High Definition Media & Technology Thread

[danth]

I have a question for you guys who know about this stuff. Will HD actually fix the common problems we see on Anime DVDs? The main problems I see are:

1) Jaggies, or jagged lines. This is when you can actually see little squares in the lines on the screen instead of smooth lines. This seems to be more pronounced in scenes with lots of movement.

2) Line shimmering. This is when lines in a still shot sort of "come alive" and look like their vibrating or blinking.

3) Jumpy panning shots. This is the "camera" slides over a still image, and you either see double images, or you notice big-time interlacing.

4) Rainbows. This is when you see bands of color where there should be none in between black lines.

I would think those are all compression problems. I've noticed that panning problems are significantly lessened on my HD TV, though.

[Dangard Ace]

Honestly, you'd think that since I own a PS3 but no HD-DVD player that I'd be pulling for Blu-ray, but I don't really agree with Dangard Ace. Blu-ray and HD-DVD use different software for the same results, so in terms of specs, the only advantage to Blu-ray is storage. Looking over my entire collection, most movies don't say how many layers they're using, but X3 proudly proclaims that it's a single-layer Blu-ray. So, as far as movies go, at least, it looks like storage is moot, and more extras could just be put on more discs. I think the biggest advantage is that some HD-DVDs (I wish it was all of them) have the HD version on one side and the regular DVD version on the other. Even for people like me that have an awesome set up in the living room might still want the regular version to watch on the regular DVD player and SDTV in the bedroom, or to rip to my iPod or something.

I can respect your opinion and I can see where you're coming from but it doesn't work for me.

POTC fills up the dual layer BD disc and it has phenomenal audio and video. I think someone on one of the HD forums figured it out to be in excess of 43GB. It needed to be on dual-layer Bluray.

Hot Fuzz on dual layer HD-DVD is also phenomenal. I'm not sure if anyone's posted how big the movie is but the sheer volume of material on one disc must fill it up.

I love all the extras that come with a movie, commentaries, special features, previews, interviews etc. Therefore to me storage and bandwidth matters. I dislike multi-disk when one disk will do as it saves on shelf space.

As for combo discs, if they were cheaper, like you said, then HD-DVD would have a killer advantage. Unfortunately they average $5 more for combo then to buy to single sided HD version. People who are buying HD want the best picture and audio quality possible so most don't care about the SD version of the movie. Also I think I read a month or two back that most studios are discontinuing combos as they aren't selling.

[mikeszekely]

I can respect your opinion and I can see where you're coming from but it doesn't work for me.

POTC fills up the dual layer BD disc and it has phenomenal audio and video. I think someone on one of the HD forums figured it out to be in excess of 43GB. It needed to be on dual-layer Bluray.

Hot Fuzz on dual layer HD-DVD is also phenomenal. I'm not sure if anyone's posted how big the movie is but the sheer volume of material on one disc must fill it up.

I love all the extras that come with a movie, commentaries, special features, previews, interviews etc. Therefore to me storage and bandwidth matters. I dislike multi-disk when one disk will do as it saves on shelf space.

As for combo discs, if they were cheaper, like you said, then HD-DVD would have a killer advantage. Unfortunately they average $5 more for combo then to buy to single sided HD version. People who are buying HD want the best picture and audio quality possible so most don't care about the SD version of the movie. Also I think I read a month or two back that most studios are discontinuing combos as they aren't selling.

Well, I respect your opinion too. One of the reasons I've stuck around MW when I usually can't stand message boards is that, for all the complaining we do here, I think most of us are willing to listen to each other with respect. And for the record, I have both of the Pirates Blu-rays, and yeah, they look so good they almost make me want to buy a 1080p set.

And yeah, I heard that they were discontinuing the dual-format discs too. And what can I say except of course they're not selling; as you said, the asking price was way to high. The dual disc format's only an advantage if the studios putting them out are willing to sell them for a fair price (IMHO, $5 over the price of the standard def DVD, not $5 over all the other Blu-ray and HD-DVDs on the shelf, which are already $10-$20 over the price of a DVD). If the studios backing HD-DVD want it to take off, they have to make it the alternative to DVD, not Blu-ray.

But I don't really have a problem with two disc sets. They don't take up more room, they just cram another disc into the case, ala the Pirates movies. I like extras, too, but all the good extras seem to be on the standard def DVDs. Pirates has been one of the notable few that they really seemed to put a lot of effort into the Blu-ray.

Edited October 12, 2007 by mikeszekely

[Dangard Ace]

A very good article by Joshua Zyber explaining the audio types available.

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Jos..._Explained/1064

High-Def FAQ: Blu-ray and HD DVD Audio Explained

Fri Oct 12, 2007 at 04:37 PM ET

Tags: Joshua Zyber (all tags)

Editor's Note: As part of his twice-monthly column here at High-Def Digest, from time to time, Josh Zyber answers frequently asked questions related to High-Definition and both Blu-ray on HD DVD. This week: Josh provides a comprehensive rundown of all the audio formats currently available on next-gen disc.

Commentary by Joshua Zyber

If there's one request we get here at High-Def Digest more than any other, it's to help readers sort through all the confusion swirling around the new audio formats that come on HD DVD and Blu-ray discs. It seems that most early adopters can easily identify the benefit of a High Definition picture over Standard-Def DVD, but making sense of the difference between Dolby Digital Plus and DTS-HD, or PCM and TrueHD is a lot harder to get a good grasp on. It doesn't help that the companies who designed these sound formats (Dolby and DTS) haven't always been clear in their labeling or naming conventions.

