Anyone re-watching some of their other SD-DVD discs that you used to love...and find that the quality isn't as good as you remember?

For example: was watching Se7en last night with a friend who had never seen it. It was almost difficult to enjoy because of how bad it was. Perhaps with the DTS track and all those other audio tracks, they killed the bitrate. I remember the video getting good marks but this just looked like crap.

Anyone else re-watch anything and be surprised lately?

For the most part, I've found almost all SD DVDs to look subpar since getting my HD DVD player. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the new Nightmare On Elm St., which looked incredibly good to my eyes.

I was thinking more along the lines of sub-par even for SD.

Okay, fine then. Star Wars original unaltered trilogy.

But seriously, I was surprised at how good Nightmare looked, since most SD DVDs I've watched, even if I thought they looked good before, now look very bad.

Gee.... and I remember watching good ol' black and white TV and wondering how fantastic colour was...

and I remember watching a 16x9 TV and wondering how poor 4x3 TV was...


and one for the future....... I remember watching HD DVDs and wondering how bad they looked like when I'm watching my 3D 10.1 Surround Channel Wall of Vision !!


Comments on 'how good' HD DVDs are feeding right into the Electronic and Hollywood businesses mottos of squeezing more and more money from consumers. "Thanks for double and triple dipping on our titles - glad that you have supported us yet again"


It's great that you have (probably spent a fortune on) HD TV and either a Blu ray or a HD DVD machine - however - comming out and saying that the 'quality' of SD isn't as good as you remember is a bit 'rich' for the millions of people who DONT have a widescreen TV, a Plasma, a LCD screen, a 5.1 amp with all the speakers or a Blu ray or HD DVD player !

(note - an Aussie here who consistently reads the posts here - I'm a movie fanatic with over a 1000 DVDs and a 16x9 TV with DD/DTS setup. HD and Blu-ray will fail to take over Australia in the very new future - due to the high costs of this equipment - and the very low cost of DVD titles here at the moment).


I keep wondering if it is all about the 'movie' - or - it is about seeing an actor's pores up closer ???


In so far as SE7EN is on DVD - hey - its a great film - and the quality of the current DVD is quite satisifactory for a 2hr flick. I can't imagine that EVERY HD DVD or Blu ray DVD movie transfer is going to be as 'spotless' and clean as what we currently have on DVDs.

It's about seeing the movies we love in the best presentation possible. Why is that a bad thing?

And really, $500 for a player is not going to break the bank, considering most early DVD players cost twice as much.

We don't have the 'luxury' of the $500 player here (locally) at the moment - and neither for the forseeable future.

No HD DVD player is being sold - only Blu-rays for Panasonic at $A2749 for sale in Dec 06 are up for grabs. And no B&M stores would risk trying to keep that on their shelves in this market.


Hey - seeing movies in the best presentation in the best possible way aint a bad thing (i would love to see them as best as what I can afford and get) (hey - maybe you should tell this to a few cinema chains as well - who play movies in poor surround sound and fading lamps !!!).

My comments were more based around that we seem to constantly 'whinge' about the 'best' - yet - I hardly feel that many people with HD setups will be 'satisfied' with HD - that they'll be wanting something more and more !!!

Whilst the guys who read and post here 'might' have HD setups - the rest of the world doesn't. And these are the people who will determine whether SD DVD stays on for the next 10yrs or more. The studios might be pushing for it - to get more revenue - but the rest of the world is still satisfied with DVDs.



edit - one of our major B&M stores put out a brochure today - front page : True High Definition has arrived. Ok - a Full HD 1080 TV - Sony 46" will set u back $A6995 !! Just out of reach of most Aussies at the moment !!!

I still watch my dvds, but even the reference ones are kinda disappointing compared to any of my HD titles.

One day I hope to have my own personal 70mm projector, so yes, I would say HD is not good enough. But it's damn good.

You don't sound very satisfied, you sound rather aggravated.

Time and time again I think about picking up one of the portable 35mm jobs off of Ebay. What always changes my mind is the rarity, cost, and the scarcity of the films.

If you are dedicated enough I bet its a hell of a fun hobby.

In order to really do that you'd need to basically have an archival room in your house with temperature controls and such. If I really did get a 70mm projector, I would only have a handful of films. More likely is that 4K will be available by the time I could afford such a thing anyway.

Jesus who crapped on your parade? I fond this entire post disgusting to the core. This is the HD forum and we discuss everything relevant to the HD format on this forum. Wether you like it or not one of the inherent byproducts of this advance in technology is in fact that the prior technology tends to look a lot worse than it did when it was the only thing available. The same thing happened when I went from Tapes to CD's and the same thing happened when I moved from VHS to DVD and guess what, It will happen again when you move from DVD to HD-DVD.

