HD DVD

Here's someone else who doesn't pay import duty

The HD DVD of The Adventures of Robin Hood arrived from Deep Discount DVD yesterday, and I'm pleased to report that Warner have delivered another stellar disc. It's becoming quite apparent that, at Warner, there are two processes through which a title can go. The first, which has given us discs like Constantine, Million Dollar Baby and V for Vendetta, delivers a noise reduced, slightly edge enhanced transfer. These are good-looking discs, but not up to the standards I demand. The second, which has given us discs like Corpse Bride, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and now, seemingly, The Adventures of Robin Hood, results in an image that seems to be more or less completely untampered: sharp as a tack, appropriately grainy (or not, as is the case with the all-digital Corpse Bride), and no edge enhancement in sight. A couple of scenes in Robin Hood show some slight ringing, and I'm currently investigating to determine whether this is caused by edge enhancement applied to the transfer, or something else endemic to the source materials (optical process shots, for example, often result in what nowadays we would refer to as edge enhancement).

As for the film, I found it to be a hoot: gloriously colourful, outrageously camp and filled with swashbuckling adventure and melodrama. Not the sort of thing I usually go in for, but I was suitably entertained and found it to be an enjoyable enough way to kill an hour and a half. The high definition Looney Tunes cartoons look gorgeous too, although something is up with the sound on both of them, with a lot of crackling that sounds decidedly digital in nature during the high frequencies. I've tried two different sets of speakers, so it's not my sound system, and I can therefore only assume that this is a mastering fault.

On the not so positive side, only one of my four Christmas DVDs has arrived (Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 4), which means that, if they don't show up by tomorrow (I'm not confident), they'll be too late.

HD DVD review: Miami Vice

Miami Vice is ultimately close to two and a half hours of posturing, insincere characterisation and abrasive style, none of which would suggest, barring the appearance of his name during the opening credits, that a filmmaker of Michael Mann's calibre was behind it. To describe it as a failed experiment would be charitable: a mess is a more accurate description.

Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx don their designer shades and head out to the beach as I review Universal's recent HD DVD/DVD combo release of Miami Vice.

Buena Vista quietly switches to VC1

Source: High-Def Digest

Due in stores today, Disney's latest wave of Blu-ray titles features the studio's first VC-1-encoded title, the Jodie Foster thriller 'Flightplan.'

Interesting, interesting. Could we be in line for an HD DVD announcement at some point in the new year?

Le DVNR et la compression

My copy of Studio Canal's recently released HD DVD of Basic Instinct arrived from Amazon.fr this morning.

Unfortunately, the transfer, while clearly in a different league compared to standard definition, is artefact-ridden in a way that I've never seen on an HD DVD until now. Daylight scenes generally look fine, but those taking place at night or in subdued interior lighting conditions (which accounts for a considerable portion of the film's duration) look smeared and defocused. Grain patterns stick to the walls and actors' faces during panning shots, making it pretty clear that some intensive DVNR has been applied. And why? The film isn't even 15 years old, and the compressionists have 30 GB of data to play with (and no extras, barring a trailer for other Studio Canal titles and some test patterns). I don't think I'd go so far as to say that this is the least impressive HD DVD I've seen so far (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and An American Werewolf in London are contending for that crown), but it's definitely underwhelming and not the sort of thing I'd show to someone to sell them on the delights of high definition.

I just hope this isn't indicative of what we can expect from Studio Canal as a whole. Certainly their trailer reel, which showcases everything from The Elephant Man to Rambo to Ran, looks rather mixed in terms of quality, with some material looking absolutely excellent (the grain in Rambo looks phenomenal, and their version of Million Dollar Baby looks more impressive than Warner's), but some not so impressive (Ran is marred by giant edge enhancement halos).

Here's looking at you, HD DVD

My HD DVD of Casablanca arrived from Deep Discount DVD this morning (The Adventures of Robin Hood was dispatched a few hours later than it, so presumably it will come tomorrow).