A Quick Recap of the DVD Situation

On Standard-Def DVD, there are essentially only two competing sound formats to choose from: Dolby Digital or DTS. Both can accommodate movie soundtracks from monaural 1.0 to multi-channel 5.1, and in some cases add a matrixed center back channel as well (DTS also offers a discrete 6.1 option on selected titles). A small number of discs (mostly music concerts) may provide 2-channel PCM audio, but those are few and far between. As a rule of thumb, it's Dolby or DTS. The DVD spec requires all discs to contain either a Dolby Digital or PCM soundtrack as the base standard (pretty much everyone uses Dolby), and all DVD players are required to decode both. DTS is optional, and is generally considered (fairly or not) an added-value feature. Though it hasn't always panned out that way in actual practice, there is a perception in the DVD marketplace that DTS is the "better" sound option that will provide greater fidelity to the source. Sometimes that's true and sometimes not, but that's a discussion topic for another day. The reality of the situation is that both Dolby Digital and DTS are capable of delivering very good, sometimes even exceptional sound quality on DVD.

Both Dolby Digital and DTS are "lossy" compression codecs. Before making it to disc, each format selectively filters out data from the studio's digital audio master using perceptual encoding techniques. In theory, the data removed should consist mainly of either frequencies beyond the range of human hearing or frequencies that would normally be masked by other frequencies in the track anyway. If done properly, the end result should sound seamless to the listener. But if done poorly or over-compressed, the audio may lose fidelity.

Standard Dolby Digital can be encoded in a variety of bit rates, the most common being 192 kb/s (reserved for 1.0 or 2.0 soundtracks and generally poor fidelity), 384 kb/s (OK quality), and the maximum 448 kb/s (used on the majority of DVD 5.1 soundtracks). DTS has two bit rate encoding options: the commonly used 754 kb/s or a rarely offered high rate of 1509 kb/s. Within each format, the higher the bit rate means the less compression needed and the less data removed from the master. However, it also means that the audio track takes up more disc space, which can eat into the bit rate allocated to video quality. Also note that Dolby and DTS use entirely different compression techniques, and their bit rate numbers are not directly comparable to one another. While a 448 kb/s Dolby track is better than a 384 kb/s Dolby track, a 754 kb/s DTS track is not necessarily better than a 448 kb/s Dolby track just because the number is larger. Dolby uses more efficient compression techniques than DTS and can usually achieve results at 448 kb/s comparable to DTS at 754 kb/s.

Now on to the High-Def Formats

The advent of Blu-ray and HD DVD has brought a dramatic increase in picture quality from Standard Definition to High Definition. Along with that has come an expectation for an attendant boost in audio quality. When there's so much more disc space available on an HD DVD or a Blu-ray, why should we be limited to the heavily-compressed sound formats we got on DVD? High Definition video deserves High Definition audio to go with it.

Jumping into the fray once more are Dolby and DTS. Each company has developed a line-up of brand new sound formats to go with the new disc types, using advanced forms of audio compression to deliver high quality to the home listener, quality sometimes matching that of the studio master itself. On some discs we even have the option of raw PCM with no compression at all. But we haven't just been given one new codec choice per company. No, that would be too simple. Now we have a whole host of confusing new options. To help straighten out this tangled mess, let's break things out by High-Def disc format and take a look at what each supports.

Click the above link for detailed explanation of each audio type available for BluRay and HD- DVD.

[David Hingtgen]

A bit OT that the above reminded me of:

On many movies, old to new, VHS to DVD---the dialogue is really quiet. As is often the music. But the sound effects (from footsteps to rain, to explosions) are very loud. It seems MUCH more common on DVD however. I often find myself being torn between hearing the dialogue, and not blowing out my eardrums. I have to turn it WAY up to hear dialogue sometimes, which makes everything else 5x louder than I want. Yet it certainly wasn't that way in the theater--I could clearly follow the conversation, with a subtle ambience of sounds and music in the background. Exact opposite experience at home.

Now, some DVD players offer various "tweaks" to sound settings, but I never find any that really help--maybe a SLIGHT improvement, but usually they just make it worse.

[wm cheng]

A bit OT that the above reminded me of:

On many movies, old to new, VHS to DVD---the dialogue is really quiet. As is often the music. But the sound effects (from footsteps to rain, to explosions) are very loud. It seems MUCH more common on DVD however. I often find myself being torn between hearing the dialogue, and not blowing out my eardrums. I have to turn it WAY up to hear dialogue sometimes, which makes everything else 5x louder than I want. Yet it certainly wasn't that way in the theater--I could clearly follow the conversation, with a subtle ambience of sounds and music in the background. Exact opposite experience at home.

Now, some DVD players offer various "tweaks" to sound settings, but I never find any that really help--maybe a SLIGHT improvement, but usually they just make it worse.

I've found the exact same thing! it really bugs me too... However, through some trial and error (just my opinion, with no technical knowledge behind what I'm about to say) I found that my cheapo Toshiba Home Theatre in a Box all in one thingy in the bedroom to be much worse at this dialogue being quiet than my basement home theatre with a IMHO fantastic 2nd generation Sony DVD (back then when they cost $600 and weighed 50lbs) and a decent Yamaha amp with a separate DSP decoding the Dolby Digital signal - plus much larger and better speakers. So I would suspect that the el-cheapo HTIB doesn't decode the soundtrack properly or as well as some other systems. What I do is turn up the centre channel - usually you can adjust the volume and delay for the individual speakers to tune it to your room and speaker placement - I found that if you boost the centre channel speakers, the majority of the dialogue comes through this channel (not exclusively, but mostly) and you can also turn down the rear left and right channels if you find the ambient stuff too distracting (this is usually the effects channels). I hate it when there is important dialog going on at a restaurant, and you can hear the nonsense conversations around you almost as well as the main actors. I've been finding that with broadcast TV, the dialog is quiet too, but when the commercials hit - WHAM! its so loud...

