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Author Topic: GLADIATOR Brouhaha Claude S. Ayakawa Film God Posts: 2738 From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA Registered: Aug 2002 posted 09-04-2009 03:09 PM                        I have both versions of GLADIATOR on DVD, the one with 6.1 DTS digital sound and the special three disc special edition. Before I watched the extended version in it's entirety on the new Blu=Ray last night, I saw the first twenty minutes of the movie on DVD and there was a big difference between the two. I watched a lot of dvds on my HDTV many times and the upconverted image on some looked like I was watching a BD instead of a dvd. The GLADIATOR dvd image did not look that good dispelling a claim made by one person at a video forum that the picture quality on the dvd is better than the Blu Ray. In my humble opinion, this is not true! I found nothing wrong with the picture and the sound quality of GLADIATOR on Blu Ray. I bought GLADIATOR and BRAVEHEART on Blu Ray on Tuesday and as far as I can tell, the picture quality of both movies looked equally impressive. A lot of people have been insisting that Paramount recall the disc and repress it with a better transfer just by looking at screen caps someone had posted. Bill Hunt at Digital Bits in a way agrees with me about not judging the movie by the screen caps and said the BD is not that bad as everybody say it is. It is just crazy how people can become bent out of shape about a BD disc they have not personally seen just because others say it was bad. I am very happy with my copy of GLADIATOR on Blu Ray which has a picture quality just as good as all of my other catalog titles in the format. -Claude  |  IP: Logged Victor Liorentas Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 800 From: london ontario canada Registered: May 2009 posted 09-04-2009 05:50 PM                     I have found some blu-ray transfers very wanting when projected on a big screen like 100 inches, even though they look fine on smaller monitors.  |  IP: Logged Claude S. Ayakawa Film God Posts: 2738 From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA Registered: Aug 2002 posted 09-04-2009 06:32 PM                        Most people do not have 100 inch displays. My brother has a 50 inch screen and I will take the disc to his house and check it on his screen. David Krauss in his review at the High Def Digest forum gave the GLADIATOR BD three and a half stars and said it is a worthy upgrade from the DVD. He also said the disc is not as bad as people make it out to be. On my Samsung 26 inch 1080p, the picture is awesome but I can see there will be some picture degradation on larger screens but I am sure it is not as bad as people are saying it is. -Claude  |  IP: Logged Mike Heenan Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1896 From: Scottsdale, AZ, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 09-04-2009 10:51 PM                     Hmm, Bill said it's watchable, but it's not good enough. He also said that it's fine on a small screen like yours. Also web page quote: In summary, Gladiator is a great film that deserves a great Blu-ray edition. Unfortunately, this isn't quite it. It could be - in terms of content and extras, this is truly an ultimate edition of this film. In every aspect other than the video, this edition is superb. However the disc's deficiencies in image quality are quite disappointing.  |  IP: Logged Claude S. Ayakawa Film God Posts: 2738 From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA Registered: Aug 2002 posted 09-06-2009 02:34 PM                        I took the GLADIATOR BD to my brother's house to see how it looks on his screen and just as I though, the picture quality was just as good on his 50 inch screen as my 26 inch screen. I have found there are other Blu Ray movie dscs with much better picture quality in my collection than GLADIATOR but the disc is more than acceptable and I am very happy with is and so will most consumers who have not read the negative on line video forum comments. The demand to have Paramount repress the disc and recall the ones already in circulation will never happen and I will have no problem with that. -Claude  |  IP: Logged Vern Dias Film Handler Posts: 28 From: AllenTX USA Registered: Apr 2009 posted 09-06-2009 05:05 PM                        Claude, (and others) When we judge image quality for HD (and even DVD), the key parameter is not screen size, but rather it's all about the actual viewing angle being used. The following chart is courtesy of another forum: For Smaller Screen Owners - Recommended Viewing Distance Relating to Your Screen Size Screen Size >>>>>>>>720p >>>>>>>>> 1080p 32 inches >>>>>>>>> 6 feet >>>>>>>> 4 feet 37 inches >>>>>>>>> 7 feet >>>>>>>> 5 feet 40 inches >>>>>>>>> 8 feet >>>>>>>> 5 feet 42 inches >>>>>>>>> 8 feet >>>>>>>> 5.5 feet 46 inches >>>>>>>>> 9 feet >>>>>>>> 6 feet 50 inches >>>>>>>> 10 feet >>>>>>>> 6.5 feet 52 inches >>>>>>>> 10 feet >>>>>>>> 7 feet 65 inches >>>>>>>> 13 feet >>>>>>>> 8.5 feet Additional Data: http://www.darkrealmfox.com/screenviewing.html Trying to judge image quality without meeting these guidelines is futile, because it is impossible for our eyes to resolve HD resolutions (even if we have 20/20 vision) at greater viewing distances than those listed above because of the eye's optical limitations. The lack of understanding of the role of viewing angle in perceived image quality is one of the reasons why we have so many reviews that fail to detect substandard HD transfers. Now some here are probably going to say that no one could or would want to meet these criteria in their living room, which may be true. However many people have home theaters designed to these specs, which incidentally are based on SMPTE and THX viewing distance recommendations. And this is why many feel that the transfer in question here is so bad. "Patton" or "The Longest Day" It's deja vu all over again..... Vern  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 09-06-2009 06:07 PM                        quote: Vern Dias rather it's all about the actual viewing angle being used. You are talking about viewing distance, not viewing angle.  |  IP: Logged Julio Roberto Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 938 From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain Registered: Oct 2008 posted 09-06-2009 06:59 PM                    I guess he means viewing-distance-related-to-screen-size = viewing angle (or rather, angular field of view, or the portion of the image to "fill" the sweet spot in the center of your retina). At any given distance, you could have a screen the size listed or larger and you would be able to notice defects that, on a smaller sized screen at the same distance or at longer distances, our eyes simply can't see, because the resolution of the image is larger than our eyes (angular) resolving power, even under optimal conditions. If we can't see all the pixels, we also can't see all the "bad pixels" (those representing "errors" on the image that shouldn't be there). Only on larger screens (or shorter viewing distances or both) are those (alledged) defects visible at all.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 09-06-2009 07:15 PM                        In this age of compression artifacts where macro-blocks take the size of up to several dozen pixels, the whole viewing distance thing becomes irrelevant. You'll have to sit across the street to not notice bad compression. It is not like every single pixel on Blu-ray movies is discrete, far from it. Blu-ray, as good as it is, is far from ideal HD. So therefore your viewing distance needs to be MUCH further than what is listed above.  |  IP: Logged Adam Martin I'm not even gonna point out the irony. Posts: 3686 From: Dallas, TX Registered: Nov 2000 posted 09-06-2009 07:20 PM                     LOL THX recommendations.  |  IP: Logged Vern Dias Film Handler Posts: 28 From: AllenTX USA Registered: Apr 2009 posted 09-06-2009 07:44 PM                        Julio has it exactly right..... BTW, compression artifacts are almost never visible on most of the well produced BD discs today. I use a 5' x 14' 2.66:1 curved screen with a viewing distance of ~14 in my HT'. With my setup (Sony Qualia 004 projector, Isco Cinema DLP 1.5X anamorphic lens, and HTPC running Arcsoft TMT and aspect ratio control software) I can handle video in any format up to 2.55:1 with no cropping, Ultra Panavision / MGM Camera 65 needs a slight crop to 2.66:1. Constant height, no black bars here. No visible macroblocking, or any other obvious artifacts on the great majority of BD and HD DVD titles either. In fact it's probably a better image than I could get from my 35mm setup in the same room, since most HD video transfers are at least 2 generations closer to the O Neg than most release prints.... The only obvious issues I see are occasional noise in dark scenes and some degradation in the original source materials (fading, density variations, etc.) Vern  |  IP: Logged Victor Liorentas Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 800 From: london ontario canada Registered: May 2009 posted 09-06-2009 08:28 PM                     If i get anything less than Baraka quality on a favorite movie i become angry! I can live with the regular dvd if the studio wants to cheat on the blu-ray! Like Joe said you have compression artifacts as well as stair stepping and who knows what if they mess it up. Sonys The Fifth Element is a great example of (the first one) Imagine if know one complained about that!  |  IP: Logged Claude S. Ayakawa Film God Posts: 2738 From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA Registered: Aug 2002 posted 09-06-2009 08:50 PM                        Almost all of the commercial movies made today are shot on 35mm film and in digital.. BARAKA was photographed in 65mm and received a very high resolution scan and it is very unrealistic to expect every 35mm photographed movie on Blu Ray to have a image quality like it. The closest it came was SOUTH PACIFIC and that movie was also photographed in 65mm and received a high resolution scan. -Claude  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 09-06-2009 11:57 PM                     I liked Gladiator enough to buy the original "Signature Selection" DVD with DTS-ES 6.1 audio. Based on the various reviews from DVD Beaver, Blu-ray.com, The Digital Bits, etc. I'm going to hold off and see if Universal creates a new HD master in the same manner Sony did with The Fifth Element. The new BD of Braveheart isn't perfect, but it is often fairly impressive. If anything the flaws I see in Braveheart are problems with the cinematography itself. For example, there's a couple of shots of "The Leper" character where the camera focus obviously missed the proper mark. The clarity of other camera shots in the same scene makes the focusing error even more obvious. In the case of Gladiator it appears Universal has done what I often suspect of many other less than impressive Blu-ray catalog titles: the studio merely recycles some old HD telecine master originally created for DVD use. Even film scanning technology from several years ago is quite inferior to the best datacine systems in use today. I think the new Braveheart BD was created via a new film scan from new datacine equipment. Gladiator should have received the same treatment.  |  IP: Logged Claude S. Ayakawa Film God Posts: 2738 From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA Registered: Aug 2002 posted 09-07-2009 05:29 PM                        When a studio release one of their catalog titles on Blu Ray, their only intention is to present a version that is nuch better than the DVD with a 1080p high definition picture.. Many catalog movies are released using the currently available material that was created for the most recent DVD of that title. If a Blu Ray release are special films LIKE GONE WITH THE WIND, WIZZARD OF OZ and NORTH BY NORTHWEST, a studio will go all out creating a special master for the release and that is exactly what Warner Brothers is doing with these movies. Paramount new Sapphire Series is suppose to present movies with the best Blu Ray picture & sound possible and why they decided to use an old HD master of GLADIATOR is something I do not understand but I am not condamning the BD because I am satisfied with it. Yes, it could have been better but as expected, it is much better than the DVD. -Claude  |  IP: Logged

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