I'm very impressed with the work Warner has done on the transfer, and would place it at around a low 9/10 on my scale. First of all, this disc should put paid to the foolish notion that there's no point in buying "old films" in high definition. The higher resolution results in as much of an improvement to the overall level of detail as any modern film I've seen, and by and large the digital tampering is kept to a minimum. There are a few niggles, however. The first is some occasional edge enhancement and filtering of the grain, suggesting that this disc was encoded (or the master created - it's unclear at which stage in the chain the faults are being introduced) by whoever was in charge of Constantine and V for Vendetta rather than whoever did Corpse Bride and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Lyris also noticed some evidence of DVNR, particularly during the airport climax in a shot where Humphrey Bogart turns his head rapidly, resulting in the grain and the details of his face "dragging".

By and large, though, this is a great-looking HD DVD. If Warner manages to top this with The Adventures of Robin Hood I will be very impressed.

High definition, every hour on the hour

To get an idea of the general sales performance of the two rival HD formats, I generally refer to The DVD Wars, which provides a comprehensive run-down of Amazon.com's DVD (which also encompasses HD DVD and Blu-ray, for some reason) sales rankings. The site is a valuable resource, but it has its shortcomings, among them an inability to display the sales rank of every available title. That's where HD Game Database's new HD DVD/Blu-ray Sales Rank page comes in.

According to them,

This page is a different representation of the same data. The primary reason for this page is due to curiousity raised by the top 10 listing on The DVD Wars...namely, what lies beyond each format's top 10?

The data below is sortable by several different fields. Both HD DVD and Blu-ray are listed in one ranking list. All movies in the database have been scrubbed of any invalid DVDs (WMV-HD, etc.). The data retrieved from Amazon.com contains ALL available next-generation titles (including pre-orders). The data displayed below contains only those movies with a sales rank.

A studio summary is listed at the bottom and is updated according to the list size (Top 10, Top 25, etc.) selected in the drop down list.

There are certainly some interesting numbers on display, especially with regard to the number of titles released by each studio: for example Warner, the studio that, along with Universal, continues to be the most enthusiastic supporter of either format, has 55 titles on HD DVD, but only 33 on Blu-ray. The statistics are not infallible, however: while Paramount seems to have 16 titles on Blu-ray but only 15 on HD DVD, in actual fact this is due to U2 - Rattle & Hum inexplicably not being listed as available on HD DVD, when in fact it is.

DVD image comparison: An American Werewolf in London

It's that time of the month again: I've done a brand new DVD Image Comparison, this time focusing on John Landis' horror classic An American Werewolf in London. Entering the ring tonight are the DVD side of the recently-released US HD DVD/DVD combo (which seems to be identical to the standalone R1 DVD), and the R2 UK Twenty-first Anniversary Special Edition (how's that for a mouthful?).

Who will be victorious? Click and all will be revealed.

Strap yourself in and feel the Gs!

My new video card, the EN7600GT/HTDI/256M model of the nVidia GeForce 7600GT family, finally arrived today, after having accidentally been sent the wrong version by the supplier. Ripping out my old card and putting the new one in didn't take too long, and I even ended up with a bit more room for ventilation in my case due to the fan on the new card not hogging an extra PCI slot (the Radeon X850XT had a very large but very efficient and quiet one). I half-expected everything to go wrong at the driver installation stage (I've read horror stories about ATI drivers remaining in the system and causing problems with nVidia devices, and vice versa), but everything went smoothly.

As I expected, switching video cards made little difference to my overall gaming performance either way. Both are, after all, from roughly the same generation and as such are generally considered to be pretty much two sides of the same coin. My 3DMark '03 score jumped from 12,582 to 12,836 (the actual numbers are meaningless - they're simply a way of comparing performance between different systems, but obviously higher=faster), while my 3DMark '05 score fell from 6,067 to 5,875. In the real world, the differences are negligible either way, and I certainly have yet to find myself remarking "Wow, that's a lot faster!" or "Christ, it wasn't always this slow!" while playing a game.