The jump from DVD to HD-DVD is no small jump. a 6x increase in resolution is a substantial jump and anyone who said their SD DVD's looked just as good as ever after watching only HD video for the last 2 months would be lying. The fact that you would come on here and start judging people's preferences for watching movies is disturbing. The fact that your doing so because someone happened to bring up the inevitable decrease in visual quality the lesser generation of video has when you get used to the higher quality successor is even worse. This isn't someone's opinion but an optical effect that everyone succumbs to when going from one format quality to the next.

What makes this post even worse is the fact that you claim to have over 1000 DVD's, a 16:9 TV and a great sound system. You could easily sell what you have and upgrade to either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray or both with a simple thing called an Ebay account. If you happen to feel that the upgrade from standard DVD to HD-DVD is just another excuse to sell everyone the same movies over and over than that is your opinion. The massive increase in both audio and visual quality associated with the next gen DVD formats takes it right out of the double dip area in my opinion. You couldn't get much more of a legitimate upgrade for any of the movies being released in HD. Even I was skeptical at first and only planned on replacing the movies I absolutely loved in HD but that has changed dramatically to me now selling all of my SD discs that I can replace with HD.

I apologize if this post is a little harsh but I hate when people come into open discussion forums like this and start throwing statements out there and accusations out there like you did. In the end your posts just look like a jealous rant by a movie fan who wishes he could be where the other people in this forum are. I guess in your eyes I would be just as guilty as DigitalFreak as I posted a thread last week stating that I was no longer buying SD discs anymore as I was strictly HD only from here on out.

Blah, this whole thread has left a bad taste in my mouth. I simply despise threads like this and people when they have to rain on other peoples parade. Some advice for you, If your unable to get into the HD format then stop coming onto the HD forums. Maybe that will make you fill less animosity towards those people that are in the HD format as we speak. If you do continue to come on here it would be better if you just accepted that HD is all that and then some and everybody on here is thrilled with the quality of the movies we are buying, so much so that not only do SD discs just not hold water anymore but a lot of us have stopped purchasing them all together. The sooner you come to terms with the fact that this is not only normal, but to be expected especially from hard core early adopters like ourselves, the better off all of us will be as we wont have to log on and listen to posts like these.

PS...

How do I not sound satisfied ???? I'm far satisfied with what I have. We don't have HD or Bluray in this country - and though it will come on sale later on this year - the prices at which they are asking for puts these players into the audio / videophile category.


As for being 'aggravated' - again far from that - hey i point out that I was from Australia - where we have NO HD MATERIAL what's so ever !! How can I be aggravated ??

Absolutely. With a real projector you are also going to need a seperate room just to run it in because of the noise. I would assume anyone picking up one of these bad boys could afford all the requirements though.

Probably would be easier buying a local cinema (if you had the money !!)

Yes. Basically, you'd have to have everything a movie theater has, for the most part. As I said, I think 4K will take off before I ever get the chance to play real 70mm in my own home.

Geez. I'm sorry HD material is not widely available to you Aussies but do you have to be so pissed about it? There are a lot of things that I can't get for myself but I still survive without being so grumpy. I sure would like to have a bigger house and a dedicated home theater room with a projector and all but I can't afford that. Still, I don't whine when people that have the money discuss about it. Do you expect people to shut up and isolate themselves just so to not hurt the feelings of some jealous people Down Under? Please... sooner or later, you'll get the chance to jump onto HD.

hey - can you all stop thinking what I - and others - are grumpy down here

And I'm definitely NOT pissed off either

I'll grab my HD chance sooner or later - however - the point of this thread was that a 'great' film was looking sad in SD DVD. My only comments were that sure it might look 'sad' when viewed in comparison to HD - but - so will many other SD films. In any case - does SE7EN in SD look that bad ????

Import the $500 player. We (a great many people in this forum) import discs from Australia, why not import HD from America. Shipping might be steep, but it is a possibility and sure to save big bucks over that absurd price.

Guys...can we please get back to the point of this thread?
It's not about Tony's bitching.

if you can't, I'm just giong to delete it.

I noticed most of the Law & Order DVD sets look pretty bad compared to their HD airings on TNT-HD.

Might be because they're in 4x3.

Technically the early episodes should also be in 4x3 when broadcast in HD, anyway. Unless they're cropping it.

But any episode that was shot 16x9 should be on the DVD in 16x9.

Why should that matter?

The TNT broadcasts are 16x9 because they were filmed and they'd have the extra resolution. You can't really compare a 4x3 broadcast to a 16x9 signal.