HD DVD

The Year in Review

2006 - the year of HD

Note: I’m not going to cover worldwide hot topics like the execution of Saddam Hussein or the continued botch-job that is the situation in Iraq. This is simply a set of personal musings about my own experiences this year.

On a technological front, by far the biggest development on the HMS Whimsy this year was the arrival of an HD DVD player - a late change from our original intention to pick up a Blu-ray player. Originally, I had expected to perhaps have half a dozen titles in high definition by the end of the year, but have in fact ended up with 21 (plus another two that Lyris bought). Certainly a number of these are films that I probably wouldn’t have bought had their been a better selection available, but still, if you’d told me that, a mere six months after its launch, the format would included crystal-clear copies of Casablanca and The Adventures of Robin Hood, not to mention more obscure cult titles like An American Werewolf in London and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I wouldn’t have believed you. All in all, HD DVD got off to a great start in 2006, with I only hope will continue to be bettered in 2007.

Including both standard definition and high definition, I bought or received for review a total of 107 DVDs. I wrote 66 reviews for DVD Times (two down from last year’s record of 68), and went to the cinema a whopping two times. I watched 216 films (including those watched more than once), 99 of which I had never seen before. These tended to be of the more obscure variety, although I did see a number of “major” (both in the sense of being “important” and of being blockbusters that just about everyone ended up seeing) titles that had, for one reason or another, passed me by until last year, including Trains, Planes & Automobiles, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Blade Runner, Tout Va Bien, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Collateral, Corpse Bride, The Piano Teacher, Theatre of Blood, A History of Violence, V for Vendetta, 5x2, Bitter Moon, Walkabout, Fritz the Cat, Vertigo, Exorcist II: The Heretic, The Descent, The Constant Gardener, Serenity, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, Duck Soup, Strictly Ballroom, The Fifth Element, Ghost World, Cars, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, Being John Malkovich, Black Sunday, The Omen (remake), Witchfinder General, Topaz, Torn Curtain, Casino Royale, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Miami Vice, Basic Instinct and The Adventures of Robin Hood. Quite clearly, this list features some real gems and some absolute garbage, including gems that I thought would be garbage and garbage that I thought would be gems.

In terms of television, meanwhile, I watched the first two seasons of Veronica Mars and the final season of Alias. I also went through the entire seven-season run of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with its steadily diminishing returns post-Season 5 gradually driving me towards the brink of suicide (I exaggerate). The long-running medical drama Casualty also celebrated its 20th anniversary, with the launch of the first three series on DVD - it’s anyone’s guess how long they will continue this, given that each series becomes progressively longer, until they eventually run for more or less the entire year. Speaking of Casualty, that particular show shocked me in delivering perhaps the best two hours of television I’d seen all year, with the much-heralded return of former writer (and Waking the Dead creator) Barbara Machin for a one-off guest writing gig. Much to my delight, the magnificent Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace was finally released on DVD, although the same team’s follow-up, the satirical chat-show Man to Man with Dean Learner, turned out to be a huge disappointment. The fifth season of Spooks also aired, and, while it was suitably engaging, it sacrificed some of the subtlety of previous years in favour of increasingly unbelievable conspiracies and hostile takeovers. Oh, and on the TV/film front, Channel 4’s dedicated film channel, FilmFour, became free in July, providing the UK with its first free-to-air channel dedicated to movies.

After over a year’s worth of procrastination, I finally recorded a new fan commentary, this time for Dario Argento’s Profondo Rosso. Once again, feedback for this seems to have been largely positive, although it’s anyone’s guess what I’ll think of it myself when I finally brave listening to it again.

The Third Mother, the long-awaited conclusion to Argento’s Three Mothers trilogy (started with Suspiria and Inferno in 1977 and 1980 respectively), finally went into production, wrapping at some point in late November/early December, with a projected May 2007 release date. Argento also helmed another episode in the American Masters of Horror television series: Pelts turned out to be less shameful than 2005’s Jenifer, but a far cry from his home-grown exploits nonetheless. Meanwhile, the much-feared Hollywood remake of Suspiria was finally axed.

After much talk of the two companies going their separate ways, Disney bought Pixar and instated John Lasseter as the joint president of feature animation for both studios. Shortly before the end of the year, it was announced that, following the release of Meet the Robinsons, Disney would be abandoning CG animation entirely and returning to the hand-drawn realm in which it made its name.

Once more in the animated world, John Kricfalusi, the creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show and the industry’s last great hope, started up an excellent blog in February. July also saw the release on DVD of Ren & Stimpy: The Lost Episodes, containing six new installments featuring everyone’s favourite dog and cat duo, three of which had never even aired on TV. Sadly, there seems to be no indication that sales of the DVD have persuaded Paramount to order more episodes.

I got into computer games this year to a far greater extent than I had for some time, picking up Guild Wars: Factions, Guild Wars: Nightfall, The Movies: Stunts and Effects, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: Legend, as well as replaying Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn, Icewind Dale II, Starcraft: Brood War and Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. Lyris also picked up the new Nintendo Wii console in November, resulting in much enjoyment as all on sundry made asses of themselves waving its newfangled controller about. Oh, and Blizzard Entertainment “postponed indefinitely” (read “cancelled”) its troubled console action game Starcraft: Ghost, much to the disappointment of the three or four people that still cared about it.