Anyway, all this was to be expected. There were two reasons for me buying this card: (1) HDCP compliancy, and (2) improved video playback. Since I bought my X850XT, numerous improvements have been made to the PC playback of DVDs (and now, of course, HD DVDs), with yet more of the decoding being shifted away from the CPU to the graphics card to improve performance, as well as greatly improved deinterlacing quality, and a variety of other neat features that you would expect as standard on a decent stand-alone DVD player, including bad edit correction and inverse telecine. The GeForce 7600GT features all of these, in addition to a couple of tools that, as you can probably imagine, I won't be touching with a ten-foot pole: edge enhancement and noise reduction.

First impressions are very positive. I threw Ren & Stimpy: The Lost Episodes in and watched it in PowerDVD 6 with inverse telecine enabled. Where once lines jumped all over the place the image is now smooth, just like you would expect from a standalone player. The deinterlacer still occasionally slips up, resulting in the odd jumping line, but, unless you have a DVD player equipped with an extremely high-end chipset, you're going to get that anyway. The point is, my DVD playback is now greatly improved for non-progressive content.

Some quibbles, though. The first problem is that the fan on the new card is rather noisy. If you're simply browsing the Internet or word processing or whatever, the card is smart enough to not run the fan, because it's not needed. However, as soon as an application calls for the card to be used (we're basically talking games and video here), it kicks in, and it sounds a little like a quiet vacuum cleaner. In the past, I've generally left the side off my case in order to improve ventilation, but I've put it back on for the first time in a over a year, in an attempt to dull some of the noise.

Problem number 2: for a princely sum of $20 to $50, depending on which version you buy, nVidia allows you to use PureVideo, which apparently further improves the efficiency and image quality of video playback. I downloaded a free 30-day trial, but as of yet have been unable to get it to work. My system simply behaves as if it isn't there, and, based on what I've read on various forums, I'm not alone in this regard. I'm going to continue to search for a solution to this dilemma, but I'm extremely glad I didn't pay any money for this software, because this is really not an acceptable situation.

Ah well, time to eBay the Radeon (or, if you want to take it off my hands for a fine price, let me know).

Mann oh mann

This morning, I received a review copy of the HD DVD/SD DVD combo of Michael Mann's Miami Vice courtesy of DVD Pacific. I've never seen the 80s TV series on which the film is based, so I really didn't know what to expect.

All I can say is that I'm glad this was a review copy and thus something I didn't have to pay for, except with the two hours and twenty minutes of my life that I'll never get back. Miami Vice is an incoherent mess, an eyesore and assault on the ears. It's one hundred and forty minutes of Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx slicking back their hair and/or adjusting their shades as they swagger around various seaside locations with their jaws firmly set and their designer shades glinting in the sunlight. The plot feels like your average 45-minute cop show stretched out to beyond the normal length of a feature film, while the characters are nothing more than mere archetypes who spit out corny dialogue and offer us glaring insights into their tedious and insincere emotions.

Style-wise, the film is all over the place. Mann shot it using a combination of traditional 35mm and 1080p high definition. Some of it looks fine, but the night scenes look absolutely vile, filled with obnoxious amounts of digital noise. Meanwhile, a whole lot of scenes have what can only be described as a motion blur effect, presumably the result of shooting the footage interlaced and then deinterlacing it for the final transfer. Mann used similar techniques on his previous film, Collateral, and they were just as bad there. If this is the future of cinema, I think I'd prefer to remain in the past. Oh, and the camerawork is dreadful, too: I get that Mann wanted to convey a sense of urgency, but when your viewpoint is jittering all of the place, Blair Witch-style, I feel ready to vomit rather than being drawn into the action.

Simply put, this is the worst film I've added to my HD collection thus far. A 3/10 is, I feel, extremely generous. Not recommended. The disc itself, however, is very good, with an array of extras that I'll no doubt have to plough through and a solid transfer that does the best it can with the uninspiring quality of the source materials.

