Technology

David Manning rides again

Source: AV Science Forum

Never ones to shy away from blowing their own trumpet (see the David Manning and PSP lie blog fiascos), Sony has launched yet another round of shameless self-promotions, this time in the guise of the obscurely-titled Phase Hydra. The aim of the game is to

seed "high profile" forums with Blu-ray advocates and target bloggers to promote Blu-ray to get the word out to the world.

This is hilarious, it really is. Many people, myself included, have long suspected that Sony was ordering employees to infiltrate forums related to the high definition video formats in order to promote Blu-ray under the guise of consumers, and it seems that we now have the closest we're going to get to proof of this. Stories like this only serve to remind me why Sony is so hated by such a large number of people.

Of course, the question now is why they are so desperate as to resort to these cheap tactics. Could it have something to do with yesterday's surge in HD DVD sales during the AVS "buy an HD DVD" celebration?

Oops!

Happy birthday, HD DVD!

HD DVD is nearly a year old! Doesn't time fly? The format officially launched in North America on April 18th, 2006, with the rather bizarre line-up of Million Dollar Baby, The Phantom of the Opera, The Last Samurai and Serenity. The HD DVD crowd at the AV Science Forum have decided to celebrate the format's one-year anniversary by buying a bunch of titles from Amazon.com, although for some strange reason they have elected to do so today, the 15th, rather than waiting till the 18th.

Well, no matter, and I've decided to toss my hat into the ring and place some orders. I've picked up The Game, The Skeleton Key and Being John Malkovich, none of which are actually ready to ship yet, but this did seem like as good a time as any to get the pre-orders placed. I haven't seen The Game yet, but I've been led to believe that it's something of an under-appreciated gem from David Fincher, whose work I generally find quite enjoyable, at least on a technical level.

HD my left walnut

As most people will be aware by now, there have been some amazing high definition transfers on both HD DVD and Blu-ray, and some rather less than amazing ones. When you're working with a native resolution of 1920x1080, you'd better hope that your master is of the highest quality, because little flaws that would go unnoticed in standard definition will stick out like sore thumbs. The two titles most commonly dragged out for a public for a ritual flogging are Sony's House of Flying Daggers and The Fifth Element on Blu-ray, transfers that are generally regarded to constitute a decidedly miniscule improvement on their DVD counterparts. Indeed, even Sony have apparently realised this, given that they are currently in the process of preparing a new version and setting up a disc replacement programme.

Unfortunately, it seems that the crown for worst HD transfer must pass from Blu-ray to HD DVD. AV Science Forum member Xylon recently started providing side by side comparisons of standard definition and high definition titles, many of which admirably demonstrate the undeniables improvements that are possible in HD with even the least visually inspiring films. Unfortunately for certain less than proficient reviewers, however, these highly effective demonstrations have shown up their amateurish postulating for the sham that it is. These screenshots serve to confirm many of the opinions I've been expressing for a while now, e.g. that Batman Begins looks underwhelming, while Serenity looks fucking incredible.

The shit really hit the fan a few days ago when Xylon posted a comparison of Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, released last September on HD DVD by Universal. When initially released, many people commented that the transfer looked less than stellar. Such individuals were quickly put in their place by being told that Traffic intentionally looked rough and grainy, and that they shouldn't expect 3D whizz-bang effects and crystal clarity from every title (a sentiment that I fully agree with). Now, however, Xylon's screengrabs demonstrate the truth that dare not speak its name:

Traffic on HD DVD is a 480i upconvert.

Not only that, it actually looks worse than the DVD, with additional ringing and what appears to be even less fine detail. I really am absolutely flabbergasted, especially given some of the reviews that have emerged. The notorious Peter M. Bracke of High-Def Digest gave the transfer a 4/5 and said this:

Bottom line, this HD DVD transfer delivers. The source material is as good as the film stock allow, with no major defects visible such as print tears or distracting blemishes, though grain is intentionally excessive for much of the film. Black levels are consistent throughout, while contrast is all over the map. Some story threads have whites so blown out that fine detail is all but obscured, while others are bathed in darkness or excessively saturated colors. Thus, there is some noise and smeared hues, but again it appears intentional. Overall detail and depth to the image is about as good as can be expected. No, I was never blown away by the presentation as I've been with other HD DVD releases, but then I never anticipated otherwise.

The infamous Joshua Zyber of DVD Talk, meanwhile, rates it 3/5, and claims that

The disc looks exactly like the film is meant to look, and it actually has some fascinating textures, but this just isn't the type of movie you buy for crystal clear HD image quality. While certain scenes show off the High-Def fairly well (primarily the blue-filtered Michael Douglas segments), on the whole there isn't much fine object detail or depth. Aside from some minor edge ringing in a few scenes, the disc represents the movie's intended style faithfully and I can't fault it for that, but most viewers will probably not find it a huge upgrade over standard DVD.