[Uxi]

It's not the player where you need these tweaks, but a decent AVR. You want louder dialogue, raise the center channel, which is where 90% of dialogue comes from. You want to dampen the explosions and SFX, lower the FL and FR speakers...

Cream of the crop allow bass management, channel adjust, DSP, etc over 7.1 PCM stream.

Edited October 13, 2007 by Uxi

[MilSpex]

I have a question for you guys who know about this stuff. Will HD actually fix the common problems we see on Anime DVDs? The main problems I see are:

1) Jaggies, or jagged lines. This is when you can actually see little squares in the lines on the screen instead of smooth lines. This seems to be more pronounced in scenes with lots of movement.

2) Line shimmering. This is when lines in a still shot sort of "come alive" and look like their vibrating or blinking.

3) Jumpy panning shots. This is the "camera" slides over a still image, and you either see double images, or you notice big-time interlacing.

4) Rainbows. This is when you see bands of color where there should be none in between black lines.

I would think those are all compression problems. I've noticed that panning problems are significantly lessened on my HD TV, though.

Laserdisc inherently has none of these problems as its uncompressed and analogue.

[danth]

Laserdisc inherently has none of these problems as its uncompressed and analogue.

Dude. That's kinda like a punch to the gut for me. I always sensed that digital technology had somehow failed us. Ever since I started watching DVD, I started noticing all kinds of annoying aliasing that I didn't remember from VHS. I never did have any exposure to Laserdisc (except for watching Tenchi Muyo once at a small convention), but I remember when they were considered the hot new thing, and they were very expensive. I always wanted to have some one day, with their giant surface area available for really great artwork.

Hearing that Laserdisc is analogue kinda solidifies my suspicion that we've chosen an inferior media, and it's sad. Laserdisc has a sort of mystique, for me. Can one buy laserdisc players anymore?

[JsARCLIGHT]

The problem may not be in your DVD player but rather in your television and how it plays the info from the player.

Every issue you described sounds like the 3:2 pulldown problem. This article goes into some pretty good depth about it: 3:2 Pulldown is the Devil

Edit: 3:2 pulldown no longer exists using a next gen player like Blu Ray or HD DVD and a nice 1080p/24 slash 1080p/60 television.

Double Edit: I forgot to semi answer your question. Will playing that same SD anime DVD upconverted or not on a HDTV fix the problem? Usually no. The source material on the DVD is 480i interlaced video. As such you will always have some level of "jaggies" in the image when played back at normal resolution. When "upconverted" to a higher resolution you will normally exchange your "jaggies" for "fuzzies". Things that were jagged before will now appear to have a slight blurriness or furry quality to them when upconverted.

[danth]

The problem may not be in your DVD player but rather in your television and how it plays the info from the player.

Every issue you described sounds like the 3:2 pulldown problem. This article goes into some pretty good depth about it: 3:2 Pulldown is the Devil

Thanks for the info, I'll check it out, but, I've noticed the same problems using multiple player/TV combos, and I always confirm the video problems with sites like AnimeOnDVD to make sure it's not just me. I'm pretty sure it's the DVDs themselves.

Edit: 3:2 pulldown no longer exists using a next gen player like Blu Ray or HD DVD and a nice 1080p/24 slash 1080p/60 television.

That's good to hear, but I suspect pulldown isn't the problem.

Double Edit: I forgot to semi answer your question. Will playing that same SD anime DVD upconverted or not on a HDTV fix the problem? Usually no. The source material on the DVD is 480i interlaced video. As such you will always have some level of "jaggies" in the image when played back at normal resolution. When "upconverted" to a higher resolution you will normally exchange your "jaggies" for "fuzzies". Things that were jagged before will now appear to have a slight blurriness or furry quality to them when upconverted.

Uh oh, maybe my question wasn't clear. What I meant to ask was: will new High-definition DVDs (HD-DVD, Blu-ray, whatever) have the same digital aliasing/compression artifacts I mentioned. I know upconverting doesn't help (at least, whenever I try it, it looks horrible).

[mikeszekely]

Dude. That's kinda like a punch to the gut for me. I always sensed that digital technology had somehow failed us. Ever since I started watching DVD, I started noticing all kinds of annoying aliasing that I didn't remember from VHS. I never did have any exposure to Laserdisc (except for watching Tenchi Muyo once at a small convention), but I remember when they were considered the hot new thing, and they were very expensive. I always wanted to have some one day, with their giant surface area available for really great artwork.

Hearing that Laserdisc is analogue kinda solidifies my suspicion that we've chosen an inferior media, and it's sad. Laserdisc has a sort of mystique, for me. Can one buy laserdisc players anymore?

