Some notes about buying Blu-rays

When it comes to blu-rays, all discs are not made equal. The quality of a hi-def transfer can vary (sometimes greatly) depending on who's releasing the disc and the effort that has been put into it. You can always go buy your favorite movies, but honestly it's not always worth it. 28 Days Later, for example, was shot on a regular handheld camera and will not look any better than a regular dvd.

I'm not going to go too much in-depth about what makes one better than the other, since it's all pretty subjective. My main reason for posting this is simply to point out that it really important to do a little research before you go on any spending sprees. There are all kinds of sites that review new discs, and the one I generally look at is Hi-Def Digest. AVSforum is another good site, but the reviews are a little more technical.

A couple buzzwords to look out for when reading reviews:

DNR - Digital Noise Reduction is something studios use to make the picture look less gritty. Basically, instead of seeing pores and wrinkles on someone's face (these are some of the details i always look for in HD), they are going to look like a wax mannequin. I'm not sure why studios do this, but it always makes a movie look worse than it should.

EE - Edge Enhancement is something applied to the edges of objects to make them stand out from the background and make the picture "pop" a little more. It creates a "halo" like effect on the object, but honestly I never really notice it. It's something that gets mentioned a lot as a negative, but I don't necessarily see it as a deal-breaker like DNR might be. The Dark Knight, for example, apparently had some edge enhancement and lots of people were pissed. This one doesn't mean as much to me, but I figured I should define it anyway.

Film Grain - This is the most noticeable thing for me and the number one thing I look for. You'll know it when you see it. In some movies it is unavoidable because a movie was shot with film rather than digitally. In these cases it doesn't really bother me, it just gives it more of a natural look. Some times it is added in the studio for artistic effect. Band of Brothers has a lot of grain in some places, but there was only one episode where it was a little distracting. 300 on the other hand, I can't watch in HD. The whole movie has a layer of grain to give it it's distinct look, and you can't really notice it in standard def (like at the theater) but in HD it really distracted me.


So yeah, those are really the main things that are mentioned in regards to picture quality, so now you know a little bit more what they are talking about when the mention it.




There are also a couple of useful sections in their forums:

The Blu-ray tier thread has all titles organized based on how good they look. Tier 0 (reference quality) is the best.


The Blu-ray bargains section is also good to keep an eye on. Basically, buying your movies at stores like Best Buy is downright stupid unless they are having a sale or the movie just came out (and is thus probably a few bucks cheaper than it will normally be. Amazon is almost always the best place to buy from. Their discs are usually 10 dollars or so cheaper than at a normal store (and shipping is free over 25 dollars). They also have sales all the time. Right now, for example, they are having a buy two, get one free sale.


Anyways, I just thought I'd share some of the pointers I've picked up. I want to make sure you guys are getting the best hi-def experience you can.

F*C* New Web sites.

I want everyone to do me a favor and travel over to espn.com. I check this site religiously. Not because its got the best coverage, in fact, i think ESPN writers other then John Clayton, Bill Simmons, and TMQ are usually pretty bad. Too many things are the best ever: best player ever, best game ever, best team ever… They need to calm to heck down over there! Anyway that’s not the point of this post. I would go to ESPN because it was the easiest to use, best designed webpage in the known universe. I could always find the top story, new columns from my favorite writers were mere clicks away. Now they have updated the site to some new monstrosity that is waaaaaayyyyy too complex. It’s obvious they are changing the design to make it easier to sell ad space and this pisses me off. The first time i booted up the new page was this morning and I got this stupid b.s. ad with video from GMC or something welcoming me to the newly designed ESPN.com. AHH. I have no problem with web advertising and i understand places have to make money somehow but my god!

The same thing happened over at IGN. I loved that site and the reason i checked it more often then other sites was strictly due to the page design being extremely easy to navigate. Then they f-ed it up to make selling ad space easier. Ads are becoming more and more obtrusive to my internet experience and its driving me away from some of my favorite sites. I may just be stuck in my ways or something, and you guys may not care about this, but I think changes should be made to improve the experience of the user. Instead these two sites made changes to make avoiding advertising harder at the expense of a good user experience. All I can say is Fuck You ESPN. You broke my heart./rant