Sorry, but the comparisons speak for themselves, and, coupled with some additional screen captures from a still crummy-looking but undeniably superior 720p broadcast version, it's difficult to imagine anyone trying to claim that Universal have done anything other than screw up royally. Unfortunately, this is not the case: Zyber is currently ransacking what little dignity he has left by attempting to poo-poo the screenshots and tell us that what we're seeing is untrue.

Josh Zyber, Peter Bracke: please consider retracting your reviews. The visual evidence speaks for itself, and not even the most blinkered individual could attempt to claim, based on the screenshots in question, that the Traffic HD DVD is anything other than a standard definition upconvert. Reviews such as these bring this profession into disrepute and mean that prospective buyers cannot make an informed decision about their purchases. Worse, they give lazy distributors ample reason to pump out any old garbage and charge a premium for it rather than spend money on new, decent-quality masters. Based on these phenomenally misguided reviews (and I'm sorry, but in this particular instance, we are talking about fact, not opinion), I highly doubt that I will ever trust a single article from these two writers ever again.

More ill-informed reviews:

DVD "Authority"
Upcoming Discs

One thing that should be remembered, however, is this: as ignorant, ill-informed and damaging as these reviews are, they are the small fry in this debacle. The people who should truly be hanging their heads and grovelling for apologies are Universal, who blew a 480i master up to 1080p, slapped it on a disc and had the nerve to sell it as "The Look and Sound of Perfect".

Update, April 12th, 2007 09:08 PM: A separate thread has now appeared at AVS, with the topic starter demanding (rightfully so) that Universal acknowledge their screw-up. Unfortunately, Mr. Zyber is continuing to make a fool of himself by refusing to admit the obvious.

DVNR - an illustrated demonstration

News is incredibly slow in movie-land at the moment, for some reason (although I apologise for not reporting on the announcement of the impending release of the DreamWorks classic Norbit sooner), so I've essentially been browsing the web for things to report on. During my adventures, I came across a rather interesting DVD image comparison on a French forum called Sans Commentaire. The title under the microscope is Rob Zombie's highly entertaining The Devil's Rejects, specifically the Canadian release by Maple Pictures (which presumably uses the same master as the US Lions Gate version) and the French release by Metropolitan. As many of you probably know, this film was shot on 16mm, giving it a harsher, grainier look than its predecessor, House of 1000 Corpses. Why should you give two hoots? Why, because the screenshots of the Metropolitan release demonstrate just how destructive DVNR (digital video noise reduction) can be on a grainy source. Look especially at the second capture, and what happens to the texture of William Forsythe's skin. The same thing happens again in Capture 6, where poor Captain Spaulding now looks like he's wearing a wax mask rather than mere face paint (look what it does to his scraggy beard too).

Here's the thing: Rob Zombie shot The Devil's Rejects in 16mm for a reason... and no, it wasn't because he couldn't afford to go to 35mm, as evinced by the fact that both it and House of 1000 Corpses cost an estimated $7 million. He shot it that way because he wanted it to look raw and documentary-like, a callback to similarly rough and ready 70s exploitation flicks like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Attempting to remove, or more accurately, smother the grain not only destroys the film's texture, making it look unnatural and digital, it also goes against the grain (apologies for the unintentional pun) of what the director was trying to achieve. On the Maple DVD, The Devil's Rejects features some compression artefacts as a result of the visual complexity of the grain pattern, but this is, in my opinion, vastly preferable to the diffuse smush that the Metropolitan disc seems to be.

They had edge enhancement in the Dark Ages too...

My copy of the Blu-ray release of King Arthur arrived today. Oh, what? It's not that bad.

Unfortunately, like the film (which I find enjoyable enough to justify rebuying in high definition), the transfer is a bit of a mixed bag. Disney are pretty quickly establishing themselves as the most wildly inconsistent studio when it comes to HD image quality. King Arthur seems to vary on a shot by shot basis. Some shots are horrendously (and I mean horrendously) edge enhanced, whereas others look overly soft; others still show both detail and smoothness and look largely natural. However, there are some fairly obvious DVNR artefacts, particularly visible in the various sweeping vistas of the grey-green English countryside, where grass and other details smear as the camera pans. The usual facial suspects - beards, stubble and rough skin textures - are also affected. On the plus side, the AVC encoding is largely very good, with no obvious compression artefacts (although some minor blocking is occasionally visible when the image is paused).

Disney have also now decided to start throwing in their trademarked pre-movie advertisements, and there are some very nice-looking (and some not so nice-looking) trailers. The crispest, by far, is for everyone's favourite homophobic racist director Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, while the clips of Chicago look just as harsh and edge enhanced as the final product, which I saw when Lyris bought it.

So, this film's about imaginary cockroaches, huh?