It's called addiction

I'm sure I'm going to regret this when my credit card bill comes in, but at just over £10 per title (thanks to the ridiculously weak US dollar), these HD DVDs at Deep Discount DVD were too cheap to pass up (thanks Phantom for recommending them to me). I ordered The Adventures of Robin Hood and Casablanca, which, released in 1938 and 1942 respectively, will be the oldest titles I will own on HD DVD, not to mention (and correct me if I'm wrong here) the oldest titles available on the format, period. And yet, despite their age, they're apparently two of the best-looking discs out there.

With Robin Hood, I must confess that the real draw for me is not the main feature itself but the chance to see two Looney Tunes classics, Rabbit Hood and Robin Hood Daffy, in full 1080p high definition - my first encounter with 2D animation in HD. As for Casablanca, I've seen it before, and it's one of those films that I find myself respecting more than actually liking, but, for some reason, I have a genuine hankering to see an Academy ratio black and white film in high definition, and Casablanca certainly fits that particular bill.

Do you see what I see?

Make click.

SD to HD image comparison

No, no, I haven't actually somehow magically managed to get HD DVDs to play in my computer. This is merely a demonstration to give you some idea of the difference in resolution between standard definition and high definition, using the 1080p QuickTime V for Vendetta trailer (available here) as a source. I'm afraid I couldn't capture the exact same frame, and the black levels are a little off (blame whoever encoded it, not me), but you should still be able to get some idea of the phenomenal leap in quality that is achieved. The DVD image was upscaled to 1920x1080, and a 508x721 portion was then selected to prevent the image from being monstrously huge on your average computer screen.

Mouse over to switch between versions:
Standard definition | High definition

Quite something, isn't it? It certainly lets you appreciate the added level of facial detail.

La haute définition

Feminists beware! My first HD DVD from Studio Canal is winging its way to me as we speak, and it's - gasp! - Basic Instinct. As it happens, I've never seen Paul Verhoeven's "classic" (so I'm not yet sure whether "classic" should ineed be inside quotation marks), but I know of its reputation, and, of the currently available Studio Canal titles, it's the one that I thought seemed like the most interesting. (Whether in a good or a bad way remains to be seen, of course.)

Anyway, I should hopefully receive this from Amazon.fr in a week of so. Isn't this whole universal 24 fps 1080p and no region coding lark great?

HD DVD review: Serenity

With the UK release of Serenity, Universal have done what, five months ago, I wouldn't have thought was possible: taken my favourite HD transfer of all time and improved it. No, I don't think I'd recommend that everyone who already owns the US version immediately rushes out and picks up the UK release, but the difference is there. If you don't already have the US disc, be in no doubt: the UK release is the finest-looking digital video disc this reviewer has ever seen, and Universal and their competitors are going to have their work cut out one-upping this beauty.

Eight months after HD DVD first launched, it's double-dipping time! I've reviewed the recent R0 UK release of Serenity, investigating whether Universal's new, more efficient transfer is any different from its predecessor.

Wolf Creek

As the first HD DVD I've seen from the Weinstein Company, Wolf Creek is a bit of a mixed bag. It has moments that are genuinely impressive, but on other occasions, technical issues that could probably have been avoided get in the way. However, it goes without saying that this is the best the film has ever looked outside a theatrical environment or the original camera recordings, so, if you are HD-capable, this is definitely the version of the film to pick up.

The Weinstein Company jumps aboard the HD DVD bandwagon this month with a variety of releases. I offer a sneak preview of Wolf Creek, an effective exploitation horror piece from the land down under.

HD for High Disappointment

Two new HD DVDs winged their way to me from DVD Pacific this morning: An American Werewolf in London, from Universal, and Wolf Creek, from the Weinstein Company. Unfortunately, these are the most disappointing high definition discs I've received so far.