I don't think we've chosen an inferior format. I don't quite get this whole "analog is better than digital" mentality. VHS tapes were analog, and they look like poo. The quality of a Laserdisc is very hardware dependent. It lacks error correction or checksums that digital media has, and is more susceptible to dust, scratching, and warping. And like a record, it was often necessary to flip the disc at some point during playback (late model players rotated the lens assembly, but there was still a pause in the movie while it rotated). In an effort to put better audio on Laserdiscs, they created problems for playback without compatible audio receivers (assuming they didn't just got with CD audio). And many discs suffered a problem known as "LaserRot" due to the use of substandard adhesives that held the two halves of the disc together. And yeah, a bad mpeg-2 transfer can make a bad DVD look worse than a bad LD, DVD has a higher resolution (analog video does not, in practice, have an unlimited resolution... an NTSC LD has a resolution of 560x480), and a good transfer looks just fine. Newer HD media continues to provide improvements in picture and sound.

A final note, there's a saying "Garbage in, garbage out." LDs, DVDs, even Blu-rays and HD-DVDs are only as good as the source transfer. You'll notice that the Animeigo SDF Macross DVDs look pretty good for a 25 year old show, but the Manga Macross Plus DVDs look like worn VHS tapes. The quality of anime, regardless of the format, is heavily dependent on how much effort is put into it.

[danth]

I don't think we've chosen an inferior format. I don't quite get this whole "analog is better than digital" mentality. VHS tapes were analog, and they look like poo. The quality of a Laserdisc is very hardware dependent. It lacks error correction or checksums that digital media has, and is more susceptible to dust, scratching, and warping. And like a record, it was often necessary to flip the disc at some point during playback (late model players rotated the lens assembly, but there was still a pause in the movie while it rotated). In an effort to put better audio on Laserdiscs, they created problems for playback without compatible audio receivers (assuming they didn't just got with CD audio). And many discs suffered a problem known as "LaserRot" due to the use of substandard adhesives that held the two halves of the disc together.

Sure, but how do we know that those problems are inherent to basic idea of laserdisc? Hardware dependency just means that some people made junky laserdisc players -- I don't think that's the fault of the technology itself. Laser rot was usually due to faulty manufacture (using low quality adhesive).

Newer HD media continues to provide improvements in picture and sound.

Sure, and in the same way, newer Laserdisc media might have continued to provide improvements in picture and sound, if we had gone that way.

A final note, there's a saying "Garbage in, garbage out." LDs, DVDs, even Blu-rays and HD-DVDs are only as good as the source transfer. You'll notice that the Animeigo SDF Macross DVDs look pretty good for a 25 year old show, but the Manga Macross Plus DVDs look like worn VHS tapes. The quality of anime, regardless of the format, is heavily dependent on how much effort is put into it.

It's funny you mention Manga Video. If it weren't for them, I'd probably be totally happy with the DVD format. I just realized that all but one of my DVDs with video problems are Manga releases. Friggin' Manga.

[David Hingtgen]

I have no reciever, and likely won't for years. Straight "player to TV" (via switchbox). But older stuff never had this problem with dialogue--only new stuff. They changed something. If recievers can tweak everything individually, there was no need to change to "improve it for them". But it sure messed up the average consumer simply watching a movie on their TV straight from the player. (I am Joe six-pack when it comes to audio---I want a good PICTURE and will splurge on that, but don't care much about audio---if it's one of the few things I want better audio for, I have my stereo hooked up to my switchbox's audio outputs--- works well, and sounds much better than the TV alone---also was effectively "free")

[JsARCLIGHT]

Uh oh, maybe my question wasn't clear. What I meant to ask was: will new High-definition DVDs (HD-DVD, Blu-ray, whatever) have the same digital aliasing/compression artifacts I mentioned. I know upconverting doesn't help (at least, whenever I try it, it looks horrible).

My only experience so far with anime on HD media has been Tekkonkinkreet on Blu Ray that I rented a little while back. The picture quality was what I'd expect from HD media and playing back on my Plasma I noticed zero artifacting / jaggies / compression. The movie itself was meh however.

Something to consider is that "old" DVD media is 720 x 480 interlaced, usually MPEG 2 encoded. Whereas the "new" HD media (Blu Ray and HD DVD) is 1920 x 1080 progressive and using more "friendly" codecs like VC-1, MPEG 4 and AVC. Right off the bat you have 2.6 times the resolution in the source which also uses more modern codecs. Just in "source" alone going from DVD to HD media you have a very marked and noticeable increase in picture quality. Even poorly mastered, downright "crap" movies on HD media still look better than their DVD counterparts. That improvement however ranges from slight to "night and day" and most of the time being guaranteed outstanding picture quality that you expect from HD media varies from movie to movie. For example, Royal Space Force on HD DVD/Blu Ray is a shoddy master and has faded colors, dust and scratches and all sorts of other poor picture issues... but Tekkonkinkreet, being a newer movie with a digital master is pristine with sharp contrasts, vivid colors and a crystal clear picture.

Add to all that the make of player you own, how you have it hoooked up, what settings you are running, what make of TV you have, what your lighting conditions in the room are, etc. etc. etc. etc. The safest saying with HD media is "your viewing experience may vary" these days.

[JsARCLIGHT]

I have no reciever, and likely won't for years. Straight "player to TV" (via switchbox). But older stuff never had this problem with dialogue--only new stuff. They changed something. If recievers can tweak everything individually, there was no need to change to "improve it for them". But it sure messed up the average consumer simply watching a movie on their TV straight from the player. (I am Joe six-pack when it comes to audio---I want a good PICTURE and will splurge on that, but don't care much about audio---if it's one of the few things I want better audio for, I have my stereo hooked up to my switchbox's audio outputs--- works well, and sounds much better than the TV alone---also was effectively "free")

Have you tried changing audio options on the DVDs you watch? My mother has one of those DVD/TV built in double jobs and she complains of the same problems. She found that if she selected regular Dolby two channel (or the "lowest" quality audio option on the movies you watch) it "fixed" that sound discrepancy problem. As others have said it is a side effect of the DVDs defaulting to the 5.1 stereo separation they work into every new movie these days. It doesn't sound "off" in the theaters mostly because the volume in the theater is cranked. People really don't notice that, because movies are mostly "quiet".