This evening, I made my way through A Scanner Darkly in its entirety, and, while I found that it picked up slightly in its second half, and sported a handful of smile-inducing lines of dialogue, I ultimately wouldn't rate the whole experience too highly. I've found this on numerous occasions with movies about drug addiction - particularly Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a film that manages to entertain and irritate me in equal measure - and I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that this is one of those "you had to be there" phenomena. I've never imbibed a single narcotic in my life, and I'm sorry to say that, although I take my job as a reviewer seriously, becoming a drug addict to get a better insight into the logic behind this film would be going above and beyond the call of duty. (Not that I'm saying that everyone who enjoys the film must be a drug addict.) Watching A Scanner Darkly, I felt incredibly distanced from the whole affair, and I suspect that this had as much to do with the subject matter as the visual styling, which, I'm sorry to say, I found clumsy and distracting throughout.

Incidentally, I was shocked to discover that, rather than simply running the footage he shot through a filter, Linklater actually had a team of artists go through every single frame and trace them by hand. The people - I'll call them clean-up artists rather than animators, because that's essentially the function they performed - responsible for this task clearly had no small amount of skill, not to mention patience, but I can't help thinking that this was wasted on a project that could easily have been automated. By the way, the included documentary dedicated to exploring the process reveals that very few of the artists had had any direct animation experience prior to working on the film. To tell you the truth, it shows, although I would probably have been even more horrified if Linklater had actually squandered the talents of real animators on this cute but ultimately pointless exercise.

Oh, and if you're going to create animation by tracing over live action actors, please, please, please use someone more expressive than Keanu Reeves as your source.

A scanner rotoscoped

Yesterday, I received a review copy of the upcoming (due out on April 10th) HD DVD release of A Scanner Darkly, from DVD Pacific.

Back when this film was released on DVD, I was interested to see it, due to director Richard Linklater's rather odd choice of shooting it in live action and then applying a "cel-shading" effect to it, to give it the appearance of hand-drawn animation (a look initially popularised by video games like Jet Set Radio, although that particular title, of course, wasn't shot in live action). It's really the latest iteration of rotoscoping, a time- and cost-saving measure initially attempted by legendary animators Dave and Max Fleischer in the 1930s. The Fleischers quickly determined that rotoscoping simply wasn't worth the time of day, because the results it produced, while requiring considerably less time and skill on the part of the animators, were, to put it bluntly, not good. Nonetheless, it would appear that many filmmakers have yet to learn the lessons that the Fleischers learned more than 70 years ago. These tend to be live action directors, who don't really understand the point or potential of animation as a medium, and approach things from the frankly ludicrous perspective of trying to make it emulate live action as much as possible. This results in films that range from merely being stilted and clumsy (see Ralph Bakshi's adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, which, unique and at times impressive as it is, falters when it comes to the sloppily traced character animation) to downright grotesque (Robert Zemeckis' The Polar Express, among others).

A Scanner Darkly, sadly, falls somewhere between these two extremes. Characters, objects and even details like eyes and facial hair "swim" around the screen in a distracting and at times nauseating manner, movements strobe rather than looking organic, and the main question on my mind was "what was the point?" Why did Linklater go to the trouble of shooting all this material using real actors, only to scan his footage into a computer and slap what looks like a silly Photoshop effect over it all? What does the film gain by being animated (and I use the term loosely, because I consider rotoscoping as illegitimate a form of animation as motion capture)? The answer is nothing. Linklater sees the medium from the perspective of a live action director, and thus isn't able to harness its unique qualities in the way that a proper animation director could. The end result is merely a gimmick - a "hey, it's like a real-life cartoon" affair that is probably better suited to a technician's demo reel rather than a commercial movie or (HD) DVD.

As for the quality of the plot itself (which, given that it is essentially just a live action film masquerading as animation, is ultimately the most important element)... well, I have to admit that I was really tired last night, and didn't have the energy or patience to get through the whole thing, but, from what I saw... eh, it just wasn't gripping me. It was okay, I guess, but I felt strangely uninvolved. Since I've got a four-day weekend (it being the time of year when Christians celebrate the death of their leader - go figure), I'm going to give it another shot when I'm feeling more awake. Well, I've got to - I need to review the damn thing. So far, though, my reaction has been one big "meh".

A day in the madhouse

Captain Whiggles has just spent his first full day as a worker bee. I showed up for 10 AM (as of tomorrow, I'll be starting at 9) and didn't leave till 5 PM - a bit of a shock to the system, given that I've been used to long lies and leisurely days for far too long now.

The good news is that there is a railway station a mere five minute walk from my place of employment. Better yet, there is a direct train from Bearsden (where I live) that will get me there ten minutes before I'm due to start work, there's a direct train home at quarter past five in the evening (fifteen minutes after I stop work). My co-workers also all seem to be nice. Oh, and there are no hard and fast clock in and clock out times, with the doors being unlocked at 7 AM and locked at 8:30 PM. In other words, provided I do my allotted 37 and a half hours per week, no-one's going to care if I show up at half past nine or leave at quarter part four one day... although I intend to do things on a 9-to-5 basis each day (with a half-hour lunch break), simply to keep things straightforward.

