which blu ray movies?

bluechair84

The HTPC (no wait come back! I'm not talking geekdom, I'm talking about the films you love!) now has a blu ray drive. My first home experiences of BD films are going to be 300 and Moulin Rouge. I picked one, her indoors picked t'other. What other half descent films do you think shows of the technology particularly well? I've heard that some films do it far better than others either because they were designed for BD from the start, or lend themselves to HD. I'm really not a big fan of Avatar, but I've heard that is the film to be blown away by HD so I might give it one last hurra before I leave it to the passage of time.

nicklouse

ok what is it being shown on? and what will you be hearing it through?

bluechair84

a 40" LCD and 2.1 audio - but it's very fancy 2.1: cambridge amp and wharfdale speakers. So... no the sound isn't going to blow anything over.

nicklouse

the 40" is full HD? and any fancy audio does not matter.

let me think.

bluechair84

Oops, tis a 37".
One thing that is a pain is that at 1080p, the HTPC is virtually unuseable without a frontend - I can barely read anything so when not watching film I have to reduce the resolution.

The Dark Knight will be another purchase to test the TV.

nicklouse

Dark Knight is over rated and can be odd as the picture size changes due to the IMAX parts.

Toons are good.

cars
toystory
rapunsel(tangled)

9 is a great film.

the BBC Planet Earth - Life

bluechair84

BBC Planet Earth... could be a very good call. I've not seen them all either. I'll add that to the list

The Northern Monkey

The Dark Knight also has shite sound quality on DVD's/Blue ray (do a search!). If varies from really really loud speech with no background noise, to really really loud background noise with hardly any audible speech.

Band of brothers in Blu-Ray would be good I reckon.

nicklouse

blu ray player for 40 squids
http://www.whathifi.com/news/asda-slash ... o-%C2%A340

bluechair84

Hmm, could be interesting, though my experience of cheap DVD players in the past is that they make DVDs look like VHS... could the cheapest BD play make them look like DVDs O_o ?

Anonymous

Most the cheap stuff these days are Chinese/Taiwanese players whose components are the same ones in the big brand names. Made in the same factories, and sometimes the no-names have a few extra features in their software.

Blu-Ray should play pretty much the same regardless of player in terms of picture quality so long as HDMI is the connection to the telly (and don't go buying £70 HDMI cables from Currys!, £5 from Amazon etc).

What varies with price is the speed of loading the disc and starting the player, some configurable features in the menus, and how good it is at upscaling DVDs. If it's a good upscaler it will make your DVDs look great. Some of the cheapies are also BD region free unlike many of the big names. Got a no-name from Aldi a couple of years back, region free, excellent picture quality and 3 year warranty through Aldi also. Only downside is it's slow to load discs.

Anyway, discs - I've cut down on buying movies on physical media now. Spent far too much money doing that on DVDs and I barely watch them, and much stuff is in HD on telly now, have less energy/time to watch films, and don't want to rebuy my collection in HD. Soon enough we'll be downloading HD movies anyway.

I just buy the essentials that I love and will watch endlessly.

I'd get the Alien set for sure. LOTR extended edition. Band of Brothers, yep. Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, etc. I'm a big Kubrick nut so his films for sure (with some mumbling about the ratios from myself). If you can cope with Lucas's raping of your childhood then maybe the abortions that are the screwed up versions of the Star Wars films .

If you're into them, the Potter flicks make a nice set in HD, though mostly the later ones that look best.

Aside from that, I'm not fussed. I'd get the Bond films but they're on ITV HD frequently. Okay there are adverts, but pretty good.

andy46

I just watched Wanted the other night on blu ray, that was good.

Some of you may know that I love motorbike racing Motogp etc and last year I got the 2010 Motogp season review on blu ray, What a difference! If you like motorsport I'd say any on blu ray would be worth a look.

ol\'gregg

I picked one of these up for £100 a few months back and have been really impressed by it.
http://uk.insight.com/productinfo/home- ... e&src=FRO1
I bought a few BR discs with it too.
Franklyn
LOTR trilogy
blade runner
despicable me
The departed
All in all i've been really impressed with it

bluechair84

Well, I'm underwhelmed so far!
300 is incredibly grainy, but after some research it's supposed to look this way... X-Men first class looks pretty good so far, but I'm not overly blown away, and Moulin Rouge won't play at all. Possibly a codec problem but I have K-lite installed so, I'm not sure where to go from here to get it running.
As the GPX upscales DVDs and xvids I wonder if the gap between the standards has been reduced so that BluRay isn't considerably higher in resolution than it is on paper...
So I'm still waiting to be blown away thus far.

Anonymous

37" display is not enough to really be blown away by the difference between a regular 1080p HD and an upscaled DVD.

It varies though, some films you'll notice things are clearly clearer and sharper, but a lot you won't. Side by side the difference is obvious, but it's just not blown away.

Thing is, the human brain gets used to things very easily and you can appreciate the quality of a DVD and think it's sharp when watching for a while. HD stuff is nicer but after a while of getting used to it, it doesn't look so stunning.

At 40" I wasn't gobsmacked. 1080p will be noticeable at bigger display sizes though, but anything smaller 720p is fine as is even DVD (576p for a good upscaler for UK PAL discs at least). My parents have a 720p Bravia that's something like 32" I think, and watching movies on that even through their old SCART connected DVD player, it looks pin sharp. If I did the same on my 40" telly it would look rubbish, but upscaled through HDMI and they look great.

Anyway, like with digital cameras, higher resolution isn't always the key factor. That just affects how big you display the picture.

bluechair84

Yeah, I agree. Tv is too small to show the difference fully. It does look good, but I probably won't buy many blu ray cpnsidering the tv size and how well the upscaling is obviously working.

louse

I can tell the difference between DVD and bluray on my 24" monitor.

bluechair84

What do you play them through - the PC or players?

louse

Both.

bluechair84

Is what you play the DVDs through up-scaling?

louse

bluechair84 wrote:

Is what you play the DVDs through up-scaling?

Naturally. But I don't buy any now so it is just the ones that come with the blurays. So it is only for comparison as I don't bother watching any DVDs now.

bluechair84

Blu Ray Battlestar Galactica boxset is reduced from 90 to 50 pounds at amazon... It's on the xmas list