Wednesday, August 26, 2009

The funniest two pictures I've seen all week

6:34 PM / Blu-ray / Comments14 Comments

Blu-ray

Priceless, just priceless.

As funny as the first picture is, the second is just the icing on the cake.

In case you're not aware, they're a reference to Paramount's upcoming Blu-ray release of Gladiator, which I initially posted about a few days ago. Since then, further information has emerged. Not only is the transfer inundated with edge enhancement and profoundly lacking in detail, it has also been fleeced with the same sort of DVNR (digital video noise reduction) technology that publicly embarrassed Warner when they tried the same thing several years back on their Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2 DVD release. Say "Goodbye, detail! Hellooooo, disappearing projectiles!" In the meantime, the only web site to have reviewed the disc (one that is infamous for its less than rigid technical standards) has hastily retracted its initial glowing appraisal after news of the scandal broke, replacing it with a more tempered (but nonetheless still profoundly ignorant) write-up.

Oh, and it looks as if, despite how poor most of the film looks, scenes that were added back in for the Extended Edition look much better. Ironically, this simply makes the whole situation much more frustrating, as these scenes provide a tantalising glimpse of how good the whole film could have looked had Paramount and/or Universal not simply hauled out a grubby old master (presumably the one used to make the original DVD release) and subjected it to an additional pass of intrusive noise reduction.

Luckily, it looks as if word is spreading fast regarding the lacklustre quality of this major release. Campaigns are under way to contact both Paramount (whose responses so far have been pretty pathetic), and director Ridley Scott's production company, Scott Free. The latter, I feel, could have a significant impact if the influential Mr. Scott, a man well known for his visual eye and who has sung the praises of the Blu-ray format in the past, gets wind of how his film has been treated and decides to weigh in.

Not that this has stopped the usual suspects at Blu-ray.com, morons of the highest order that they are, from having a whine about "screenshot Scientology" (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean) and adopting the predictable "It looks better than the DVD!" and "The sun shines out of Blu-ray's arse!" stances. These are the people who retard the growth of new technology and convince the studios that "okay" is an adequate standard for which to aim. I despair of that forum, I really do.

Artist's impression

Artist's impression

 
14 Comments

1. Anthony said:

I really wish a few of the more knowledgeable and qualified reviewers around would either start a review site or join an existing one and attempt to turn the tide of quality reviews. Perhaps they can accomplish more on the various forums but it currently seems the signal to noise ratio when it comes to top of the line reviews is lacking.

(Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 at 10:05 PM)

2. Olly said:

It has annoyed me with this one where the first direct screens came out and clearly looked awful, yet the early reviews were praising it unreservedly. Either some of these people haven't actually seen it or they're not fit to do their job, given that they can't do the most basic appraisal of a film's AV quality.

Have you seen anything on the UK release of Gladiator from Universal? It's probably too much to hope for that it'll be a different transfer, but I've seen significant differences in quality between various international versions before...

(Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 12:51 AM)

3. Kram Sacul said:

So Blu-ray.com isn't a site for critical PQ analysis? ;-)

(Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 3:51 AM)

4. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Anthony:

It's something I'd love to try to organise myself if I had the time, resources and connections. In the absence of a dedicated site, I just try to do my bit wherever possible, whether it's on forums, at DVD Times, or on this site.


Olly:

I got your email and replied to your question there but I'll post it here as well in case anyone else is wondering the same thing:

I strongly suspect that the master used for Paramount's release of Gladiator originated from Universal in the first place. This is just a hunch, admittedly, but one that's backed up by the company's track record with catalogue releases. Aesthetically, it looks an awful lot (with an emphasis on "awful") like many of the shovelware titles they used to put out on HD DVD when the format war was at its height and they were simply churning out as many releases as possible with seemingly little regard for their quality. Given that Universal was the larger of the two studios responsible for producing the film, it stands to reason that they would have control of the master. As such, I strongly suspect that the UK release won't be any better. If it does improve on Paramount's version, I'll happily eat my words, but I'm not hopeful in the slightest.

Really, I think our best bet is to kick up enough of a fuss about this release that Paramount and/or Universal revisits it, similar to what happened with Sony and The Fifth Element, or Disney and the Pirates of the Caribbean framing error (which was an infinitely less significant problem than the one facing Gladiator!). I've actually ordered a copy of it (and Braveheart) so I can review it myself - via DVD Times, which has a much wider readership than my own puny little site - and continue to spread the word.


Kram:

Oh, there are knowledgeable people who post there, such as Robert Harris and Torsten Kaiser - there's no doubt about that. Sadly, the vast majority of its posters come across as deluded, gullible fanboys who appear to be sharing a couple of brain cells between them. I have it on good authority that even top Blu-ray insiders look on that site with disdain.