On the downside, the office is rather hot, with no air conditioning, and we're only in March - I shudder to think what it will be like in July and August. At the moment, I'm also working from a rather slow, aged computer hooked up to a CRT monitor with an uncomfortably low refresh rate: cue headaches and eye strain. I can't tell you how glad I was to get back to my nice LCD monitor this evening.

Not much more to tell, really. I spent most of the day doing data entry - a fairly straightforward process and not as laborious as it sounds. I believe that, later on, I'll get to perform other exciting functions such as typing letters, diary management and using the telephone. Right now, though, I'm simply recording the fact that Jock Daring from Rutherglen (not a real person - I respect patient confidentiality!) smokes 60 a day and has done so since he was five years old.

The nightmare of Pan

Yesterday, I received a review copy of the new 2-disc Platinum Edition of Walt Disney's classic, Peter Pan, from DVD Pacific. Mindful of both the unnaturally harsh look of the earlier (2002) DVD release of the film, as well as Disney's unfortunate habit of going overboard during the restoration process of their older titles, I was rather curious to see how this enjoyable 1953 lark had fared on of what the publicity describes as Disney Home Entertainment's most prestigious line-up of DVD releases.

Unfortunately, the new edition really is a bit of a mixed bag. While the rampant edge enhancement of the previous release is nowhere to be found, it seems that DTS Digital Images (formerly Lowry Digital), Disney's regular partner in these ventures, have once again thrown artistic intent out of the window in an attempt to deliver an impossibly clean, "flawless" digital experience for the 21st century. By far the biggest problem is that the overall colour, brightness and contrast values of the image have been tweaked into oblivion. Tinkerbell was originally supposed to have an overexposed glow, which, on this release, has been dulled down severely, making the glow look more like a muddy shadow. Actually, "muddy" is the word of the day here: the colours are generally dull and sickly. The decidedly red Indians are now a gloomy shade of brown, more suited to something like Pocahontas than this altogether more fun and colourful cartoon world, while Captain Hook now looks like he has liver damage. Everything is so murky that the hand-inked, cel-animated characters, who should be vibrant, threaten to disappear into the backgrounds. I've inspected the DVD on both a monitor and a calibrated TV: it just doesn't look right.

Respected cel restoration expert Stephen Worth, and animation directors Oscar Grillo and Milton Gray, have all criticised this new restoration, while Chuck Pennington has provided visual evidence that each subsequent home video release of Peter Pan has taken its visuals further and further away from Walt Disney and co's original intentions. I've never personally seen the film on an actual print, but I feel more inclined to trust the informed opinions of experts like Stephen Worth than the staff of DTS Digital Images, who have shown a cavalier attitude towards artistic intent several times in the past, perhaps most significantly with Bambi, which was so heavily noise reduced in an attempt to remove any semblance of the movie ever having come from film that the image smeared and warped during camera movements.

Captain Hook is the greatest bastard ever.

Even the bonus content turns out to be rather disappointing. There really is very little here that wasn't present on the 2002 release. In the past, just about every Platinum Edition has included a lengthy documentary or at least a series of informative featurettes on the film's history and production. Not so with Peter Pan, which has to make do with a 15-minute made for LaserDisc featurette, a 20-minute piece showing ideas that didn't make it into the final film, and a couple of other miscellaneous featurettes. The commentary, moderated by Roy Disney and featuring the observations of a combination of animators and critics, is of a high standard, but it too was already to be found on the previous DVD release. Of the new additions, the most significant is an abridged narration of an essay by Walt Disney explaining his reasons for making the film, while the games, read-along storybook and preview for a horrendous-looking CGI Tinkerbell movie can go hang for all I care.

It's not the end of the world, though. Unlike the previous DVD, the original mono track has been included, at least on the US release (the European versions predictably lose this vital component of the original film, no doubt in order to make room for additional dubs). It's too bad that, despite allowing the film to sound as was it was intended, those responsible for the DVD made no attempt to ensure that it looked as it was intended.

One of the privileged few

As you may or may not have gathered from reading this site, Diablo II is one of my all-time favourite computer games. It's simple enough that you can pick it up and play it any time you want, while the number of different choices you can make, coupled with the randomly generated environments and items, makes it endlessly replayable and means that you always have new decisions to make. In the gaming community, the news in 2003 that David Brevik, Erich Schaefer, Max Schaefer and Bill Roper, the chiefs of Blizzard North, the studio responsible for both Diablo games, had tendered their resignations, was met with no small amount of disbelief, followed by considerable interest as a steady stream of employees left Blizzard North, joining their former bosses at their new company, Flagship Studios, or setting up new development houses of their own. Blizzard North struggled on for a while but, in August 2005, its plug was pulled by parent company Blizzard Entertainment, and with it supposedly died not one but two unannounced projects. One of these, many have speculated, was likely Diablo III.

Diablo III may, therefore, have died with Blizzard North, but its creators seem intent on bringing us the next best thing. This summer, they will be releasing Hellgate: London. The spiritual successor to Diablo II, this game combines the familiar concepts of randomly generated environments, as well as action/RPG hybrid gameplay with concepts more commonly associated with MMORPGs, including guilds, instances and a persistent world. Better yet, unlike most MMORPGs, there will be a free online multiplayer mode for those who don't want to fork out cash ever month for the privilege of playing, as well as a single player mode for those who prefer to go solo (such as myself).

The best is yet to come, though. In preparation for the release of Hellgate: London, Flagship have created an entire game for the sole purpose of testing their server architecture. This game, Mythos, will be entirely free, and this morning, in my capacity as an alpha tester, I got my first glimpse of what looks even more than Hellgate: London to be the true successor to Diablo II.

Call it Diablo 2.5 if you like, because, while the graphics and world are completely new, the game mechanics are almost identical. Anyone who has played the Diablo games should be able to jump straight in and feel right at home. The interface and controls are virtually identical, and old favourites like the skill tree, a feature first introduced in Diablo II, are in their proper places. The usual point and click controls are in place, and, over the course of the two hours that I've been playing, I've found myself getting that same buzz that I first did back in late Spring 2000 when I participated in the Diablo II stress test.

Obviously, there have been some major changes. The look of the game, for instance, is about as far removed from its forebearers as possible. While Diablo's graphics were moody and gothic, Mythos is a much more colourful, exaggerated (I refuse to abuse the word "cartoony") and warm affair, more along the lines of Warcraft, with its primary colours and over the top animation and character designs. The closest point of comparison, arguably, is a little game called Fate which I played back in Summer 2005. This is perhaps not entirely surprising, given that that game's creator, Travis Baldree, has a hand in this title.

As you would expect, the gameplay is fairly straightforward. Equip your weapon, point the mouse at an enemy and hold down the button till it's dead. Rinse and repeat. It's simple, but fun - as the millions of people who wore out their mouse buttons on Diablo can attest. No, it won't make you smarter, but it is a great stress reliever, and highly addictive in the best sense of the word. The exaggerated visuals go hand in hand with this type of simple, no-nonsense gameplay, although the move from 2D to 3D does mean that, unsurprisingly, some of the Diablo series' precision is lost. On the plus side, though, the game runs very smoothly thanks to its fairly simple graphics, with the impressive art direction meaning that it never looks cheap and clunky. I suspect that those who find themselves unable to run the more graphically complex Hellgate: London will find this to be a more than acceptable substitute.

Other minor miscellaneous complaints? Well, the manner in which skills are equipped seems to have changed. In Diablo II (and, or so I'm led to believe, Hellgate: London), you can bind an ability to each mouse button simply by clicking on the relevant icon and selecting a skill of your choice. Not so with Mythos. Instead, you have to go into the Skills menu and bind your abilities to various hotkeys (in this case, the F1 to F12 keys). It's not the end of the world, but it's an extra step that detracts from the otherwise simplistic nature of the interface. Also, whenever you descend (or ascend) to another level or area, the game asks you to confirm whether or not you want to do this. When you simply need to travel, it's a mildly irritating extra step. When you're running from a horde of angry monsters, it can mean the difference between life and death. I really hope that, for the final game, Flagship will consider either doing away with this "are you sure?" mechanism entirely, or at least give players the option of turning it off. I'm also not a fan of the tiny little minimap in the corner of the screen - I much preferred the larger overlaid Diablo style of map. Oh yeah, and the interface graphics end up being stretched if you select a widecreen (16:9 or 16:10) resolution. It's not the end of the world, but it does look a little sloppy.

I hope to be able to bring you more observations as I continue to play. Because the alpha is designed primarily to test Flagship's servers, the game can only be played at specific pre-arranged times (in order to get as many people thrashing them as possible), and, because the game originates from America, the times aren't always entirely convenient for me. I wasn't able to attend last night's session, for example, because it wouldn't have started until 2 AM GMT. (As luck would have it, though, a technical glitch meant that it got postponed anyway, so the server was still online when I got up this morning.) Presumably as the game enters the beta phase and more testers are gradually added (I believe I'm currently one of the few people playing who isn't a family member or friend of the developers), the server will stay online for longer, but it is slightly annoying to have to adhere to a specific schedule. Still, I'm grateful that we're getting this great game for free, and that I'm getting to participate in this early sneak peek. Stay tuned!

