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."

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

[Kris_J]

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.

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

[jgoemat]

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 losers? Oh, I see at the bottom that "Field of Dreams", "Crash" and "A Christmas Story" are dishonorable mentions...

They all look the same...

[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.

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

[Mark Maughan]

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.

Re:They all look the same...

[iainl]

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.

They might be good HD

[clickety6]

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

What happened to movies?

[hsa]

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.

Re:How could they screw up 'Fifth Element'?

[lotsotech]

What CRT are you projecting onto a 119" screen? Maybe they look the same because the picture is so incredibly dim. On a Sony Qualia 004 (which only takes a 1080i input) the difference between Blu-Ray and DVD was very noticable to the people in the room. Standard DVDs look great, but nobody was saying that they looked close.

Re:HD had better be more than just Cinerama.

[GrayCalx]

You sir are confusing content with delivery method.

Re:They might be good HD

[MikeBabcock]

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 back down to 480i on a wide CRT is quite the unappealing adjustment, visually.