Let's start with An American Werewolf in London. Prior to receiving it, I was under no delusions as to how it would look. This is a low budget film from 1981, and one that, despite its cult following, is neither prestigious enough to be eligible for a Casablanca-style restoration, nor for the same standard of storage. So far, all of the HD DVD's I've bought have been of recent (i.e. less than 10 years old) films, many of them sourced from digital intermediates with the film negative itself being scanned almost as soon as it was shot. As such, there is a certain "look" that you can expect from them that you aren't going to get with something like American Werewolf. Still, I expect the technicians to do the best they can with the materials they are handed, and not to attempt any sort of invasive digital manipulation. Unfortunately, those responsible for the master used for this HD DVD clearly missed that particular memo from the HMS Whimsy, for they have attempted to compensate for the inherently somewhat soft look of the source materials by adding a tonne of edge enhancement. The aliasing on this particular title is the worst I've seen on any HD DVD, and would probably be considered pretty noticeable even on a standard definition release. All things considered, this gets a very low 6/10 from me.

Even the sound is a disaster - a 0/10 affair. American Werewolf was, unsurprisingly, mixed in mono, but, for the most recent theatrical re-release, Universal undertook a whiz-bang new DTS 5.1 remix, and in doing so not only fed the existing audio through multiple channels, but also threw in all manner of new sound effects not present originally. Unfortunately, on the DVD, and now the HD DVD, only this mangled 5.1 mix is provided. As far as I am concerned, this is not the film as it was originally released, and as such is a faulty product. Sorry to be harsh, but intrusive revisionism of this sort has absolutely no place on a disc whose cover art proclaims "The Look and Sound of Perfect™", unless of course the original version is also provided as an option.

Wolf Creek next, and I'm afraid things go from bad to worse. This film is actually not a "film" at all, since it was shot in 1080p high definition. As such, an HD DVD encoded at 1080p should theoretically provide a more or less perfect pixel to pixel replication of the original image that was recorded. Unfortunately, Wolf Creek has what Lyris refers to as "the Blu-ray look". The image is incredibly inconsistent. Some shots look absolutely brilliant, with razor-sharp details, while the fake grain added to many scenes to make the movie look a little more intense (and less like a home video) is accurately represented. Other scenes, though, show noticeable compression artefacts and give everything an odd "waxy" look, as fine details are smeared out, a little like the HD DVD of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Unlike most North American HD DVD studios, the Weinstein Company are using AVC/MPEG4 as their codec instead of VC1, and, while I personally was very pleased by the results that this produced for the Japanese HD DVD of The Machinist, I'm beginning to see why so many people are down on it if Wolf Creek is representative of how it generally looks. Another 6/10.

Oh, and the disc took absolutely ages - about three minutes - to boot. Apparently this problem affects all of the Weinstein Company's HD DVDs, for some reason.

A most eventful excursion

This morning, I was at an interview for a job with the Scottish Qualifications Authority, the body in charge of designing and conferring all non-degree awards in Scotland. The post in question is an administrative one, and it's a part-time (three days per week), temporary (three months) venture, but we've all got to start somewhere, as they say, and I'd like to be able to get some money coming in again (I've been putting all my unemployment benefit rakings into a PhD fund). Of course, being an interview, I had to wear a suit and tie, which, as you probably know, I absolutely loathe. (Can someone please explain to me the point of a tie? I can't think of a more useless item of clothing.)

Anyway, while I was out, I took the opportunity to do two things. First, I went to Burger King and ate one of their burgers - something I haven't done in many a year. Not much has changed: they're still better than McDonalds' burgers, but they sit like a lump of lead in your stomach and very quickly leave you feeling empty. Second, I went to Borders to spend a £25 book token I had lying around. I was rather foolishly hoping they'd be stocking HD DVDs and that I'd find something to my fancy, but evidently Borders still think it's the 20th century, so I had to settle for good old-fashioned literature instead. I picked up The Peoples of Middle-earth, Christopher Tolkien's account of his father's writing of the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings, and a copy of the original graphic novel of V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. Unfortunately, the only version I could find had been subjected to an incredibly naff colouring job (the original publication was black and white, but evidently nowadays readers want their comics in colour, no matter how crummy that colour might be), but it's better than nothing, and the paint job is so faint that, if I squint hard enough, I can just about manage to make it look monochromatic. It also happens to be printed on something closely approximating toilet paper, which, for £16.99, seems a bit mean, but that's evidently how many people like their comics. Personally, I prefer the glossy surface of the most recent Asterix re-releases.

