Picture: Awaiting info; Sound: Awaiting info; Extras: Awaiting info
Movie: Picture: Awaiting info; Sound: Awaiting info; Extras: Awaiting info
(Australian rating); Region Free
The following video bitrate graph was generated by BDInfo 0.5.3:
In addition to the usual PAL DVD, it was also released in Australia in a SuperBit version, enjoying an average video bitrate of 7.09Mbps, some 60% higher than the standard DVD release. It looks about as good as the DVD format is capable of delivering.
In the following examples, at the top of each is the full frame (suitably shrunk down) used in the comparison, with a 250 pixel wide detail from the frame underneath. The left side is from the PAL DVD. The image was captured digitally from the disc, scaled up from its native 720 by 576 resolution to 1,024 by 576 (to present in the 16:9 aspect ratio), and then, in order to be comparable to the Blu-ray version, from that to 1,920 by 1,080. The detail is from that last scaled version, and has not been rescaled again. The right side is from the Australian Blu-ray. This has not been scaled at all.
Different applications were used to capture the two frames, so I am not normally comfortable comparing the colour between the two, merely the detail and sharpness. However the DVD does seem to have a slight pink cast, which is thankfully absent from the Blu-ray. For those visitors from NTSC lands, generally the PAL DVD is just a touch sharper than the NTSC DVD.
Despite me praising the general Superbit transfer, there were some oddities. Notice the jagged stylings of the rat's whiskers. This wasn't a scaling artefact from the manipulations described above. All these did was make those jaggies a little more apparent:
This shot demonstrates the more natural colour, far greater detail, lack of artefacts and increased sharpness of the Blu-ray:
This kind of shot really brings out the greater naturalness of the Blu-ray look:
With Blu-ray, you can see the texture of Josh Brolin's skin, a suggestion of whiskers lurking just under the sming, along with the texture of his jacket, and even his shirt, and the pattern of his tie:
