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Topic: Chicago (2014 blu-ray reissue) with Dolby 'Vision' and 7.1 sound
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Terry Lynn-Stevens
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1081
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2012
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posted 02-16-2014 01:31 AM
I read a little about this a while ago, Dolby is kind of dead right now, DTS Master Audio is the sound format that most blurays are released with, Atmos is okay as long as it is not paired with a dim or shoddy projector and nobody really cares about the legacy formats such Stereo or 5.1. Heck, Cineplex promotes everything in Dolby Atmos which made me question whether Dolby was intentionally instructing Cineplex to do this (I sometimes jokingly call it Ass-mos because of that).
Coming very soon will be Dolby Vision discs, players and televisions (sounds like THX). I figure Dolby is betting their future on Dolby Vision and they will do as much as they can to transition Dolby into a sound and vision company. Being an audio company alone is not enough, people need to perceive Dolby as more than just audio. I have said it in the past that for Dolby to become relevant again, they will need to the marry picture and sound elements so that the consumer views Dolby as more than just the audio. Dolby got it right by obtaining the rights to the Kodak Theatre and they have now renamed it the Dolby Theatre.
From the Dolby website
Offering dramatically expanded brightness, contrast, and color gamut, Dolby® Vision delivers the most true-to-life viewing experience ever seen on a display. Only Dolby Vision can reveal onscreen the rich detail and vivid colors that we see in nature.
To me, Dolby simply copied what IMAX is doing with their DMR and digital projection in their theaters and applied it to home video.
Dolby recently hired a former Apple marketing exec and will be actively promoting on social media and if you go onto the Dolby Facebook page, Dolby is marketing Atmos in ways they have never marketing before.
If the home theatre market works for Dolby, I predict with absolute certainty that we will see Dolby Vision enter the exhibition market in the not so distant future.
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Mark Lensenmayer
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1605
From: Upper Arlington, OH
Registered: Sep 1999
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posted 02-16-2014 08:53 AM
The picture quality is not what I expected...I don't see much difference between this and the earlier version. Bitrate is a bit low at an average of 23,084 bps mainly due to the size of the documentary on the disk. (Movies in the 28-30 mbs range look a LOT better.) There is a 2-hour doc with new material that takes up almost 1/2 of the disk space.
Sound is another matter. The original had a great mix but this is better, in my opinion. Surrounds are much more active and enveloping. In the home environment, it sounds terrific, especially in 7.1. BDInfo does show this at 96-khz.
The new mix brings out the orchestra more...a couple of great musicians there. Lead trumpet for most of the James Bond movies, Derek Watkins, pops out a bit more, and you can reallly hear the terrific drumming of Perry Cavari, especially in Cell Block Tango.
CHICAGO is one of my top movie pleasures, and was one of the first 2 blu-ray disks I purchased. I'm glad I got the new version, especially for less than $10.
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Terry Lynn-Stevens
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1081
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2012
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posted 02-22-2014 03:06 PM
quote: Frank Angel
It's an embarrassment, especially from a company that used to have a decent level of integrity.
The situation for Dolby is about making money and growing in the future, sound alone will not be enough for Dolby to continue the way they are currently set up. Dolby Vision has to be a hit for them.
A lot of people do not realize that Dolby (outside of cinema products) generates almost 90% of their revenue from licensing and royalties, every time a receiver or a dvd is bought, a small royalty fee is paid to Dolby if the receiver or dvd uses Dolby technology that has been licensed to the manufacturers. Same thing goes for blu-ray players etc etc. If you look carefully at what is happening in the non-cinema segment, optical discs/players/receivers and equipment are on the sales decline, streaming and downloaded will continue to eat market share, as the market share streaming/downloading increases, there will a decrease in Dolby revenues from other segments.
The PC market is also on the slide downwards, tables are replacing PCs and Dolby did have a strong presence in the PC area. I don't think Apple iPads use any Dolby technology. But iTunes does.
Dolby is doing well in the broadcasting segment, as that continues to grow for them. But for the home cinema side of the business, income from the discs/receivers licensing/revenues etc needs to be made up from somewhere else. Dolby Vision is the answer, whether or not it succeeds is anyone's guess.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 02-22-2014 05:38 PM
quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
If you look carefully at what is happening in the non-cinema segment, optical discs/players/receivers and equipment are on the sales decline, streaming and downloaded will continue to eat market share, as the market share streaming/downloading increases, there will a decrease in Dolby revenues from other segments.
What a crock of shit. Streaming services only help Dolby, not hurt them. What the hell other sound format besides Dolby Digital is Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus and others using? Nothing. If anything, Dolby Digital Plus is the next runner up over standard lossy Dolby Digital. DTS, as much of a fan of them as I have been, are a very distant second when it comes to streaming services. Some movies via Ultraviolet have DTS encoded audio tracks. But that's about it.
It's going to be an extremely long time before HDTV monitors, game consoles, home theater receivers and various types of set top boxes are sold without Dolby Digital encoding.
Even though DTS has been making quite a bit of effort at gaining some kind of inroad with broadcasting Dolby Digital remains the de facto standard for HDTV broadcasts. That isn't going to change anytime soon.
DTS has been dominating in the field of Blu-ray discs, and quite easily so. Some of that dominance has to do with obvious mistakes Dolby made in its software development. ALL professional level Blu-ray authoring is done on Windows-based PCs. Sonic Scenarist, Sony Blu-code and Sony Blu-print are Windows-only suites. Dolby's TrueHD software is Mac only. Giant mistake on Dolby's part. Dolby should have taken a clue from Steve Jobs' biased attitude against Blu-ray and ported their TrueHD encoding software to Windows ASAP. They didn't bother doing that. DTS Master Audio software is A LOT less expensive than Dolby's TrueHD suite. Another huge mistake on Dolby's part. DTS' Master Audio suite is a lot easier to use. Honestly, it's no surprise why DTS is the de facto surround sound format for Blu-ray. Dolby's guys just copped that typical, militant, elitist, snobbish "we're only doing Mac" bullshit attitude without realizing Blu-ray authoring is an exclusively Windows-oriented endeavor. Shame on them for that ignorance. At least DTS covered their bases by making their Master Audio studio software available for both Mac and Windows platforms.
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
The PC market is also on the slide downwards, tables are replacing PCs and Dolby did have a strong presence in the PC area. I don't think Apple iPads use any Dolby technology. But iTunes does.
???
Again, lossy Dolby Digital is the dominant format for movie and TV show audio formats. It doesn't matter if someone is watching the show on a tablet, game console or computer. Dolby Digital is the main format being used. Dolby isn't losing anything on licensing in that area. But then again, neither is DTS. The Dell XPS notebook PC I'm using has a sound processor in it that decodes all of Dolby's and DTS' audio formats. How is Dolby or DTS losing out in that?
As to Dolby Vision, I think it's a solution in search of a problem.
They make the sales pitch over high end video camera systems having color dynamic range data in RAW footage that no one sees. Unfortunately Dolby Vision isn't going to change any of that. ALL Hollywood movies shot with video cameras try as hard as they can to imitate that film look. That means doing all sorts of post processing to the video footage. It means throwing away a LOT of that native RGB gamma data and muting it within the confines of a film-like CMY subtractive color space.
Dolby Vision strikes me as something akin to the sales guy at the electronics store putting an HDTV display on vivid burn cycle to make the screen look as garish as possible to generate sales.
Current TV sets are very limited in the kind of color gamma that can be displayed. They conform to the REC 709 color space standard. Throwing Dolby Vision in there is like putting the cart ahead of the horse. We need much better HDTV sets. We need HDTV monitors that at least support the REC 2020 standard. ZERO TVs in use today do that. All Blu-ray discs currently authored do, at best, 4:2:0 color sub-sampling. No better. We need REC 2020 level TV monitors to support full 4:4:4 HD video. But that probably also means another delivery medium aside from the current version of Blu-ray. It sounds like Dolby Vision is trying to go past 4:4:4 territory into an even more garish zone. And that's not how movies are color graded and finished. It's all about mimicking the film look.
I've seen High Dynamic Range imaging mentioned as part of the Dolby Vision sales pitch. I'm not a big fan of HDR in still photography. HDR still photos have a strange, artificial appearance to them that makes me think of an image taken from the point of view from someone who was high on narcotics or hallucinogens. Human eyesight has far wider dynamic range than any general purpose camera. We see far greater detail from highlight zones to shadow areas in real time. Our eyes automatically white balance between multiple zones, such as indoor lighting and outdoor sun light at the same time. No camera made can do that. Human eyesight kicks ass. Cameras have a fucking long way to go to equal that shit. If cameras were anywhere near as good as human eye sight a movie set wouldn't need Goddamned stadium lights and other shit illuminating a movie set.
And that kind of makes me wonder why these companies selling professional camera gear are charging so Goddamned much money for their stuff. The farther I look into the capabilities of their products compared to what I can see with my own eyes the more I am turned off by them. What a bunch of assholes. They need to be doing their jobs a lot better.
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