Speaking of Asterix, I note that the first two albums, Asterix the Gaul and Asterix and the Golden Sickle, have recently been re-released in a larger print format with new covers and, according to the official Asterix blog, completely re-inked and re-coloured panels.

Personally, I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, many of the books do have very poor painting, especially the first four titles, and, in addition, many of them, even comparatively recent ones, suffer from what I imagine is erosion on the master plates themselves, resulting in lines that are faint and at times lost entirely, DVNR-style (Asterix and the Soothsayer is particularly affected). At the same time, though, these books are products of their time, and any attempt to bring them "into line" by giving them all the same colour palette and lettering style seems like meddling with a piece of history. (It's also incredibly pointless because, even if you standardise the colouring, you still have to contend with the fact that the look of the characters and indeed the overall art style have continued to evolve with every album.) I can't deny that many were produced in less than ideal circumstances, but it all seems a bit intrusive to me. The first eight books were, a few years back, released re-coloured and re-inked (although I believe that these most recent releases re-colour them yet again), and, while the likes of Asterix and the Goths, which was incredibly poorly coloured in its original state, certainly benefited, others, such as Asterix and the Banquet, which already looked very nice, lost a lot of their vibrance and subtlety in their new homogenised versions.

Still, part of me is actually quite tempted to pick up at least one of the new books and see whether these re-issues are worthwhile. The €14 price tag at Amazon.fr is pretty damn steep, though, and, morbid as it is, I'm also a little concerned that Uderzo will either retire or pop his clogs before he can finish re-doing the cover art for each book.

PS. You can view a Flash demonstration of the "restoration" process if you're interested.

Captain Whiggles' Christmas list

It's nearly that time of the year again and, in order to avoid any potential disappointments, I've decided to put together my Christmas list and get my orders in now, rather than waiting till the last moment. Therefore, on the birthday of everyone's favourite fictional deity (Mithras), I shall (hopefully) be receiving the following:

• Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 4 (R1 USA). For the last few years now, it has been something of a custom for me to receive the latest instalment in this collection of remastered (and sometimes mangled) cartoon classics, and to spend a copious portion of the morning watching them with Lyris. The notion of a whole disc full of Speedy Gonzales cartoons on this set doesn't exactly seem like the most welcome prospect... although I don't imagine it being considerably worse than the Road Runner disc in the previous set.
   
• The Double Life of Véronique: The Criterion Collection (R1 USA). Although Krzysztof Kieslowski's brand of spiritualism doesn't really do much for a heathen such as myself, I must confess to being absolutely enthralled by his use of colour and imagery. His Three Colours: Blue is one of my favourite films ever for its cinematography and lyricism. I already own the French release of Véronique from MK2, but, for some reason, I never got round to watching it, and the news that the new Criterion release duplicates all of its extras, plus adds several of its own, in addition to a better transfer, makes this a must-have in my book. Expect to see the French release on eBay before too long. Oh, and check out John White's review of the Criterion set at DVD Times.
   
• The Quiller Memorandum and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: Ultimate Edition (both R1 USA). Two catalogue titles picked up in the same order from DVD Pacific for a very reasonable combined price. I haven't seen The Quiller Memorandum, but I do love me my Cold War-era spy thrillers, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is one of the greatest American horror films ever made, so it makes sense to add what is apparently the definitive edition to my collection (having previously sold the non-anamorphic UK release).
   
