[GRLUG] windoz - NOT LINUX

[Michael Mol]

On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 9:59 PM, L. V. Lammert <lvl at omnitec.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Apr 2010 topher at t1kdevelopment.com wrote:
>
>> VLC does a pretty good job with deCSS, but in general I don't like it.
>> WinDVD plays dvds a lot better in Windows.  In Linux I'm *really* liking
>> Smplayer these days.  It's a fantastic front end for mplayer.
>>
> DVDs are pase`, aren't they? What about blue ray?

DRM issues aside, and for a lot of content, DVD is fine; a good
up-converting player will give you a decent experience for content
produced with NTSC (or even PAL) in mind--which is going to be most
televised material before 2003-2005ish. There are some things that
Blu-Ray is a *lot* better for, though, most notably film and any TV
content produced which targeted HD broadcast and HD cable.

For actual *film* film, on bona-fide light-sensitive chemical-coated
reels of material, YMMV; the actual film usually has a small enough
grain to still hold greater detail than, say, 1080p, and *much* more
detail than NTSC. However, if the release didn't do a good job
redigitizing the film for the HD release, you'll see quality issues.
My Blu-Ray of Star Trek II is horrible, for example.  If the folks who
put together the Blu-Ray release used old NTSC masters, then you're
not necessarily going to get any better than a DVD release focused
around that same NTSC content. (There's a little bit of fudge factor
here, too; you get a lot of leeway in bitrate when you master a DVD,
and some releases cut down the bitrate severely in order to fit more
episodes to a disc. A lower bitrate almost invariably results in a
lower resulting image quality.)

Traditional animation, hand-drawn with cells, has been seen on both TV
and in movies, and they're generally *capable* of HD-quality
rereleases, but it's a mixed bag. Depending on the availability of the
original cels, and the effort the masterer is willing to go through to
obtain them, a rerelease of traditional cel animation can be
HD-quality (if they got the original cels, or if the original cel
scans were of good enough quality), or they can be crap (if they just
re-encoded the old NTSC sources).  For a good example of a *good* HD
anime film re-release, see Akira on Blu-Ray.

Computer-aided animation rereleases are also a mixed bag, but have
more complicated circumstances. Sometimes the original CGI output
wasn't better than NTSC/PAL. In those cases, you won't see an
improvement. Even if they were, then you run into the same question of
original source material vs re-use of a previous release.

It all boils down to whether or not you care enough about the quality
of what you're watching. If you actually care, then check in with the
folks who've already seen the release you're interested in before you
choose between a DVD and Blu-Ray, find out if the release quality is
worth paying the extra dollars for. If you don't care, or can't tell
the difference, then you may as well just go with the DVD.

I generally will buy the Blu-Ray of things that I *really* like, and
am willing to pay the extra coin for. Off the top of my head, here's a
list:
* "Taken" - worth it, maybe
* Star Trek II-IV. - I should have gotten the DVDs.
* Paprika - Worth it, definitely
* Akira - Worth it.
* Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence - ABSOLUTELY worth it.
* The Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy. - Decent. Probably worth it.
* The Usual Suspects - The DVD would have been good enough; I just
liked the movie too much.
* "Pitch Black" and "Chronicles of Riddick" - Would have been worth it
if the director hadn't spliced back in lower-grade previously-cut
footage.

On the other hand, I've got over 130 titles of DVDs, and most of those
are *series*, not one-disc releases. Some of those I'll be looking for
Blu-Ray releases for. Mostly the ones that fall under the TV Trope
"scenery porn".


And, yeah, I didn't say anything at all about the active content and
other special features on Blu-Ray discs. I don't really care about
those.

-- 
:wq