Update, March 24th, 2007 04:16 PM: The server has now gone offline, and an in-game text message from one of the developers indicated that all characters have been wiped, meaning that, when they go live again, everyone will have to start from scratch.

You take the blue pill...

Oh, wait. Sorry - the blue pill isn't ready yet. It's been delayed due to continued BD-Java problems. The red pill will, however, be ready for you to swallow on May 22nd, at which point you'll be able to see just how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

What am I babbling about? Why, the announcement of The Ultimate Matrix Collection for HD DVD, of course. The Matrix was one of the most hotly anticipated high definition titles last year (and rightly so - it certainly helped sell plenty of DVD players, so chances are it will do the same for HD DVD), with many expecting it to arrive at some point in the run-up to Christmas. When it failed to materialise, customers were understandably disappointed, but it seems that Warner are intent on making up for lost time by releasing what looks set to be the single most comprehensive and all-inclusive high definition box set to date. In addition to the first film, the shoddy The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions (which I haven't actually seen - Reloaded was that bad), each film will include an In-Movie Experience feature and all of the extras from both the original and Ultimate Matrix Collection standard definition releases. (Read the full press release at the AV Science Forum. (A slightly cheaper, less extras-intensive version, The Complete Matrix Trilogy, will also be available.)

Part of me is slightly disappointed that the films are not being released separately, given that I only really want the first one. Then again, this does sound like the HD DVD box set to die for, and part of me really wants to listen to the notorious "critic commentaries", in which an increasingly disgruntled group of film reviewers lay into the trilogy. Knowing me, I'll end up splurging on the full package - unless, of course, I can get a review copy.

Oh yeah, and in case it wasn't clear enough from the little reference to one of the film's iconic scenes at the start of this post, the Blu-ray release will be arriving "later", giving the HD DVD version free reign until it deigns to put in an appearance. Many will no doubt say "Oh, it'll come eventually," but how many format-neutral customers are going to wait for that? It certainly looks like Warner have delivered a Pirates of the Caribbean beater to wipe the smirks off the Blu-ray fanboys' faces come May.

Casino Royale high-def comparisons

A nice chap has put together a comparison between the standard definition and Blu-ray releases of Casino Royale - well worth checking out if you remain unconvinced as to the benefits of high definition. I particularly recommend having a look at the third image - when watching the film, this shot was the one that leapt out at me personally as the most obvious example of the stunning amount of detail that you can get from 1080p. You can even read the lettering on the wine bottle - HD product placement!

By the way, I've pre-ordered the supposedly uncut Korean Blu-ray release of the film from YesAsia. It's due for release on March 29th, at which point I'll sell off my cut US copy.

Update, March 21st, 2007 05:43 PM: There's a whole thread filled with comparison screengrabs, from both HD DVD and Blu-ray, at the AV Science Forum.

Is it a sign of the apocalypse when an MPEG2 encode looks this good?

My copy of the Blu-ray release of Resident Evil: Apocalypse arrived today from Amazon.com. Slowly but surely, my DVD collection is being replaced with high definition editions!

Anyway, this guilty pleasure looks very impressive indeed in high definition, especially given that it is an MPEG2 encode (although, to be fair, Sony did have 50 GB of disc space to play around with). It's far from the best HD title I've ever seen, and there are a few instances of noticeable compression artefacts (Lyris has a screen grab of the most offensive one), but this is yet another smooth, crispy, grain-filled title that looks as if remarkably little, if any, digital tampering has gone on. There is a minute amount of ringing at the top and bottom of the frame, suggesting some very mild low-pass filtering, but, for the most part, I am very pleased with how this looks. A mid-range 9/10.

On a side note, as Lyris points out in his review, certain reviewers have been critical of the image quality of this release, seemingly confusing aesthetics with cold technical facts. I'll grant you this: Resident Evil: Apocalypse is not the world's most visually impressive film. In fact, it looks downright shoddy in some places. However, this has got nothing to do with the quality of the disc itself. Aesthetics are a matter of taste, whereas technical issues are not. No-one in their right mind would seriously say "Well, personally, if it's all the same to you, I'm not a fan of detailed, untampered transfers that are transparent to the source - I'd prefer something edge enhanced and DVNR'd, with some compression artefacts for good measure." We all want the best-looking discs possible, I'm sure, but certain reviewers seem to have trouble differentiating between personal preference and actual quality, and reviews criticising discs that correctly represent the source material are, in my opinion, doing damage to home cinema.

Royale with cheese

My copy of the Blu-ray release of Casino Royale arrived this morning from Deep Discount (formerly Deep Discount DVD). Given that this looks set to be the fastest-selling high definition title so far (as of writing, it's number 9 on the DVD chart at Amazon.com - an incredible number for a niche product), it's the sort of release that can, in many ways, make or break a format's reputation (I'm sure it will be many customers' first ever Blu-ray title, with a number of people even buying into the format especially to see it).

