Best (and Worst) High-Def Discs of 2006

An anonymous reader writes "High-Def Digest has released their first annual 'Best (and Worst) of the Year' list of movies released on HD DVD and/or Blu-ray. Not surprisingly, the 'best' list is heavy on superheroes. Superman, Batman, and the Hulk all made the list. Not a bad cheat sheet for those of us with a Blu-ray capable PS3 or an XBox 360 HD DVD add-on on our Christmas lists."

I know this'll burn karma...

[DarkHelmet (120004)]

But what would be even nicer than having a list of nice HD movies, how about a nice guide of HD sets that accept 1080p via composite input or VGA input?

After all, what good is having a 360 HD drive when you're only going to be watching the stuff at 720p or 1080i anyhow?

Anyone?

Re:I know this'll burn karma...

[by Anonymous Coward]

1080p transmission is a farce when you're dealing with movies. There is basically no difference between transmitting in 1080i vs 1080p when viewing content at or below 30 frames/second.

When talking about high def tv's, you're mostly talking about progressive displays (plasma, lcd, dlp, lcos, etc...) and in the US those displays are running at 60hz or 60 frames per second. Movies on the other hand are shot and encoded at 24fps. Now both an hd-dvd player and a blu-ray player, whether by component, dvi or hdmi are transmitting data to your tv at 60 fps. 1080i sends half the image on cycle 1 and half the image on cycle 2, your tv deinterlaces the image fields and shows you a progressive image for 2 frames. 1080p on the other hand sends the whole image on cycle 1, and nothing on cycle 2, and shows the progressive image for 2 frames as well. When you put down $1000 for a 1080p player, you've just paid $500 extra for a marketing term and the belief that movies will ever be shot at 60fps in the forseeable future.

Alot of people will probably chime in and start screaming about interlace artifacts right now. The only way you get interlace artifacts on a progressive tv, is if the source material was shot as interlaced, for example http://thewebfairy.com/911/presentation/artifact.h tm [thewebfairy.com], but both hd-dvd and blu-ray, and presumably network tv are all shot in a progressive format, so your deinterlacer is reassembling the same image you'd see over 1080p.

Re:I know this'll burn karma...

[DrXym (126579)]

When talking about high def tv's, you're mostly talking about progressive displays (plasma, lcd, dlp, lcos, etc...) and in the US those displays are running at 60hz or 60 frames per second. Movies on the other hand are shot and encoded at 24fps.

Except that some TVs can output in 1080p/24. So they can show the movie at the same frame rate as it appeared in the cinema. Getting a player to output in that is another matter. The PS3 can't (at the moment), but allegedly a firmware patch will add that support (see here [beyond3d.com] for details).

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[by Anonymous Coward]

The only way you get interlace artifacts on a progressive tv, is if the source material was shot as interlaced, for example http://thewebfairy.com/911/presentation/artifact.h tm [thewebfairy.com], but both hd-dvd and blu-ray, and presumably network tv are all shot in a progressive format, so your deinterlacer is reassembling the same image you'd see over 1080p.

No, the deinterlacer is trying to reassemble the separate fields of an interlaced image to a frame. To do this, is has to guess where the 2:3 cadence falls, and detect

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[Malc (1751)]

Shouldn't scenes with motion appear smoother at 1080i @ 60 FPS than 1080p @ 30 FPS?

Re:I know this'll burn karma...

[matt328 (916281)]

It all depends what FPS the content was created at. If you're talking video games, its 'content' is created procedurally by a GPU at as many FPS as it can crank out. If you've got a movie that was shot at 30 FPS, viewing it at 60 FPS will cause each source frame to be displayed on the tv for 2 frames (or cycles, or whatever you want to call it). Even though the FPS on a tv is higher, it depends on the FPS of the content you're displaying.

An example would be if in one frame of a 30 FPS source, my hand is on the left side of your screen. My hand moves so quickly to the right so that in the next frame it appears on the right side of the screen. So one frame has my hand at the left, then the very next has my hand at the right. Even if you view it at 100000 FPS (impossible, I know, but stay with me) there would be 50000 frames showing my hand at the left, followed by 50000 frames with my hand at the right. Even though you raise the FPS, there are still no frames that exist with my hand anywhere in between left and right. Unless 60 FPS TVs are able to interpolate between the two, there's just nothing available to show during the 'extra' frame so it stays the same.

