenes, you also won't have anything truly important cut off the screen. (That said, this is a very rare case).

PopcornTreeCt

I'm thinking about this too. Except canceling from WHV is impossible.

DVD Polizei

StephenX

I'm pleased with the images. I really like what I have seen. But I'm just a normal movie watcher and not an AVS forum expert.



I CANNOT WAIT until Tuesday.

DVD Polizei

I think most are more concerned with a movie studios' obligatory meddling with popular releases in order to make sure they "pop" to the average viewer. I'm sure TDK will look pretty good. But it won't be a reference title like it probably could have been. Just my guess on that, and I will have to see it for myself.

So, I doubt if the concern is will TDK be "viewable" as I think anyone knows it will be. But the primary concern is, "why fuck with it--it was fine already, thank-you".

DthRdrX

I've given up any hope of WB even getting the disc to me next week.

JTH182

According to Amazon the DVD versions of TDK are only outselling the BDs 56-44!

That's great news considering there are three DVDs to two BDs, one being an expensive limited edition.

PopcornTreeCt

I love Amazon. I've bought nearly all of my blu-ray discs there, however, I rarely buy any DVDs from them. I don't know how savvy most people are when it comes to shopping but I can usually get the best prices on blu-ray discs at Amazon but I get the best prices on DVDs at other places. That's just my 2 cents.

JTH182

I agree, but..... SHUSH!!! lol

DVD Polizei

Well, also at Amazon, Wall-E Single-Disc DVD Edition is #1, while the Wall-E Blu-ray is #17. #18 is the DVD Jeff Dunham: Spark of Insanity.

We have 3 Blu-ray titles in the top 25 at Amazon at the moment. But if you look at the 26-50 section, Blu-ray is very strong there. So, this is mixed news, but I've never seen Blu-ray be so popular as compared to last year at this time. And as I've said in other posts, during this recession economy, we may see some areas where the consumer will dedicate their financial resources to, and Blu-ray might be that special micro-sector which gets a little push this year, while many others suffer financially.

RockStrongo

Maybe Nolan didnt want it that way. Maybe he believes the definitive version is the IMAX version.

I know how much of a HO he has for IMAX.