I also used to have this problem years and years ago running a cheap HTiB setup but ever since switching over to a dedicated receiver / speakers arrangement I've never had the problem again. Then again I watch my movies "cranked"... I like to feel those low base notes in the furniture.

[David Hingtgen]

I've tried every option I can find--and as I said, they only ever seem to make it worse. On those few that offer a "stone-age" simple stereo 2.0 option it's a little bit "not as bad".

I suspect part of it is intentional mastering---the studios want the sound effects pumped up, so that you buy it as a "audio show off" disc etc. (It also explains VHS with the same problem---Heat is probably the best example--darn near unwatchable (or unlistenable---you have to shake the walls with bass to have any chance at hearing people speak)

[JsARCLIGHT]

Heh, that is actually the way you are supposed to watch Michael Mann's Heat. That movie was intentionally mixed so during the big downtown shootout you get the same hardcore "thwomp" sound dispersal that you would have in the theater. Heat is one movie that I'm waiting for on HD, mostly just to get a lossless sound track.

[David Hingtgen]

But was it intentionally mixed so that I still haven't ever heard half the dialogue and have a hard time following it due to that? (I never saw it in the theater)

[JsARCLIGHT]

It sounds to me more like a problem with your equipment. I have Heat on DVD and play it at low volume quite often (as my wife doesn't want the house shaken by that shootout scene) and I can hear everything said clear as a bell. As others have said, it all comes down to hardware. If you have the right hardware set properly then it decodes the sound very well and is clear as day, even at lower volumes.

Right now I'm sitting on my couch posting from my laptop while watching 28 Weeks Later on Blu Ray. I have the volume set rather low and can still hear every line of dialog clear as a bell, even the very low "whispery" stuff, and when the loud bangs and crashes start they are not all that "intense".

[VT 1010]

Danth, JsARCLIGHT is right when he says that it is an interlacing problem. Even on good old regular 480i SDTV, jaggies can be a problem. They can be made even worse when the player or the TV tries to deinterlace the DVD. The video on a DVD isn't usually stored in progressive form. Instead, the video is encoded in 480i and "flags" are added to notify the player or TV (provided it can properly detect them) how to deinterlace the movie. Unfortunatley, some movies do not have flags or the flags are improperly encoded. Not to mention the player and/or TV may not deintrlace the movie very well, even when the disc is encoded properly.

In regards to Laserdisc not having these issues, that statement is completely false. If anything, Laserdiscs are more prone to these issuses than DVD (the Star Wars Definitve Collection for example). Laserdisc also has chroma noise issuses too. That doesn't mean Laserdisc is the inferior format either. Unlike DVD, there aren't any compression artifacts and edge enhancement wasn't too common. That said, I really wouldn't want to get into the old Analog vs. Digital argument. That could get ugly...

To answer your question though, danth, HD DVD and Blu-ray will not completely eliminate the afformentioned interlacing problems (at least, not entirely). Please allow me to explain.

Although most of the movies released are encoded in their native 1080p24 format, some were either converted from interlaced masters (such as the early Warner Bros. titles) or they were filmed natively in 1080i (usually at 60fps). If you have a 720p/768p only display, the player will have to downscale the image from 1080 to 720/768 lines of resolution. This can cause jaggies.

If you have a 1080i capable TV, and the movie you are watching was encoded in 1080p, the player must interlace the movie before it is sent to the TV. Since, however, most HDTVs are digital fixed pixel displays (DLP, LCD, Plasma, LCoS, SXRD, HD-ILA, etc.) and not CRT, they cannot display a true interlaced signal. The TV, therefore, must deinterlace the signal. Actually, many 1080i TVs could technically be considered 1080p. So, in essence, the movie is converted from progressive to interlaced to progressive. All of this processing isn't good for the picture is often a large source of jaggies and shimering.

Then there is the is the issue of framerate. The majority of 1080i and 1080p sets out there will only accept a signal at 30 or 60 fps (or 25fps and 50fps). Most movies are filmed at 24fps. Obviously, it has to be converted for most displays. However, some HDTVs will accept a native 1080p24 signal. You then have to have a player that can send a 1080p24 signal, which once again, is something only a few players currently support (the PS3 is one of them). And if this device is connected to something like a reciever or a switch, it has to be able to pass the 1080p24 signal untouched.

And Last, but not least, the mastering of the disc plays a part as well. Edge Enhancement, stupidly, is still occasionally used on the new HD formats. Also, as mentioned earlier, the master can be a lower resolution, interlaced source upscaled and deinterlaced into 1080p24. This was luckily just a problem for some of Warner Bros. early releases.

I forgot to mention to turn down the sharpness/detail control on your set. Make sure there aren't any artificial picture "enhancements" enabled on your set as well. Quite often, this can help reduce problems with jaggies. Most modern CRT sets (both SDTV and EDTV/HDTV) shouldn't have sharpness turned all the way up. This is especially true when viewing HD materiel. The sharpness control should be turned down to a very low level or off. FIXED PIXEL DISPLAYS SHOULD NOT HAVE SHARPNESS TURNED UP AT ALL.