When it comes down to it, a movie is still a finite amount of pictures shown in rapid succession (mainly 30 of them per second). Even though a TV can be capable of displaying twice that many in a second, it's not capable of 'making stuff up' to show you every other frame. So I guess I'm trying to say its the content, not the TV that determines the 'smoothness'.

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[Kjella (173770)]

First off, the one that's dead wrong. Network TV is not filmed in progressive, or if they did it's not sent as telecine. Plenty interlacing artifacts there.

Secondly, when you make 24p to 60i you get as follows (1/12th of a second):
1A 2A
1B 2B
to
1A 1A 2A 2A 2A
1B 1B 1B 2B 2B

You actually send half of these in 60i, but that's the result. See the interlaced frame? Each frame gets 5 half-frames, but you can't split that evenly. You could give one frame 4 half-frames and the other 6, but that'd lead to stuttering. H

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[twistedsymphony (956982)]

well, the other argument is video games. both the Xbox 360 and PS3 can play games at 1080p and some already at 60FPS, Not to mention the Xbox 360 has an internal scaler to upscale 720p games to 1080i/p if so desired, you'd be halving your frame rate if you used this feature and neglected to

you're absolutely right about showing low frame rate films... but I wouldn't be so sure about films NOT going to 60FPS in the future. Movie frame rates are low because back on the old film reels the lower the framerate

Re:I know this'll burn karma...

[The-Bus (138060)]

I have no mod points, so I can only respond and say you're right. The source material of HD DVDs and Blu-Ray discs is 1080P. If there's an exception, you'd note it on the back of the case. From what I understand, if the source material is 1080P but your TV is 1080i, you most likely won't see any difference unless you have a very poor deinterlacer.

Even if your TV is 720P, you'll still see a difference between regular broadcast / DVD and HD discs. Some people (myself included) claim to see a difference between HD discs and HD broadcast; for me, this is mostly due to HD DVDs having none of the compression artifacts and color banding you find occasionally on your HD broadcast.

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[poot_rootbeer (188613)]

After all, what good is having a 360 HD drive when you're only going to be watching the stuff at 720p or 1080i anyhow?

Anyone?

Um, because it will still look an order of magnitude better than 480i?

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[iainl (136759)]

1) No, 1080i and 1080p work just fine on the 360. Image Constraint Token has not been implemented on a single public disc yet, and is highly unlikely any time in the near future, given the speed at which these add-on drives are flying off the shelf. By the time it does become an issue, you'll have almost certainly got your $199 worth of fun out of the drive, and the standalone players that you'll need will have come down by that much.

2) The grandparent is strictly off-topic. Burning karma to get his questio

If that's the best, they're in trouble.

[Kris_J (10111)]

Let's see;

• BATMAN BEGINS (forgive the caps, I'm copy 'n pasting). I own it on DVD and I still haven't been able to sit through it.
• THE BOURNE SUPREMACY, which made a good friend of mine motion sick.
• HULK, which I thought was roundly considered awful.
• MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III, starring the recently disowned by his old studio Tom Cruise.

Meanwhile, it looks like some good movies were completely screwed up, such as Army of Darkness.

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[by Anonymous Coward]

Batman Begins [imdb.com] is #88 on the IMDB Top 250 and is rated a solid 8.3. Do you really expect us to take you seriously when you're trashing what is arguably the best superhero movie (let alone Batman movie) in the past decade?

Re:If that's the best, they're in trouble.

[EvilIdler (21087)]

Not just trashing it, trashing it on a geek site!

Batman Begins is back to the darkness, not quite Burton style, but very far from
Batman & Robin. I'm sure the original poster just got Batman titles confused..
Give him a notice for the record, and pull his geek license next time it happens.

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[drsquare (530038)]

Being the best superhero movie is like being the tallest dwarf at the circus, and imdb is infested with raving fanboys who think the film industry started in 1990.

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[jgoemat (565882)]

1. BATMAN BEGINS, the best Batman movie in my opinion
2. THE BOURNE SUPREMACY, another excellent movie, although I didn't like the jerky camera action either, but I understand why it was necessary to hide the poor fight-work
3. HULK, guess you missed Ebert and Roper giving it two thumbs up
4. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III, I haven't seen this one. If someone I know owns it I may borrow it, but I'm not going to give Tom Cruise one more dollar to give to Scientology.

