Tuesday, July 7, 2009

BD impressions: Serenity

4:46 PM / BD Impressions / Comments7 Comments

BD Impressions
Blu-ray

Critics and fans alike continually shower Joss Whedon's Serenity with praise for its witty dialogue, adrenaline-pumping action and rich characterisation, and rightly so, but it always surprises me that very few of them mention Jack Green's striking cinematography. It's beautifully captured here on this stunning BD from Universal, a re-encode of the same master used for its predecessor, the studio's first ever HD DVD release. Serenity is hyper-detailed and has a grain structure that is more pronounced than your average Hollywood blockbuster, which looks extremely pleasing and film-like, particularly in motion.

There's very little appreciable difference between the two, both of which are pretty much at the peak of what the two formats are capable of. I can show you frames where one looks to have handled the compression of the grain slightly better than the other, with the BD tending to have a slight edge (presumably thanks to its increased bit rate and improvements made to the VC-1 codec between the two releases), but much of the time we're simply talking about the particles being dispersed differently, without one leaping out as obviously superior. Ultimately, if you already own the HD DVD and still have a means of playing it (three red rings on the Xbox 360, anyone?), you can safely hold on to it and be reasonably confident that you aren't really missing out on anything. Of course, the BD does have the benefit of lossless DTS-HD Master Audio while the HD DVD "only" has a 1.5 Mbit/sec Dolby Digital-Plus track, but again I challenge you to pinpoint any differences that are actually detectable by the human ear. 9.5/10

Serenity
studio: Universal; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: VC-1;
file size: 31.5 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 37.89 Mbit/sec

Serenity Serenity Serenity Serenity Serenity Serenity Serenity Serenity Serenity Serenity Serenity Serenity Serenity Serenity Serenity Serenity Serenity Serenity

And a handful from the UK HD DVD release:

Serenity Serenity Serenity

 
7 Comments

1. Christopher D. Jacobson said:

Would it be safe to assume that the US BD release is the same?

(Posted on Tuesday, July 7, 2009 at 9:54 PM)

2. Author Profile Page Michael said:

I wouldn't like to stake my life on it, but I would imagine so.

(Posted on Tuesday, July 7, 2009 at 9:57 PM)

3. Kram Sacul said:

There's those dreaded elevated black levels again although less so than other DIs.

(Posted on Tuesday, July 7, 2009 at 11:29 PM)

4. Erik said:

Directors (and DPs) love darkness, heck, Clint Eastwood often talks about barely being able to see the characters, just their silhouettes, parts of their faces... 'tis all in the acting and framing/direction. Ironically; Jack Green, who often worked with Eastwood, shot SERENITY.

(Posted on Wednesday, July 8, 2009 at 12:28 AM)

5. Dom said:

Aha, now is time for you to get David to redo his hd-dvd cover for the new blu-ray edition :)

(Posted on Wednesday, July 8, 2009 at 8:58 AM)

6. Dom said:

Just spotted that your cover shot on your article actually matches his cover?

I thought the official cover looked like this for bluray?

(Posted on Wednesday, July 8, 2009 at 9:01 AM)

7. Author Profile Page Michael said:

The cover in this article is that of the UK release, which is the one I rented. As far as I'm aware, the US edition does indeed look like the one you linked to (which is a big step up from the "space porno" version used for the HD DVD and original DVD releases).

When my brother made his custom cover, he based it closely on the UK theatrical poster. When Universal released the film on DVD (and HD DVD) locally, they did the same, hence them looking so similar.

(Posted on Wednesday, July 8, 2009 at 10:00 AM)

 
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