Luckily (or unluckily, if you have a vested interest in Blu-ray's failure), it has been granted a stunning-looking transfer. Actually, I'm tempted to call it the best I've ever seen. Some rather puzzling reviews have predictably materialised, criticising the picture for a handful of supposed defects, ranging from a lack of "realistic skin textures", to "motion-drag and aliasing" to, "too much digital noise reduction" being applied, to, in the most general case, a statement by one reviewer that he "was expecting just a bit more". These reviews are wrong. Casino Royale is astounding more or less from start to finish. It's highly detailed, contrasty and film-like, with no visible compression artefacts: Sony have finally ditched the aged MPEG2 codec in favour of AVC, and the result is their first 10/10 title that I've seen. Sony's European division have made a wise choice in dishing out copies of this title to early Playstation 3 adopters.

Lyris has written some more pleasing words about this disc, and highlighted some of the film's most hilarious examples of product placement.

I also received a copy of The Devil's Rejects - a gift from Gary Tooze of the excellent comparison site DVD Beaver for some HD DVD screen captures I supplied for him from Casablanca and The Adventures of Robin Hood. It's not as good-looking as Casino Royale, but it put a smile on my face all the same. It's interesting, given the false belief, held by certain individuals, that a film has to actually be shot in HD to look good on an HD disc (a perfect example of the sort of misinformation that is likely to be putting a lot of people off adopting either format), that 16mm material seems to shine so much in high definition, with both this and the Moroccan segments of Babel looking particularly luscious. (Now I really hope Universal UK gives Thirteen a whirl on HD DVD - or Fox on Blu-ray if they promise to tame the rampant DVNR plaguing the DVD release.) Unfortunately, The Devil's Rejects is an MPEG2 title on a single layer BD25 disc, so there are some noticeable compression artefacts (and a dearth of extras in comparison with the 2-disc DVD), but it's an impressive presentation all the same - a high 8/10 on my scale.

So who's in on this HD DVD thang?

With no new HD DVD releases in the US until near the end of the month, it's sometimes a little tempting to think that Toshiba and their buddies have forgotten about us (and this is not help by the jeering of the Blu-ray fanboys, who seem to be in high spirits about the fact that Amazon has a Blu-ray sale on, which is causing titles to fly off the shelves). Therefore, this post is for any HD DVD-only people who are currently feeling a little down in the dumps. This morning, I came across a link to a PowerPoint presentation with Toshiba's name plastered all over it, presumably intended as a morale booster for current HD DVD partners, as well as an advertisement for any companies considering joining the party. Anyway, it gives some rather insteresting details regarding the state of the format at the moment, and what we can expect in the next year or so.

HD DVD supporting hardware manufacturers:
Toshiba
Onkyo
Meridian
Shinco
RCA
Jiankui
Liteon
Alco
Microsoft
Hewlett-Packard
Acer
LG
Fujitsu-Siemens
Samsung
Alpine
NEC
Broadcom

HD DVD encoding partners:
Toshiba
Microsoft
Memory-Tech
DTS
Dolby
Ulead
Sonic
Plasmon
Datarius
Singulus Technologies

HD DVD authoring and disc replicators:
Imagion
CMC
Digital Media Production
DVDPartners
Infinia
Deluxe Digital Studios
Technicolor
Sonopress
Cinram
MPO
QOL
Duplico

HD DVD supporting distributors:
Paramount
Universal
Warner
Eagle Rock
DVD International
Studio Canal
Pathé
France Télévisions Distribution
LCJ
Wild Side Video
2 Entertain
Imagion
EMS
Universum Film
Kinowelt
Nixbu
Opus Arte
SPV
Optimum
Momentum
Twister
ILC
PIAS
Filmax
DeAPlaneta
Sandre Metronome
Cecchi Gori
Contantin Film
Concorde
Inakustik

Projected number of titles by end of 2007:
UK/Ireland: 250
France: 270
Germany/Austria/Switzerland: 250
Spain: 180
Italy: 170
Benelux: 200
Nordic countries: 200

If you have PowerPoint, I strongly urge you to check out the full document. It's full of lots of interesting information about available and upcoming hardware and titles, including a lot of stuff that, to the best of my knowledge, hasn't been replicated elsewhere. For instance, did you know that Wild Side Video in France (I think) is planning to release Pan's Labyrinth on HD DVD in April?

And yes, that's right, Samsung are getting on board the HD DVD gravy train, at least as far as laptops are concerned. Perhaps this is a direct result of Sony throwing them under the bus last year during the whole Blu-ray image quality debacle?

USB stick delivers MPEG soup!

This tiny stick contains 67 channels!