What good movies (other than Army of Darkness) were the

Re:

[Cheetahfeathers (93473)]

The Bourne Supremacy fights were disappointing after watching Bourne Identity. BI had amazingly good fights that used Krav Maga and Escrima/Kali fighting styles to great effect.

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[PingSpike (947548)]

In the BS fight scenes, as near as I could tell, Matt Damon rolled around on the floor with a RealDoll while the director shook the camera hard enough to give old Star Trek space ship combat scenes are run for their money.

If Matt Damon was doing something else, I apologize...because I COULDN'T SEE A GOD DAMN THING.

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[drsquare (530038)]

I don't know if Ebert's opinion counts for anything, he seems to be going senile. Gives pretty much every film four stars no matter how average it is. I don't know anyone who thought Hulk was anything other than awful.

And it's funny to see Ebert slam a film in the 70s/80s, then come back twenty years later and hail it as a 'Great Movie' when he realises everyone else liked it. The man's a fraud.

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[DrXym (126579)]

Batman Begins is a great movie, as is the Bourne Supremacy. Can't say I think much of the other two although MI:III was supposed to be a fairly good popcorn flick even if it did contain a diminuitive AC:DC weirdo in its lead role.

Re:If that's the best, they're in trouble.

[Mark Maughan (763986)]

Batman Begins was arguably the best superhero movie ever.

Hulk was a Shakespearian, father-son conflict, tragedy shot comic book panel style. The only reason people thought it was awful was because they came wanting to see some piece of shit like Fantastic 4 and instead got a more thoughtful, artistic masterpiece. It was a highbrow movie about lowbrow subject matter.

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[Kris_J (10111)]

Batman Begins was arguably the best superhero movie ever.

If you like tired cliches, unnecessarily brutal violence and a movie that doesn't really get started until half way through maybe. Oh well, at least if it's as popular as you say it should be easy to eBay.

Re:If that's the best, they're in trouble.

[clickclickdrone (964164)]

Hulk was a Shakespearian, father-son conflict

I tried to get Hulk via P2P to see if it was as bad as everyone said but it turned out to be a renamed porn movie file with some seriously hot action. I was happy.

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[JFMulder (59706)]

This reminds me of an old Penny-Arcade strip [penny-arcade.com].

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[iainl (136759)]

That's true. It also possibly explains why so many of the big scenes (the dogs and the climax in particular) took place at night, where you can hide the rough bits in the shadows.

Which is what really annoyed me about the film, I think - bits of it were just so dark I couldn't actually see what was going on any more.

But yes, having some time for characters really worked with Hulk. Unlike most of the Batman sequels, where they throw so many villains at it that no-one (least of all Bruce Wayne) gets enough cha

Re:If that's the best, they're in trouble.

[Ucklak (755284)]

Tell that to the boom stick.

Never overestimate the loser potential of Anoracks

[BristolCream (102658)]

This list seems to miss one crucial point: people watch movies for entertaiment. For the vast majority it's all about being told a good story, not studying the quality of the latest movig image to be projected onto a wall/into a box/whatever.

Imagine having a collection that included films like hulk, mission: impossible iii and superman returns (I refuse to capitalise the titles - they're that bad). i'd rather spend the time beatig myself about the head with a dead salmon.

The majority of films in this lis

Re:Never overestimate the loser potential of Anora

[Duds (100634)]

Oh I think they know, but it's not hard to find reviews of these movies on an entertainment basis. It's surprisingly difficult to find reviews of "Let's assume you like this movie, here's how pretty this version is".

Re:Never overestimate the loser potential of Anora

[DrXym (126579)]

The reason the list is decidedly anorak-ish is because those are who the early adopters are. They are technophiles who absolutely must absolutely new gadgets even if it costs 3 times as much to buy 1st gen bugged hardware. While these people have very questionable judgement skills, the likes of Sony, Toshiba etc. still want to attract them to their platform in the hopes that Blu-Ray or HD-DVD will win more converts. Hence the reason for all of the crappy discs released so far.

Normal people wait for the pr

They all look the same...

[by Anonymous Coward]

They all look the same...when you can't watch them at all.

