Video Asylum

Posted by David Aiken (A) on May 12, 2008 at 01:03:10

In Reply to: RE: Do you already have this title and have you compared it with the standard DVD release, ... posted by Audiophilander on May 11, 2008 at 22:46:12

I haven't seen M&C on either DVD or BD but I have duplicated a number of my DVDs with BD releases. Some of those BD releases have had extremely favourable reviews re picture quality, some less so. Despite that, in my setup with a 32" Loewe LCD screen with 1366 x 768 resolution, admittedly not a world beater but still giving quite good picture quality, I have yet to see a BD disc of a film I'm familiar with on DVD that I did not think a clear improvement over the DVD and the biggest improvement is not always in sharpness or in resolution. Often I feel its simply that the colours are clearer and there's simply a greater clarity of image, as if a very fine veil were removed.

On the basis of what I've seen over, say, 25 BD discs where I'm also familiar with the DVD release (note: I'm in Australia and our DVDs are PAL and, according to DVD comparisons at DVD Beaver that doesn't always translate into a better DVD picture despite the gain in resolution from 480i to 576i), I'd be prepared to say that I've tended to think that the gains in picture quality I've seen on BD are often greater than what the DVD Beaver reviews suggest.

Now it's always possible that one reason for that is that my screen doesn't do a brilliant job of upscaling and that I'm getting proportionately less in picture quality from DVD than I do from BD and perhaps Jazz Inmate has a problem like that too, but in my system so far I'd have to say that while my experience tends to agree with DVD Beaver's comments for BD discs with very good picture quality, my experience tends to indicate that I feel the improvement is somewhat greater than they suggest for BD discs which they don't feel offer a major improvement.

And then perhaps I just do my viewing through rose tinted glasses :-)

As far as the sound goes, I think that uncompressed PCM and the Dolby and DTS lossless formats are definitely better than DVD soundtracks. The greater richness in tonality, especially voice tone, from the new audio formats surprised me. Not every soundtrack provides the same level of improvement but there has always been a clear level of improvement so far for me with BD where there was a genuine high definition soundtrack.

David Aiken

Edits: 05/12/08