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: The Complete Recordings (on CD). Last Christmas, I bought the Complete Recordings package of The Fellowship of the Ring, a 4-disc set (3 CDs and one audio DVD) turned out to be a massive improvement on the heavily-truncated single-disc release, so it stands to reason that this instalment should also be a worthwhile acquisition. The Two Towers always struck me as having the weakest score of the three Lord of the Rings films, but I suspect that this is because, perhaps more than the other two films, it was severely short-changed by having some of its most impressive cues left out of the single-disc release.

I'm also currently pursuing replacing my current video card, Sapphire's ATI Radeon X850XT, with the similarly-performing nVidia GeForce 7600GT from ASUS, the EN7600GT/HTDI/256M model of which includes an HDMI output and HDCP compliancy, in addition to various high-end video processing features, such as inverse telecine, temporal de-interlacing, bad edit correction and hardware VC1 decoding. I'd originally planned on waiting to pick up a DirectX 10-enabled card from nVidia, but the price and power consumption of even the lower-end 8800GTS model were enough to persuade me to forego sheer brute strength and just settle for improved DVD (and eventually, I hope, HD DVD) playback. Besides, such a high power graphics card would probably be all but useless on my now-outdated Pentium 4 configuration.

Anyway, I bought a EN7600GT/HTDI/256M on eBay for a not unreasonable price, but, due to a mix-up, I was sent the non-HDMI, non-HDCP model instead. The correct model has been located, however, and I sent the other card back yesterday, so should hopefully be receiving the right one before too long. As an added bonus, the fact that I am buying what is technically a card from the previous generation of graphics technology means that I should hopefully be able to sell my current ATI card for not too much less than what I'm paying for this new one.

Xbox 360 beating PS3... in sales and performance

Don't believe the lies. Sony's overpriced and hard to find Playstation 3 is currently being trounced by the Xbox 360... and I'm not just talking about sales figures. No, I'm talking about graphics quality and performance. Gamespot has posted an article comparing eight different games that are available on both systems, and their findings were, for the most part, the same across the board:

The Xbox 360 had better graphics in almost all the games we examined. The 360's biggest victories were in Madden 07 and Fight Night Round 3, where the differences in texture detail and lighting stood out in our comparison shots. We couldn't capture this in the screenshots, but the Xbox 360 games generally offered better framerates too.

Hmm... where have we seen this before? Oh, that's right: the Playstation 2, that oh-so-amazing system that was supposed to be able to render Toy Story-like graphics in real-time; that system that was so powerful that Saddam Hussein would be able to power his nuclear warheads with it (Saddam with nuclear weapons - there's another myth busted)... when in fact it struggled to outdo the older Dreamcast. Seriously, Sony, we're sick of your lies, and it looks like people may finally be starting to cotton on to the fact that all your grand claims are nothing but empty promises. You see, folks? If you want to play boring excrement-coloured action games and painfully photo-realistic sports sims (not to mention watch HD movies), you can get all that on the 360, with the benefit of them running faster and looking (comparatively) better.

Of course, it goes without saying that, as a new device, it will take some time for programmers to be able to extract the full potential of the PS3. Even so, however, it's pretty damning that, even at this stage in its life, a machine that was touted as the be-all and end-all of console gaming technology is struggling to keep up with a system a year older than it.

Oh, and in other news, yet another formerly pro-Blu-ray analyst is now predicting HD DVD to win the high definition format war.

More Blu-ray "exclusives" on HD DVD

Source: AV Science Forum

Courtesy of our friends at DeAPlaneta Home Entertainment and Filmax in Spain, several more titles that are Blu-ray exclusives in the US are due to be released on HD DVD between now and the first quarter of 2007. These include Underworld: Evolution, Saw and Saw II. The title that especially excites me, however, is Asterix and the Vikings - presumably the first ever high definition release of an Asterix film, not to mentioned the first 2D animated title. I'm practically soiling myself with excitement.

Oh, and for all you spaghetti western fans, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is also listed.