Probably the funniest post I came across in their thread on the Gladiator debacle was an outlandish theory that the people complaining about that title's image quality were bitter HD DVD supporters who still couldn't bring themselves to admit that their preferred format lost the war. The irony being, of course, that Gladiator looks a heck of a lot like the sort of shovel-ware Universal used to put out on the now defunct format.

(Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 6:56 AM)

5. Anonymous said:

"Not that this has stopped the usual suspects at Blu-ray.com, morons of the highest order that they are, from having a whine about "screenshot Scientology" (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean) and adopting the predictable "It looks better than the DVD!" and "The sun shines out of Blu-ray's arse!" stances. These are the people who retard the growth of new technology and convince the studios that "okay" is an adequate standard for which to aim. I despair of that forum, I really do."

'Retard' is a apt term to use regarding the majority of the Blu-ray.com posters.

(Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 8:19 PM)

6. Author Profile Page Michael said:

"'Retard' is a apt term to use regarding the majority of the Blu-ray.com posters."

I chose it for that very reason.

(Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 8:20 PM)

7. Anthony said:

Outside of the film grain artistic thread on AVS, do you know of either a master list of titles that were done as authentically as possible or specific reviewers that tend to do the best job of articulating when a transfer is quality or not (Adam Tyner of DVDTalk and Kenneth Brown on HDD/Blu-ray.com are the only two that I have stumbled upon so far)?

(Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 10:03 PM)

8. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Anthony:

- Matt Shingleton over at DVD Times is pretty sharp (although as I write for that site too and know Matt in that capacity, I'm well aware that this could potentially be interpreted as a biased opinion).

- Josh Zyber is genuinely pretty good at calling out DNR and edge enhancement too, although I've disagreed vehemently with him on many occasions. (For instance, he thinks the first Resident Evil has the best-looking BD and the third one has the worst, whereas in my opinion it's the other way round. Likewise, he praised Universal's Traffic HD DVD, vehemently denying that it was an SD upconvert when called to task on it and shown the visual evidence. As far as I'm aware he has yet to admit his error.)

- I can't say I'm familiar with Kenneth Brown's work - I tend not to read the reviews on either HDD or Blu-ray.com.

- Adam Tyner is very good. Actually, he's better than that - he's excellent. In fact, if I was in charge of putting together a BD review site, he'd be top of my list of "dream" reviewers to hire. By and large, he's actually slightly harsher than I am, going by his scores for image quality. (For instance, I rated both Poltergeist and Final Destination significantly higher than he did.) I feel threatened! :D The only title he and I have both reviewed that I strongly disagree with him on is The Simpsons Movie, to which he awarded a perfect score. It is in fact noticeably filtered.

That's about it, really. I must confess I'm not really "up" on the who's who of the BD reviewing world. There are a handful of truly bad reviewers that I'm aware of, but I won't name them here.

As for a master list of titles, I've been thinking for some time about revamping my HD Image Quality Rankings page with a series of icons identifying which specific flaws (if any) are inherent in each disc. Of course, my list only accounts for the films I've seen. Something like the "Film Grain Allowed" thread covers a far wider base of titles, and is considerably more democratic... although the latter point is actually a negative, in my book, because all it takes is for a handful of people to champion a poor-looking title and it instantly gets elevated to the highest "tier".

(Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 10:22 PM)

9. Anthony said:

I can understand not wanting to publicly call out reviewers that do more harm than good when it comes to promoting quality releases but I do wish a site like Cinema Squid had some form of a cream of the crop reviewers (eg. Meta Critic or weight the reviews to some degree rather than a straight average) or something along the lines of a basic listing to highlight authentic transfers as contributed by trusted reviewers.

There seems to be at least a handful of individuals that already contribute their knowledge on an ongoing basis at various forums that organizing something to draw greater attention to those releases (and ones noteworthy on the opposite scale) wouldn't be too difficult to get going. The info is just so spread out currently that it becomes quite the effort to research interested titles and doesn't do as good of a job conveying them beyond those ever so small circles.

The film grain thread has the right idea but I agree that it has the potential to be counterproductive with no criteria on whom contributes as well as being one thread in a forum that only draws from those that specifically posts in it thus limiting its pool as well as possibly diluting it.

That said, tons of people greatly appreciate the knowledge and time that people like yourself share to help promote and educate the rest of us.

(Posted on Friday, August 28, 2009 at 11:11 PM)

10. FoxyMulder said:

As the starter of the Film Grain thread i have considered changing it's title to try and get more participation. It's unfortunate i feel that more people care about eye candy and take part in the Tier thread than currently take part in a thread devoted to faithfull reproductions of the original film.

I do feel one of the reasons we get less participation is the fact they think we are too nit picky. Personally i want the nit picking and thats why i made the minor issues list to show that there is a selection of discs with minor issues which are still very good image quality and worth watching.

I have been thinking of changing the format of the film grain thread and have come up with an idea and perhaps Whiggles and a few others with access to rental facilities might be interested in taking part in.