In summary, the new HD formats could potentially reduce the occurence of jaggies, with the proper mastering and equipment. I'm sorry if I rambled a little bit. I have a tendancy to get carried away when discussing home theater. I hope this has helped answer your questions.

[VT 1010]

EDIT: Oops, double Post.

I guess I will go ahead and address the subject of the soundtracks being too "loud".

When the soundtrack is mixed in the studio, it is geared towards the theater. Since the acoustical difference between the cinema and your average living room are quite dramatic, the soundtrack is remixed for home video. Sometimes the same audio engineer will be the one to remix it, sometimes it's someone different. Also, the movies will at the theaters can have different mixes themselves. For example, movies can be released in Dolby Digital, DTS, SDDS, and PCM. All of these can sound different from each other and are almost entirely different from their home video counterparts. I haven't even talked about things like DialNorm. What you hear at home will usually always be different from what you hear at the theater.

Many newer recievers and players have what's called a "Night Mode" which will help compress the dynamic range of the soundtrack (I know the 360 has this feature). It can be very helpful if want to listen the dialog without going deaf from an explosion. The sound quality may suffer, but your ears won't. The higher end recievers will also allow you to adjust the volume and properties of the speakers individually. Calibration should also be considered. You may notice a difference if switching from a TV to a reciever.

Edited October 15, 2007 by VT 1010

[David Hingtgen]

Thing is--the whole "dialogue low" problem occurs with every TV, VCR, DVD player combo I've tried. I still blame the mixing/studio/factory. IMHO, I shouldn't have to buy extra stuff just to hear the dialogue normally. As I've said--I don't care much for audio. If people want to spend $$$$ on a receiver for multi-channel surround sound--go right ahead. But I shouldn't have to do the same to hear mono dialogue...

[JsARCLIGHT]

And you are right to blame the audio mix, it's mixed for higher scope equipment. That is the double edged sword of this high flight home movie boom... they have to make these tapes / DVDs / HD media (well, not so much the last one) to fill the "most common denominator" while at the same time giving the "enthusiast" enough punch for their home theater gotterdammerung. And in the waining years of DVD it has become quite obvious that the pendulum was swinging towards the home theater crowd rather than the "I have a mono TV with a built in funai DVD player" set.

[David Hingtgen]

And people like me, who gladly spend money on video but use no-name splitters and the free cables the stereo came with to get the signal to 3 different things for audio....

[danth]

Danth, JsARCLIGHT is right when he says that it is an interlacing problem. Even on good old regular 480i SDTV, jaggies can be a problem. They can be made even worse when the player or the TV tries to deinterlace the DVD. The video on a DVD isn't usually stored in progressive form. Instead, the video is encoded in 480i and "flags" are added to notify the player or TV (provided it can properly detect them) how to deinterlace the movie. Unfortunatley, some movies do not have flags or the flags are improperly encoded. Not to mention the player and/or TV may not deintrlace the movie very well, even when the disc is encoded properly.

Well, my main concern, if it's an interlacing/pulldown problem, is: can I fix it? Can I watch all my crappy DVDs and still get a good picture? I believe the answer is "no". If there's some miracle DVD player out there that can make my Black Magic M-66 DVD play without aliasing or line shimmering, please give me the model number. And I'm not being sarcastic -- I'll buy it. Also, most of my DVDs have great pictures, so I would think my DVD/TV combo is doing everything it can.

EDIT: I feel like I need to carefully explain my situation. I have a progressive scan DVD player and a HDTV. If I turn off all sharpness and edge enhancement, most of my DVDs play great. Most of them look much better than when viewed on an SD TV, with less aliasing. However, a about 15-20% of my DVDs (mostly Manga releases) have aliasing, or look edge-enhanced, no matter what I do or what equipment I use.

In regards to Laserdisc not having these issues, that statement is completely false. If anything, Laserdiscs are more prone to these issuses than DVD (the Star Wars Definitve Collection for example). Laserdisc also has chroma noise issuses too. That doesn't mean Laserdisc is the inferior format either. Unlike DVD, there aren't any compression artifacts and edge enhancement wasn't too common. That said, I really wouldn't want to get into the old Analog vs. Digital argument. That could get ugly...

I just think laserdisc shouldn't be dismissed as inherently inferior. I know, I'm the one who said that I suspected laserdisc was the better way to go. But I just realized that 80% of my DVDs look great, and it's mainly my Manga DVDs that look bad. So I'm not so disillusioned with DVD anymore.

To answer your question though, danth, HD DVD and Blu-ray will not completely eliminate the afformentioned interlacing problems (at least, not entirely). Please allow me to explain.

Although most of the movies released are encoded in their native 1080p24 format, some were either converted from interlaced masters (such as the early Warner Bros. titles) or they were filmed natively in 1080i (usually at 60fps). If you have a 720p/768p only display, the player will have to downscale the image from 1080 to 720/768 lines of resolution. This can cause jaggies.

If you have a 1080i capable TV, and the movie you are watching was encoded in 1080p, the player must interlace the movie before it is sent to the TV. Since, however, most HDTVs are digital fixed pixel displays (DLP, LCD, Plasma, LCoS, SXRD, HD-ILA, etc.) and not CRT, they cannot display a true interlaced signal. The TV, therefore, must deinterlace the signal. Actually, many 1080i TVs could technically be considered 1080p. So, in essence, the movie is converted from progressive to interlaced to progressive. All of this processing isn't good for the picture is often a large source of jaggies and shimering.

