On November 10, 2007 at 13:41, Anthony said...
not me, the producer thought it was not what it could
be. I am guessing as the director he must have had access
to the actual film and unlike you (where we don't know
if you have even seen the HD DVD or the movie) must be
giving an informed opinion
I am sure you did no see it and like most HD DVD supporters
mindlessly parroting something dumb you read somewhere.
Or else you would know how idiotic this makes you sound.
It looked and sounded much better then the superbit DVD
(let alone the normal DVD) what makes your post even more
retarded is that TFE had PCM, so it had lossless audio,
so you can not get better then that. Also it is funny
that you needed to go back to a movie that came out over
a year ago (actually one of the original titles available
on day 1) to find something that is not acceptable. Even
more, at least Sony was honest and intelligent enough
to notice it was sub par and was willing to replaced it
with a much better transfer from a much better master.
most people are happy with a 20$ DVD players and a 2$
bad copy of a DVD, further more most people were happy
with VHS, and I am sure many more DL way over compressed
bittornt versions. I am guesssing someone buying an HD
player and paying 30$ for HD versions of movies he already
owned would be looking for something better.
It is a well known fact that Fifth Element was a lousy transfer. Nobody needs to actually watch it to know that. It was all over the net within days of it's release. The Fifth Element exhibited obvious visual deficiencies due to weak source materials
and poor digital compression encoding.
BD was designed with that extra storage space BECAUSE it originated as a recording tech before AVC (mpeg4) or VC-1 came along. It was designed for the space/bandwidth hog MPEG2. They also needed the extra storage for the bloated PCM codec.
Sony is all about collecting money for licensing produts, not paying money. They would have to pay licencing fees to use VC-1. Same goes for the PCM used on TFE. They would have to pay to use Dolby TrueHD.
THIS is the reason it came with the higher space/bandwidth in the spec. It NEEDED it for how they planned to do video & sound with it.
Fifth Element was cheap (licensing wise) to manufacture. But they paid dearly when they had to redo it.
To be completely fair about codecs I want to pull a quote from Joshua Zyber in an article he wrote called "Commentary: Specs vs. Reality:
"The truth of the matter is that all video compression codecs have the same purpose, to accurately represent the source using a fraction of the storage space. In the hands of a good operator, both VC-1 and AVC are more than capable of achieving this goal. Even the dated MPEG-2 codec has been known to deliver excellent results (owners of the now-defunct D-Theater tape format sure didn't seem to have any problem with it). There are plenty of examples of "reference quality" transfers using any of the above, from 'King Kong' (VC-1) to 'Final Fantasy' (AVC) to 'Kingdom of Heaven' (MPEG-2). In all cases, the skill of the compressionist and the quality of the work is more important than the codec used to get there."
I personally think PCM is a waste of disc space. Great sound no doubt. But is it necessary? Here is another quote from the same article on Transformers, which got a 5 star rating for AQ:
"I should mention at this point that at least one working Hollywood sound mixer has voiced his opinion that, when played back on his professional dubbing stage, well-mastered Dolby Digital Plus soundtracks encoded at the high 1509 kb/s bit rate that Paramount uses can be audibly transparent to the studio masters, when tested on movies that he mixed himself and would presumably know better than anyone else. But what use is the informed opinion of an expert in the field when it's easier to just point to the specs list on the back of a disc's packaging to make conclusive statements about matters of quality? In the forum on this site, a number of readers have made proclamations such as, "Compressed audio is just not acceptable these days" and "Whether you can tell the difference or not is irrelevant."
The disc's audio being indistinguishable from its studio master is "irrelevant"? Even with just a Dolby Digital Plus track, the 'Transformers' disc rated the highest score for audio quality that we can give. What more could we demand from it? It's absolutely terrific, but it's just not absolutely terrific enough if the packaging doesn't have a listing for TrueHD or PCM, even when it's likely impossible for human ears to tell the difference? What kind of argument is that?"
Blu-Ray fans were screaming that Transformers was no good due to not having a Dolby TrueHD soundtrack. Well, scream away. I know it sounds and looks awesome on my Toshiba HD DVD player and Pioneer plasma.
