Category Archives: Blu-ray

Ratatouille angles

Posted on April 8, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

I’m expecting to receive both Monsters Inc and Up on Blu-ray from Disney shortly. Meantime, I just wanted to revisit another earlier Pixar classic: Ratatouille. In particular, the way that Pixar caters for foreign languages. I raised that in an earlier … Continue reading →

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Blu-ray review page

Posted on April 8, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

I’ve been elsewhere the last few days. Elsewhere on this site, that is, updating and adding video bitrate graphs to a whole bunch of my Blu-ray reviews. The ‘updated’ text in the table shows which ones. In addition, I’ve added … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Disc details, DVD, Giveaway | 4 Comments

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King – Blu-ray vs DVD comparison

Posted on April 2, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

And now for the Blu-ray vs DVD comparison for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Here’s a sample: A note on all three of these releases. I’ve amended the comparison pages by removing the suggestion I … Continue reading →

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Unusual region coding

Posted on March 30, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

I’ve just been looked at a forthcoming Blu-ray title from Roadshow Entertainment: The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans, directed by Werner Herzog and starring Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendes. This title comes from Roadshow Entertainment and has two … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Disc details, Region Coding | 9 Comments

‘I’ frame rate

Posted on March 30, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

MPEG2, VC1 and MPEG4 AVC are all video compression systems that work both intra-frame, and inter-frame. Intra-frame is like JPEG (or like DV for that matter). Each frame of the video is treated as its own independent entity and compressed … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Codecs, Compression, How Things Work, Video | 4 Comments

Blu-ray reviewing – verity or result?

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

In comments on an earlier post, Peter draws attention to another negative review of The Fellowship of the Ring. This gives 3/5 stars for video quality. The other review suggests 2.5/5. Once again, the finger is pointed at digital noise … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Cinema, Rant, Testing | 6 Comments

Don’t Crush at the White End

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Crushing is what happens when you have the ‘brightness’ control of your TV turned down too low, or the ‘contrast’ control turned up too high. Ignore the names. The brightness control does control the brightness … of the black levels. The … Continue reading →

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The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers – Blu-ray vs DVD comparison

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Last night I put up a Blu-ray vs DVD comparison for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.  The picture on this one is clearly much sharper than that on The Fellowship of the Ring. Here’s a sample from … Continue reading →

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12 Monkeys Blu-ray vs DVD comparison

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Apparently back in January I ripped ten thousand frames from the Blu-ray for 12 Monkeys, and then forgot all about it. I stumbled across it the other day, so it made doing a comparison relatively easy. I’m hoping I won’t … Continue reading →

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LOTR Picture Quality

Posted on March 28, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Peter comments on the previous post that the picture quality of The Fellowship of the Ring has been criticised at blu-ray.com. That site seems especially critical of what it claims to be digital noise reduction applied to this movie. If … Continue reading →

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