Uh oh, that sounds messy. So the solution is to have a TV capable of 1080p?

And Last, but not least, the mastering of the disc plays a part as well. Edge Enhancement, stupidly, is still occasionally used on the new HD formats.

Boy do I hate edge enhancement. It's the worst!

I forgot to mention to turn down the sharpness/detail control on your set. Make sure there aren't any artificial picture "enhancements" enabled on your set as well. Quite often, this can help reduce problems with jaggies. Most modern CRT sets (both SDTV and EDTV/HDTV) shouldn't have sharpness turned all the way up. This is especially true when viewing HD materiel. The sharpness control should be turned down to a very low level or off. FIXED PIXEL DISPLAYS SHOULD NOT HAVE SHARPNESS TURNED UP AT ALL.

Yep, I had to learn this the hard way. I always turn all edge enhancement and sharpness off. It still doesn't help with the "bad" discs I'm talking about, though.

In summary, the new HD formats could potentially reduce the occurence of jaggies, with the proper mastering and equipment. I'm sorry if I rambled a little bit. I have a tendancy to get carried away when discussing home theater. I hope this has helped answer your questions.

All good stuff, VT 1010. Thanks! Edited October 16, 2007 by danth

[the white drew carey]

I have no reciever, and likely won't for years. Straight "player to TV" (via switchbox). But older stuff never had this problem with dialogue--only new stuff. They changed something. If recievers can tweak everything individually, there was no need to change to "improve it for them". But it sure messed up the average consumer simply watching a movie on their TV straight from the player. (I am Joe six-pack when it comes to audio---I want a good PICTURE and will splurge on that, but don't care much about audio---if it's one of the few things I want better audio for, I have my stereo hooked up to my switchbox's audio outputs--- works well, and sounds much better than the TV alone---also was effectively "free")

You know, I'm not an audio snob (being partially deaf most of my life until 3 surgeries in the past 3 years fixed that will do that to ya), but it's still fun to have surround sound.

I purchased an Aiwa shelf system back in 2000 that has Dolby Digital, 5.1 surround and adjustable center, rear and subwoofer channels (subwoofer sold seperately), and I STILL have no desire to replace it. Given, my "home theatre" has never been in a living room larger than 12x16 feet, but it works just fine for me!!!

So, you don't have to purchase a kick ass reciever just to get good sound.

[VT 1010]

Danth, a better player and TV may help with the interlacing problems. You did say, however, that it isn't so bad for most of your other DVDs. If your worst offenders are Manga DVDs, then it's probably due to bad mastering. There's always the Japanese versions. Lots of old anime are being remastered in Japan. The new Macross Plus set looks way better than the old Manga releases. If your TV and player are properly adjusted, then they shouldn't be as noticible. Even with a properly calibrated system, you still can't make up for crappy mastering.

In the realm of HD media, 1080p would a good idea. Just keep in mind, you still may have problems unless the set can display video at 24fps (or multiples of 24 such as 48, 72, 96 and 120). Also, make sure it can display the full resolution of 1920x1080. Some TVs can accept a 1080i/p signal, but will convert it to the set's native resolution. Unfortunately, a good HDTV with all of these features could cost a lot. If you have the budget, however, I would highly recommend getting one (don't forget to do your research).

I'm wondering if I should do some sort of HD FAQ in this thread. Would anybody be interested?

BTW, I also believe Laserdisc is still a good format. I still collect and watch them. Nothing like DYRL? in PCM...

[JsARCLIGHT]

WHOOPS! Product described on package may not be actual product received!

Paramount's "Jack Ryan" "Special" Edition HD DVD set not so special...

I wonder how they spin this one?

[David Hingtgen]

TF movie DVD audio-dialogue review:

The first 30 mins or so was great. But when Prime did his little holo-explanation soon after he first appeared---things started getting weird. For much of the last half of the movie, your standard "I can't hear what they're saying" came and went with every scene---the levels were all over the place.

Also, any cool weapons effect seemed almost "turned off". In the opening scene, Blackout's blue-EMP-pulse thing has a very cool, loud effect. At home---they were like silent. It also affected many of Prime's voiceovers---he'd yell, but it'd actually be quieter than his normal dialogue.

[Alpha OTS]

Jsarclight, I enjoy reading your posts. I'm curious as to what your opinion on upscaling standard dvds is. What do you think of the difference between watching a natural 480(I know it's encoded as interlaced) picture in 480p on your hdtv vs upscaling that 480 picture to 1080.

Actually, I'd like to hear anyone's experience on the subject. My xbox 360 vga cable just broke. I'm still unsure how, but it just no longer works, and it was upscaling my dvds(according to my tv menu at least). So I had to go back to the regular component cables for the moment. I have a regular dvd in now, and I'm not so sure there's a difference as when I played the same dvd upscaled to 1080.

[Gaijin]

TF movie DVD audio-dialogue review:

The first 30 mins or so was great. But when Prime did his little holo-explanation soon after he first appeared---things started getting weird. For much of the last half of the movie, your standard "I can't hear what they're saying" came and went with every scene---the levels were all over the place.

Also, any cool weapons effect seemed almost "turned off". In the opening scene, Blackout's blue-EMP-pulse thing has a very cool, loud effect. At home---they were like silent. It also affected many of Prime's voiceovers---he'd yell, but it'd actually be quieter than his normal dialogue.

Paramount: Give us Blu-ray edition with uncompressed PCM track please.