I also bought rather more technological gadgets than is normal for me: I picked up a digital camera in February, and a swish new widescreen LCD monitor in June. I also replaced my Creative Zen Micro MP3 player with a Sony NW-HD5 in November, and made the mistake of buying an nVidia-based video card for my computer in December (the replacement ATI model will hopefully arrive soon after business returns to normal after the New Year holiday).

In September, I finally finished my MLitt, handed in my dissertation, and, much to my shock, was awared a Distinction. Unable to find a job, I went on unemployment benefit - what fun.

Oh, and on the web site front, September saw a new site design and a return to Movable Type as a publishing platform after slightly over a year with Blogger. In November, meanwhile, I finally got sick of my useless host, Fuitadnet, constantly screwing up and making life difficult, and moved to Donym, where the rent is cheaper and everything runs much more smoothly to boot.

DVDs I bought or received in the month of December

• The Adventures of Robin Hood (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• An American Werewolf in London (R0 USA, HD DVD/SD DVD combo)
• Basic Instinct (R0 France, HD DVD)
• Casablanca (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• The Double Life of Véronique: The Criterion Collection (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (R0 UK, HD DVD)
• Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume Four (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• Miami Vice (R0 USA, HD DVD/SD DVD combo)
• Operation Crossbow (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• The Quiller Memorandum (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• Serenity (R0 UK, HD DVD)
• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: Ultimate Edition (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• Wolf Creek (R0 USA, HD DVD)

This month, the number of HD DVDs I picked up exceeded the number of standard definition DVDs for the first time: long may this trend continue.

Kisses, bangs, tombs and Blu-ray - oh my!

We took a little family outing today, and went to Braehead Shopping and Leisure Centre, where all the cool people buy their groceries. In the after-Christmas sales (or not), I picked up Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: Legend (what a mouthful) for PC. I’d downloaded the demo on a whim and played it the night before, and found it to be surprisingly good, especially in comparison with its tedious predecessors. It seems that the move from Core Design to Crystal Dynamics salvaged the crumbling franchise and resulted in what it possibly the first truly good Tomb Raider game: even the much-lauded original struck me as rather anaemic, thanks mainly to the awful controls - Legend solves this by switching to a much appreciated mouse-and-keyboard combo. I’ll probably do a full review once I’ve worked my way through the whole thing.

I also picked up Kiss Kiss Bang Bang on HD DVD. I’d been toying with getting the US release, which is an HD DVD/DVD combo, for some time, but, when I saw that the UK version was just a straight HD DVD, I decided to get it instead. I’m glad I did: this is probably the funniest film I’ve seen all day, and quite possibly my favourite HD DVD release so far. It’s a little too smugly self-referential at times, especially in terms of the narration, but the rest of it had me guffawing uncontrollably. I don’t think I actually understood the plot at all, but who cares when you’ve got Robert Downey Jr. losing his finger and having it swallowed by a dog, Val Kilmer playing a gay private detective called (what else?) Gay Perry, and Michelle Monaghan running down a Los Angeles highway in the middle of the night wearing a skimpy Santa outfit? I understand that the film didn’t do particularly well at the box office, partly due to an ineffective advertising campaign that seriously misrepresented it, but don’t let that put you off: this borderline satire of film noir is highly entertaining stuff and one of the most purely enjoyable films I’ve seen in ages.

After that, we headed over to Costco, where Lyris wanted to look into a 1080p television that he will, we hope, soon be picking up. It was there that I had my first up close and personal experience with Blu-ray. And do you know? It wasn’t as bad as I was expecting…

It was worse!

I came across Lyris watching something on a moderately-sized HDTV. I glanced at the screen and saw what looked to me like a heavily edge enhanced but rather crisp DVD. “What’s this?” I began to ask, but, even as the words left my mouth, I began to wonder if something foul was afoot. “That’s not… is that… Blu-ray?” I spluttered. It was. The title in question was S.W.A.T., described by High-Def Digest as “a very nice-looking disc from Sony, and definitely one of the better they’ve put out on the format thus far”. If this ranks among the studio’s best, I’d hate to see their worst. The image was definitely sharper than standard definition DVD, and yet I wouldn’t actually describe it as better. Sharper, yes: the edge enhancement was pretty invasive, and the image overall looked incredibly harsh rather than particularly detailed. But that paled in comparison to the appalling compression. “MPEG2 is perfectly viable for high definition” my left buttock. The film grain was rendered as grubby noise rather than actual grain, and, whenever the camera moved, macro-blocking was in abundance. Worse still, any part of the screen that might be described as remotely saturated was alive with smearing artefacts. Admittedly, an improperly set-up television in a warehouse is far from an ideal setting for evaluating a disc, but I highly doubt that all the calibration in the world would save the mess that assaulted my eyes today. I’ve never felt more glad we went with HD DVD instead.