Seriously, please don't buy into HD, unless the DRM madness ends. A few extra pixels are not worth our rights, nor the damage to the open source community.

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[DrXym (126579)]

Erk, but DVDs have DRM so what other video format are you talking about? VHS? Good luck trying to sell that to people.

Besides, I fully expect that you'll see a flood of DVD players capable of playing high definition DIVX / AVC content from a burnt DVD before long, with tools and rippers to extract them from the source material.

Re:They all look the same...

[iainl (136759)]

VHS only doesn't have DRM because the D stands for Digital, anyway. The Analogue Rights Management of Macrovision is (if anything) worse, because it's actually affecting picture quality, unlike on a DVD or HD-DVD where it's invisible on a working machine.

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[DrXym (126579)]

Of course the DRM is on a completely different level. Does that mean it's uncrackable though? The problem faced by all DRM is that the key used for decryption has to be stored somewhere locally and the player still has to output video and audio so people can see / hear it. Which means that no DRM will ever prevent content from being stolen. Somebody will either find a weakly protected key, or produce an HDMI dongle that sits between the player and TV and rips the content on its way through. My understanding

No matter how high the resolution

[rolfwind (528248)]

The Hulk was utterly mediocre. Wouldn't buy it for $4.99, let alone whatever it is high def movies fetch.

Where are the real classics that I would actually want to see in hi-def?

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[Sinryc (834433)]

Waiting to be put out so that the winner is what format they will go on.

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[iainl (136759)]

I'd suggest you start with Casablanca, which is even better than that blurb makes it sound - the amount of texture detail and those deep shadows are just stunning. I can't believe this film looks better than I've seen far more recent movies look when projected from actual 35mm film, when watching on an 8ft screen.

Next up, and almost as good (the larger grain of the original print being pretty much about it) is The Searchers. Finish off an initial purchase run with Forbidden Planet, and you'll be very happy.

They might be good HD

[clickety6 (141178)]

But most of these aren't good films.

Sorry, but I'd rather watch a good film with a good plot and good acting on VHS any day over a whizz-bang technical film with crappy pretty-boy/barbie-girl actors and a script written by a committee...

I'll pass on this one

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[Jah-Wren Ryel (80510)]

Sorry, but I'd rather watch a good film with a good plot and good acting on VHS any day over a whizz-bang technical film with crappy pretty-boy/barbie-girl actors and a script written by a committee...

Spoken like someone without an HDTV.

When most people first get an HDTV set, they will watch anything in HD, no matter how inane, just for the visual quality. The wow-factor tends to wear off after 6-9 months, but just about everyone with an HDTV set still remembers those first few months where the only thing

Guilty!

[LibertineR (591918)]

Dude, when I got my first HD set, I started watching PBS because they had these incredible wildlife and wilderness images on their HD channel. PB-fucking-S! I hate those wankers, but I could not get over the picture quality. If not for DirecTV-HD (who is just now shipping their HD-DVR) I would still be watching cheetahs drag racing antelope over desert tundra.

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[MikeBabcock (65886)]

Do you have any idea how much PBS I've watched since having an HDTV for a year now? PBS in HD can be a truly beautiful experience. The stories were always informative I suppose, but from cooking shows to tours of aquariums to scenic vistas in nature or travel shows, HDTV really maximizes what they're trying to do with TV.

As for regular content, almost every show I watch is in HD these days [mikebabcock.ca] (scroll to the very bottom for the list). I don't watch many shows just for their being in HD, but going from 1080i

Re:They might be good HD

[the_womble (580291)]

You are clearly an eccentric.

What has good plot and good acting got to do with making a good film?

The measure of a good film is how much money is spent on making it: especilly how much is spent on marketing.

What happened to movies?

[hsa (598343)]

What happened to movies themselves. I honestly couldn't care less if I get video commentary with my HD movie or not. I watch movies for movies sake. Extras are something I watch if I liked the movie and have extra time to see how it was made. They are worth nothing if the movie sucks.

The worst movies in list are lacking in extra HD content. So what? Couldn't care less. The winning movies have all sorts of cool extra content, but it still doesn't make the movie good. I will never buy World Trade Centre, even if had best extras and good transfer.

Video quality and soundtrack are the only things I care about. Please remove the extras and put these in with higher quality.

No Adam Sandler?

