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My brother in law has a weird request with Blu-ray movies. Does it matter?

J

jc0481

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 16, 2005
228
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My brother in law and his family were here in town last Christmas. He got a few movies not in blu-ray format but regular DVD's. Although he does have a PS3 at his house. He told me in order for him to buy a blu-ray movie over a regular DVD the movie has to be shot in native HD or native blu-ray. I can't remember specifically what he said. It was a while ago.
He then told me a little bit more saying "that way it won't do any loss of any kind when it gets burned at the factory on blu-ray discs.
I am not a blu-ray expert so I stayed quiet. I think this is a weird request and was wondering does this even matter? I think blu-ray is just that 1080P goodness all around. I hope someone out there can help me with this. Thank you
 
I guess what he means is that some movies aren't shot in HD, and just "upconverted" to HD for Blu-Ray.

Not sure why that'd be a bad thing though, if the source material isn't HD, there's not much you can do.
 
I guess it depends on what kind of film -> digital transfer they did for the DVD. If they have enough quality with it, they could probably use it for Blu-Ray without much issue. You should probably remind your brother-in-law that for movies, digital wasn't really an option until the last few years, so nearly everything is going to be on film anyway.
 
Your brother inlaw doesn't know much about BD then as it is about good masters I mean B&W looks briliant (if transfered/mastered correctly), and Battle of the Bugle which was filmed ages ago (before BD) is excellent (something to do with the 70mm film used, you would think with the HD age they would go back to 70mm as it produced some good BD films), it all depends on the transfer, shot in HD or not the transfer is where the quality comes into play.
 
Wait. I always thought that films have some kind of master recording in super duper high resolution (film), and when new formats come out they just print off a new digital version?

If films are shot on SD digital cameras then you'll never get a "pure" HD picture.

Or is that wrong? :eek:
 
Films are released for viewing at cinemas. Your typical cinema screen is what? Roughly 5m x 3m. Larger than your average TV. So films have to have enough resolution to make them look good on massive screens. I'd imagine that the effective resolution is a lot higher than what you'd get in your average Blu-Ray movie.

So as long as the transfer is ok, any movie will look better on Blu-Ray than DVD.
 
They are nearly all on film (as I said already), it is just the transfer/mastering that effects quality as it is there, just a case of the studio doing a good job (Universal and Warner both suck in my opinion).
 
raggedjimmi said:
Wait. I always thought that films have some kind of master recording in super duper high resolution (film), and when new formats come out they just print off a new digital version?

If films are shot on SD digital cameras then you'll never get a "pure" HD picture.

Or is that wrong? :eek:
Click to expand...


No, you would be right.
 
Has anyone seen Bangkok Dangerous in blu-ray? I have not finished it, but when I put it in just to see how it looked it was really grainy, even worse than a standard DVD. I guess it could have just been a bad movie in general.
 
jamesarm97 said:
Has anyone seen Bangkok Dangerous in blu-ray? I have not finished it, but when I put it in just to see how it looked it was really grainy, even worse than a standard DVD. I guess it could have just been a bad movie in general.
Click to expand...
Some are made Grainy for effect, others just have bad transfers
 
The main "problem" with Blu-Ray is that it shows up BAD cinimatogaphry. i.e. the grain issue, if a movie is shot in low light, with the wrong type of lense (for the conditions) or the wrong film (for conditions) or with a poorer quality Digital Cinema camera, Film grain or sensor noise will be more visible. Often these imperfections can be literally fudged out in cinemas by unfocusing the projector slightly.

Many people, myself included, like to see the grain in some films, i.e. ROBOCOP (Blu-Ray). The grain is there, but its unifurm and adds to the feel of the film, as it dose with superman the movie (Christopher reves origional).

Wherte it falls down is when its not uniformley grained. a good example of this is Starship Troopers (1). The Daylight scenes have verry little, but still noticible grain, Low light scenes have loads of grain and the CG shots are clean smooth and grain free. Its not a nice effect.