Jingle bells

In case you didn’t notice, yesterday was Christmas. As luck would have it, the various presents I had ordered all showed up on Saturday, contrary to all expectation (Saturday being the last day for the postal service until the 27th), and I got one or two surprises in addition to those. Thanks must go especially to Lee for sending me a copy of Burton on Burton, which, as you can probably guess, is a book on director Tim Burton and his bizarre gothic fantasies. I’m sure I’ll enjoy getting stuck into it when I next have a spare moment.

Otherwise, there were no huge surprises. I got The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - The Complete Recordings (what a mouthful!) on CD but haven’t had a chance to listen to anything but the first couple of tracks. And, in terms of DVDs, my collection now includes Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 4, The Double Life of Véronique (Criterion), The Quiller Memorandum and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Ultimate Edition). I’ve not had the time to watch any of them, but I gave most of them a brief glance, and have collected my thoughts below.

• The Double Life of Véronique: This release looks slightly better than the French MK2 release (repackaged in the UK under the Artificial Eye label), but it’s a close call. There is less noise reduction and the compression is better handled, giving the image a more eye-pleasing, filmlike appearance. However, I am once again annoyed that Criterion, who are (wrongly, in my opinion) frequently held up to be the pinnacle of DVD production companies, have chosen to assault the image with edge enhancement and brick-wall filtering. Especially following the advent of HD DVD, I am acutely aware that the vast majority of DVDs simply aren’t of an acceptable level of quality.
  
  
• The Quiller Memorandum: Probably the worst transfer I’ve seen all year. This DVD was released only a month ago, and yet it looks almost like a LaserDisc master. The image is flat, detail is non-existent, and I once again find myself wondering how Fox, like Criterion, can garner so much praise for such feeble efforts.
  
  
• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: This restoration, undertaken by Synapse’s Don Mar Jr., has been praised to the high heavens on the Internet, and with good reason: the film has undoubtedly never looked better on a home video format, and the material May had to work with can’t have been in particularly good condition. All the more reason, then, for my to be annoyed by Dark Sky’s DVD, which is ineptly encoded, resulting in some of the most blatant macro-blocking I’ve seen in a long time. At times, the screen is such an array of compression blocks that it resembles a UK Freeview TV broadcast (which anyone who has witnessed this ingenious but flawed “digital TV through an antenna” solution will agree is capable of looking very bad indeed).

That’s all for now. Thoughts on the Looney Tunes discs will follow eventually.

PowerDVD HD - finally

As you probably know, I use my computer quite extensively for DVDs - not just for playback, but also for taking screen captures for reviews, analysing bit rates, carrying out in-depth comparisons between different releases of the same film, and so on. As you can therefore probably imagine, I’m dying to start doing the same thing with HD DVD content. Originally, I thought this would mean either buying an expensive HD DVD drive or waiting for them to come down in price, but the recent discovery that the $200 Xbox 360 add-on drive could actually be hooked up to any PC and used for HD DVD playback right out of the box was a considerable relief, and means that, when they finally become available again (the initial shipments were snatched up faster than you can say “steal of the century”), I will certainly be picking one up.

More good news, then, that Cyberlink has finally released its long-delayed high definition version of the venerable PowerDVD suite. PowerDVD Ultra can play both HD DVD and Blu-ray movies (although the word on the street is that it can only do one at a time, meaning that you have to choose which format you want to play during the install process). At $99, it’s a bit steep, but I expect it will eventually come down in price, and, in any event, I won’t be buying it until I’ve ascertained that it is capable of playing titles in full 1920x1080 resolution. The early HD-enabled versions of PowerDVD bundled with HD DVD PC systems downscaled the image to 960x540, regardless of the fact that, so far, no commercially released titles have had the resolution-limiting ICT flag enabled, and despite the fact that those with HDCP-enabled video cards and displays (like me) are being affected by what should, for them, be a non-issue. Apparently, this is because PowerDVD were terrified of being sued, and therefore chose to mangle the viewing experience for their customers rather than face the wrath of the Hollywood thugs. Obviously, if I can’t watch, analyse and capture discs in their native resolution, there’s not much point in the whole affair, so I certainly won’t be frittering away any pennies until I know exactly what I’m dealing with. I hope for a trial version before too long.

Update #2, December 24, 2006 11:55 AM: I seem to have been misinformed about the downscaling issue, which it turns out does not affect PowerDVD. I give visitor Demented’s response below in full:

“You have slightly got your facts wrong here. PowerDVD 6.5, which came bundled with Toshiba HD-DVD laptops and other HD-DVD drives, does play titles at full resolution. The problem with this early version is that it is full of bugs.

You appear to be confused with the Intervideo Japanese Win DVD HD-DVD software which would automatically downscale titles to 960x540. I can confirm that the Intervideo BD player does play titles in full 1080p.

PowerDVD Ultra does also play titles in full 1080p but the upcoming Intervideo release looks to be slightly better and much cheaper. Another problem for PowerDVD Ultra owners is that you have to specify which version you install – either BD or HD-DVD. This is yet another needless annoyance for those of us who have both formats.”

As such, I suspect I’ll now wait to see what Intervideo come up with, although personally I’ve always found the interface design of Cyberlink’s players to be more intuitive.

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.