I picked up this little doozy for a mere £19.57 (plus shipping) at SVP. It's a Freecom DVB-T USB Stick, and it is in fact a miniature digital terrestrial TV and radio receiver that plugs directly into your computer. This, in conjunction with the bundled software, provides a very convenient way to watch and record TV shows. It comes with its own mini-antenna, but it turns out to be little more than a glorified fridge magnet (it wasn't managing to pick up any channels), so I ended up connecting it directly to our roof antenna, which has a decidedly strong signal (all six signal bars are lit up in the software).

The TotalMedia software, as it happens, isn't the most brilliant piece of engineering. It has a lot of niggles, and switching between channels is a little on the sluggish side, but it's nicely laid out and easy to use. The MPEG2 files it saves are also pretty reasonably sized (approximately 1.2 GB for an hours' worth of poorly-shot shakycam, at the lowest compression settings) and there doesn't seem to be any noticeable degradation in quality, with the end results looking noticeably better than the dedicated DVD recorder my parents have... not that the quality of British digital TV is any great shakes in that department anyway. For £20, it strikes me as being a really good deal.

Oh yeah, and I now have a job. I don't have a concrete starting date yet, but, after several months on the proverbial dole, my days of scrounging are finally about to come to an end!

DreamWorks goes fishing in the HD pond

Source: DVD Times (1, 2)

Back in February, I reported on a rumour that DreamWorks was preparing to jump into the world of high definition with HD DVD and Blu-ray releases of Dreamgirls and Flags of our Fathers. The rumours, it would seem, were true, as an official announcement was made today about both titles. They will be coming to both formats in May (the 1st for Dreamgirls, the 22nd for Flags of our Fathers). Distributed by DreamWorks' parent company Paramount, both will be 2-disc special editions, reproducing the extras from their standard definition counterparts in 1080p or 1080i high definition (although, for some reason, Dreamgirls' image gallery seems to have gone bye-bye). Neither film is one that I'm wild to see, but it's great to see DreamWorks finally jumping into the fray, and with what appear to be extremely impressive releases to boot. I really hope to see HD releases of American Beauty and Gladiator before too long...

That Trojan horse never looked so wooden

According to the News of the World, Troy is "the greatest sword and sandal epic of all time". Well, I don't know about that (although something tells me that this is a little unlikely), but I do know that this is yet another high definition title that received rave reviews despite being, well, fairly average-looking. It's simply not very detailed at all, and there is some ugly ringing around highly contrasted edges. Odd, then, that the Warner logo at the very start of the film basically looked flawless, and yet, as soon as the first image appeared on the screen, it immediately felt as if I was watching the thing through a dirty window.

Where did I get a hold of Troy from? Well, Lyris received a Toshiba HD-E1 (the European equivalent of the American HD-A1) HD DVD player to review today, and Toshiba were kind enough to bundle the disc with it. These companies really need to start selecting better titles to include as review samples! Panasonic, after all, included the mediocre-looking Fantastic 4 with their DMP-BD10 Blu-ray player as well. Discs like these really don't make good first impressions - why not throw in something that's more or less flawless like Corpse Bride, if you want that pristine digital look, or Serenity or The Descent if you want something rich and film-like? At least Microsoft had the right idea and included a copy of the magnificent-looking King Kong with the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on.

On a related note, Lyris has done a very nice rant about the underwhelming quality of so many Blu-ray releases on his new site. It's well worth a read, and there's even a nice picture of the hideous-looking American Psycho for you to marvel at.

Blu-ray 13

My copy of the Blu-ray release of Luc Besson's District B13 (Banlieue 13 in its native France) arrived today from Amazon.com. This is one of my few high definition blind buys so far, and I'm glad I picked it up, because, while it's hardly a masterpiece, it really is very entertaining stuff - the sort of fast, fun, unpretentious action film Hollywood wishes it could make but can't. I continue to be impressed with the way that Besson manages to take a Hollywoodish sense of entertainment and distil it into something decidedly European. This isn't quite as good as the earlier Unleashed, which had more appealing characters, or Léon, which remains my favourite Besson film and the closest I've ever seen to an action film that is a genuine masterpiece, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, and, at 84 minutes, it's about as unbloated as you can get.

Magnolia Home Entertainment's transfer, meanwhile, is another matter. It's an MPEG2 encode, and the source seems to have been a 1080i master. Like Lethal Weapon, Full Metal Jacket and a handful of other Warner releases, it's "bobbed", resulting in jagged diagonal lines and some noticeable moiré. There's also a fair amount of edge enhancement on display, and the level of detail is decidedly inconsistent. Some shots are razor-sharp, others look like upconverted standard definition. It's nice to see one of the smaller players getting involved with HD, but I hope they're able to step up their game, because transfers like this go some way towards negating the whole point of a format that's supposed to be all about delivering optimal image quality in the first place.

Of course, the less said about the cover art, the better.

Song of the PS3

A sweet little video has appeared on YouTube featuring an absolutely delightful song entitled "How to Kill a Brand". Mean, but oh so funny.