And as for digital Cinematography cameras, they tend to be available in 2k, 3k, and 4k, resolutions (thats 2000, 3000, and 4000 horisontal lines) compared to the aprox 1k of Full-HD 1080p
 
northy124 said:
They are nearly all on film (as I said already), it is just the transfer/mastering that effects quality as it is there, just a case of the studio doing a good job (Universal and Warner both suck in my opinion).
Click to expand...

True, but even the worst quality Blu Ray movies I've seen are still better than upconverted DVD.
 
I don't get stuff like comedies in blu-ray even though I have a blu-ray player, there's no point... it's a comedy! An upconverted comedy is fine by me if it means I don't have to wait for the blu-ray to become available through netflix (which is usually forever on new releases). And as far as your brother in-law's logic... it's flawed. I think people in the thread have touched on this, but I didn't read all the responses.

Film has a much higher resolution than blu-ray anyways, so when they take the film master, they usually scan them into the computers at 4k, which is still higher than 1080p out of current HD TV's, then they do their color correcting and fix any issues that could be on the film itself (scratches, etc). Then they use that new enhanced digital copy to press to blu-ray. They aren't just taking the files they encoded for the DVD and pressing them to blu-ray and calling it HD. That's why not all of the old movies that are on DVD, are on Blu-ray yet. And that's why even movies shot back before HD technology are still in HD, because they were shot on film. Resolution is really only applied to all digital media. It's the same idea in film photography. You can take a picture on a film camera, and blow the negative up to almost any size you want (obviously to a degree), and you won't lose quality.
 
mak10 said:
I don't get stuff like comedies in blu-ray even though I have a blu-ray player, there's no point... it's a comedy! An upconverted comedy is fine by me if it means I don't have to wait for the blu-ray to become available through netflix (which is usually forever on new releases).
Click to expand...

My Blu Ray collection is small, but every single one of them is a comedy (with the exception of the Foo Fighters and Nine Inch Nails concert Blu Rays). Maybe a comedy movie in HD won't make you say "Holy sh*t, that's awesome!" like, say Transformers, 300, The Dark Knight or The Matrix in HD would, but if I'm buying a movie and have my choice between DVD and Blu, I'm going for Blu no matter what genre it is. I paid good money for my HDTV and Blu Ray player, and I'm getting the best picture quality I can possibly get out of it.
 
mak10 said:
I don't get stuff like comedies in blu-ray even though I have a blu-ray player, there's no point... it's a comedy! An upconverted comedy is fine by me if it means I don't have to wait for the blu-ray to become available through netflix (which is usually forever on new releases).
Click to expand...

Heh, I still prefer DVDs for convenience (iPod rips, my girlfriends/relatives/home abroad only have DVD players) and price, and even on our 46" Bravia DVD's still look fantastic. As soon as my computers start shipping with BR drives at little extra cost and as media prices fall to DVD levels I'll make the switch. And when I'm sat back on the sofa I don't notice the difference in detail at all :)
 
raggedjimmi said:
Heh, I still prefer DVDs for convenience (iPod rips, my girlfriends/relatives/home abroad only have DVD players) and price, and even on our 46" Bravia DVD's still look fantastic. As soon as my computers start shipping with BR drives at little extra cost and as media prices fall to DVD levels I'll make the switch. And when I'm sat back on the sofa I don't notice the difference in detail at all :)
Click to expand...

I agree that not having the ability to bring them over to my g/f's place to watch them is annoying, just means she has to come over and I don't have to leave the couch. But as far as ripping for iPod and stuff, out of the last maybe 5 blu-rays i've bought, only 1 didn't come with a digital copy you could put on your ipod, iphone, whatever... so that's kinda cool, even if I don't utilize that feature too often.

yg17: believe me, I'm spoiled now and wish I could get every movie on blu-ray, but the prices are still a little high, and the quality doesn't seem worth the price when it comes to comedies to me, basically because of what you said. There aren't many special effects, or need to have the best quality 'IMO', so I just can't justify the cost right now.
 
Thank you for the replies.

Next time my brother in law talk about movies and of course it leads to blu-rays. I can just point this forum to him and all will be well.

Thanks again

JC0481
 
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