[JsARCLIGHT]

Jsarclight, I enjoy reading your posts. I'm curious as to what your opinion on upscaling standard dvds is. What do you think of the difference between watching a natural 480(I know it's encoded as interlaced) picture in 480p on your hdtv vs upscaling that 480 picture to 1080.

Well, it's been my experience that using my PS3 to upconvert my older DVDs has been a mixed bag. There are some DVDs that look better when upconverted like my Indiana Jones box set... but on the flip side of the coin others look much, much worse. Most of the ones that look worse do so because they are bad transfers to begin with. I'll give some examples of the biggest offenders in my collection.

The Black Hole on DVD

When played back on a normal DVD player on a normal 480i television the movie looks decent. Dated, but decent. You can barely see the wires on the actors and props but the overall "fuzziness" of the picture hides the true poor picture and SFX quality. When played back in my PS3 upconverted to 1080 and displayed on my plasma the movie looks downright awful. Picture grain everywhere, dust specks all over the footage, the prop wires stand out like marker lines and you can actually see the break points and matte objects used on the special effects. In other words the upconversion of the Black Hole's terrible DVD print turns it from a passable DVD into an abysmal one. The movie looks downright terrible when upconverted and the fault lies entirely on the poor print the DVD uses. A speck of dirt on the print at 480i can go by unnoticed, but when an upconverter makes that 2 pixel dirt speck into a 10 pixel dirt speck it sticks out like a sore thumb.

Night of the Living Dead on DVD

Another prime case of a DVD that when played back on a regular DVD player and television is "passable". The print even looks old and poor on a normal TV. When upconverted... damn. The picture is abysmal. Grain, grain, grain. Dirt, dirt, dirt. Wavering hues and poor edge definition. As usual, all things you would never really "notice" on a normal DVD/TV playback made a million times worse by upconversion. The only upside of this DVD that I own is that you can watch it "colorized" with additional "color" commentary by Mike Nelson of MST3K. It makes the bad picture tolerable. However the upconversion makes the colorization look even worse as you can now see that it is nothing more than single hues laid over the original black and white print. The lack of gradient in surfaces stands out even worse than it would on a regular TV IMHO.

Tron 20th anniversary edition DVD

This DVD looks pretty darn good on a regular TV/DVD but it still has a level of "grain" that you can see. That was a result of the post processing of the glow effects. When played back upconverted it looks completely horrid. The swimming grain in the glow scenes is almost distracting and the blurry, messy edges are made worse in the upconversion. The movie basically goes from looking fairly sharp to looking like it was filmed through a defocused lens. The "real world" scenes are passable but the computer world actor plates and other items that are not computer generated or matte paintings, are painful. This is another case of the "old school" special effects looking darn good in low resolution but look totally balls when upconverted.

And honorable mention: Miami Vice Season 1 on DVD

This DVD set when upconverted suffers from the same "dirt, specks and poor master" issues the other DVDs above suffer from but the strange thing is that the picture quality varies from poor to good. That is because Miami Vice, like many other '80s TV shows, used a lot of older, lower quality stock footage in some of it's scenes. This stock footage was grainy, speck filled and downright nasty. You can tell how nasty it is in 480i on a regular TV but when played back upconverted it looks like pure turd. But then the scene will change and most of the bad artifacts will minimize, so it's kind of a mixed bag.

All in all I feel the prime "danger" with upconverting your old DVDs is that the picture stands just as good a chance to look worse than it does to look better due to issues with the print being magnified. This mostly has to do with many DVDs having prints that took advantage of the low resolution to hide problems or poor cleaning, which are made worse when the upconverter doubles or triples the size of that dirt speck or matte line. The DVDs I've mentioned are the ones in my personal collection that seem to suffer the most from upconversion, but it is almost entirely due to the quality of their material. As I've said, I own many other DVDs that look great when upconverted. The Indy set, My three star wars discs, etc. BUT it should be noted that those are heavily laundered and restored prints. So I guess the rule of thumb should be the older the DVD movie and the less it was "cleaned" or "restored" when mastered then the greater the chance that the picture will not improve and possibly deteriorate when upconverted.

[mikeszekely]

TF movie DVD audio-dialogue review:

The first 30 mins or so was great. But when Prime did his little holo-explanation soon after he first appeared---things started getting weird. For much of the last half of the movie, your standard "I can't hear what they're saying" came and went with every scene---the levels were all over the place.

Also, any cool weapons effect seemed almost "turned off". In the opening scene, Blackout's blue-EMP-pulse thing has a very cool, loud effect. At home---they were like silent. It also affected many of Prime's voiceovers---he'd yell, but it'd actually be quieter than his normal dialogue.

Dammit, David, I was hoping that it was just your neglect for audio. So I throw my DVD in and fast-forward to when Blackout arrives (this DVD is one of those annoying ones without enough chapter stops... from the first shot of the Osprey until the first shot of Sam is one chapter). I wouldn't say that Blackout's EMP was silent, but nowhere near the bassy thrum it had in the theater. And since the HD-DVD doesn't use uncompressed audio, I'm worried about it...

[David Hingtgen]

Not only are there few chapters--they're poorly placed. Also one scene: "computer hacker at his momma's house" and "Barricade going after Sam". Gah! I hit "chapter skip" when we got to the comedy-relief scene, and it went straight to the car chase. Yeesh. Barricade's my fave character in the movie, but I have to slowly manually fast-forward past the stupid stuff to make sure I don't skip his stuff.

....waiting for the Blu-Ray uber-edition in 18 months or so hopefully.