I wish to change it so that anyone can enter the thread and nominate a list. They would nominate and recommend a section of the thread on which the release would be placed and then a panel of experts would watch the film and give their opinion and say where the film should be placed on the list. I think either a 3 person or 5 person panel would be perfect with at least 2 or 3 people needing to agree from the panel when placing the film on the list.

Whiggles could post the list at his site here and i could do the same on my site and others could do the same at their site. The list would be much better because of having such a panel reviewing each nomination and the average person would still get to participate.

I'd love to get someone like Whiggles on the panel as well as Joshua Zyber and either 1 or 3 other people depending on whether it would be a 3 panel or 5 panel of experts.

I too feel the thread needs improving and this would be one way to do it and to have people with good eyes and the right equipment overseeing things.

I also feel the thread title being changed to something like Film Analysis and Reference Thread would be better than Film Grain allowed which currently puts some people off entering the thread.

I'm all for suggestions on what to call the thread though.

If you are interested Whiggles i will post in the thread later today or tomorrow and try to get the ball rolling.

(Posted on Saturday, August 29, 2009 at 2:20 PM)

11. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Foxy:

I like the idea, but I think there are also problems with it.

My chief concern is that, if the current system is seen by some to be nit-picky and inaccessible, then these feelings are only going to be increased by the notion of a panel of supposed "experts" vetting every title that gets added to the list. What constitutes an expert, and who determines this? How are their credentials determined and verified?

Geographical placement could also be an issue. Like you, I'm based in the UK, but I imagine most AVS readers are located in the US. Therefore, someone such as myself would have access to a very different rental list to someone like Josh Zyber. Obviously in the case of a worldwide, mainstream release by a major studio, where the same encode is likely to be used in the UK and the US, this isn't much of an issue, but it's still not something I'd like to take a chance on. And consider cases such as Braveheart, where Paramount is releasing it in the US and Fox in the UK... to say nothing of smaller releases by independent labels, all of which are likely to have their own quirks.

To be fair, I can't think of a single way of doing this without getting someone's back up, but I'm not entirely convinced that the new system you're proposing is substantially better than the current one.

(Posted on Saturday, August 29, 2009 at 9:16 PM)

12. Anthony said:

FoxyMulder.. Sounds like a good idea to me. Anything that can take on more of an authority voice and become a destination for authentic releases is a good thing in my opinion.

The whole eye candy angle is plenty well covered on basically every review site since, even from those reviewers that write them up accurately within the review, still have to use a video scale that equates to how attractive the end result is (ie. review that states it is an authentic transfer without obvious manipulation but can only give it 3 stars because it only looks average in comparison to the best the format can look).

There seems like there is enough reviewers and knowledgeable people that participate in the forums all the time any way that perhaps they would also have interest in looking over a list of titles on a weekly basis and vote on those they felt had the most authetic transfers. Might even become something that would promote both those individuals as well as the releases and would encourage other reviewers to strive to improve.

I know those individuals comment on them already but having a specific place that highlights them would seem to do a better job at articulating that versus doing title searches on forums and review sites.

(Posted on Saturday, August 29, 2009 at 9:33 PM)

13. FoxyMulder said:

I know something like this could well be controversial and get some peoples backs up and could if handled wrongly actually damage the entire thread.

It could potentially make the thread better.

Perhaps a UK panel and you could be on it for UK or European handled titles and i could go on it as well meaning at least one more person needed and an American panel for American discs consisting of three people.

I see that as a great way to actually get all those films currently sitting on the nomination list either removed or put onto a reference list or a minor or major issues list. The potential to improve the thread far outweighs any other issues.

I mean i wouldn't just go ahead with it. I would actually seek opinion on it in the thread. People would still nominate as they do now but their nominations would be vetted by those with the equipment and eyes to spot edge enhancement or DNR or macroblocking or any other issue.

I think the lists need to be accurate and this is one of the best ways to do it.

As for who is picked well as the thread starter and as someone who knows who the best reviewers are i would hopefully be able to take a stance and pick people i know have the equipment and the eyes to do the job and i believe you have the qualities needed to do a good job and be fussy enough to see issues.

I haven't thought it completely through but perhaps keeping the label expert out of it and just calling it a panel of reviewers who then decide on placement is the best way forward.

The thread does need to move forward and needs improving though.

(Posted on Saturday, August 29, 2009 at 10:13 PM)

14. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Yeah, I definitely think avoiding the "expert" label would be the right way to go about it... although I still think people are going to want to know why it is that the "panel of reviewers" gets final say over what ends up on the list and where. It's something I'd definitely be interested in participating in, time constraints and LoveFilm's ability to send me the discs I ask for in a timely fashion permitting, of course.

(Posted on Saturday, August 29, 2009 at 11:55 PM)

 
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