[antifoidulus (807088)]

But I heard fart jokes are so much better in HD!

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[clickclickdrone (964164)]

But I heard fart jokes are so much better in HD!

Sounds like (smells like?) you want Smellyvision.

HD DVD Advert

[dimer0 (461593)]

Man, that page sure makes it seem that Blu-Ray sucks ass. I'm not sure what they based their selections off of...

If you want some better lists to work form, the guys over at avsforum are a much better information source, if you ask me:

HD DVD Picture Quality Tiers List [avsforum.com]

Blu-Ray Picture Quality Tiers List [avsforum.com]

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[Danga (307709)]

Man, that page sure makes it seem that Blu-Ray sucks ass.

Blu-ray does suck ass and will die. It is more restrictive, has more DRM, requires java virtual machines to be implemented on all players (ugggh), requires the current DVD manufacturing plants to do serious upgrades because the surface layer is much thinner and also requires a special hard coating to be applied, and in turn is more expensive. Sure, it can theoretically hold more data but I think that will really only make a big difference for people

Waiting for winner.

[s31523 (926314)]

" Not a bad cheat sheet for those of us with a Blu-ray capable PS3 or an XBox 360 HD DVD"

Or those who might have burning hardware in their PCs... In my search of DVD burning/authoring software I found software by RocketDivision called Grab & Burn [rocketdivision.com] which claims it can, "Duplicate CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD media in 1:1 mode", and, "supports all types of optical storage media (including CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, BD-R/RE, HD-DVD-R/RW and DVD-RAM) as well as a wide variety of burning hardware", and best of

HD had better be more than just Cinerama.

[dpbsmith (263124)]

For you youngsters here: Cinerama was to 35mm movies as HD is to NTSC. It used three synchronized projectors on a deeply-curved screen subtending a 146-degree arc. Everyone who has ever seen it was bowled over by it. It is still shown on rare occasions when fans arrange it. It is universally acknowledged to be better than the later wide-screen processes such as CinemaScope, VistaVision, etc. all of which were pretty much acknowledged to be ways to get something sorta-kinda-not-quite-almost like Cinerama, but on the cheap. Many who have had an opportunity to compare it with present-day IMAX have judged it to be superior, too, although that's trickier. IMAX suffers by having too much height and not enough width; when presented on a flat screen, it's flat, and when presented on a dome screen, it's hopeless washed out by cross-reflection (unlike Cinerama, which was always pitch-black in the shadows). Of course CInerama had those awful panel joints... but I digress. Here's the point:

Cinerama was never more than a footnote, because it was only suited to spectacle, not to storytelling. Only two Cinerama features were made with a conventional storyline: "How the West was Won," and "The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm." The rest were pastiches of spectacle: travelogues, ride-film-like experiences, and so forth.

It bodes very ill for high-definition that most of the "best" films are special-effects sci-fi extravaganzas.

I'm glad to see they have Casablanca on their list, but it's not clear that they're saying the actual experience of watching the movie is any better than on DVD. They seems to like the many extras bundled in. Is Rick more world-weary in high-definition? Is Ilsa lovelier? Do the heartrending scenes rend your heart any more? I haven't seen it... but I doubt it.

I like seeing superheros hurtle through space and things blow up as much as the next guy, but these are not enough to carry an expensive video format.

How, exactly, is high-definition going to help directors evoke emotion and tell a story?

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[PoconoPCDoctor (912001)]

I'm awaiting delivery of my new techie toy - a 50" Vizio HD Plasma tv. I was looking forward to finding some great sci-fi flicks to check it out - I'm off the next week. The Fifth Element is one of my favorite movies - the DVD I played on my old tv set looked pretty good. So the HD version isn't any good?

Dang it!

I don't have an HD DVD player anyway, so am limited to watching it on a regular DVD player anyway. I hope the best format wins.

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[Overzeetop (214511)]

Don't worry. A good transfer on DVD on such a "small" screen as 50" will be nearly indistinguishable from HD unless you have a controlled environment, good eyes, and an A-B setup to test. I have a good CRT set which is calibrated (professional alignment, enthusiast calibrated) and the difference between HD broadcasts and DVD is minimal to the point that the recently aired ROTK did not look noticably better in 1080i than in 480p off my DVD. I will admit that the HDMI input has not been calibrated with an HD