Blade Runner Ultimate Collector's Edition: Blu Ray or HD DVD?

N

Nisei

Guest
Since there's many people who haven't decided yet which HD format to invest in, I'm curious which version you have decided to buy.
The Ultimate Collector's Edition comes in 3 flavours: DVD, Blu Ray and HD DVD.
Of course I want the thing in a HD format so there's the choice between Blu Ray and HD DVD. I've pre-ordered the Blu Ray version but I'm still in doubt which standard I'm going to choose in the future.
So, which format did you non-HD users choose to pre-order? :)
 
DVD

I can't be bothered with HD until they've decided on one format.
 
Wow, really? I mean, even if the HD format you choose is going to be obsolete, so will DVD.
And with a release like this I wouldn't even consider buying it on DVD when there's a HD format available. It's almost the same as buying a VHS tape when DVD was already available. Anyone want to buy my X-Files Season 1 to 6 on VHS?
 
Yeah but there was a much bigger difference between dvd and vhs compared to dvd and HDDVD/bluray. Also to notice the biggest difference you need to spend a fortune on the best HDTVs and HD players as well.
 
What's the point of having HDDVD/Blu-ray when the movie was made in the 80s? It won't make any difference in quality.
 
The Monkey said:
What's the point of having HDDVD/Blu-ray when the movie was made in the 80s? It won't make any difference in quality.
Click to expand...

It depends what sort of goodies they add in. With HD DVD they can make the experience pretty cool with being able to open up director's commentary PiP while the movie is playing without leaving the actual movie :cheese: The menu just fades in (in 300 it scrolls in from bottom and King Kong it comes from left side). It's really cool.

If I were you, I would get HD DVD.

If you have a 360, it's even more of a no-brainer.

You can buy the HD DVD player, and get King Kong and 5 HD DVDs of your choice for free. Every week there are other deals that you can find. Two weeks ago Best Buy had the option of including three other HD DVD's at time of purchace. That's a total of 9 free HD DVDs! It's awesome the deals they are giving people.

Plus, the picture quality is excellent. The differences between Blu-Ray and HD DVD are negligible in most movies that are coming out now (anytime there is a edge, 9 out of 10 times it goes to HD DVD). The determining factor now is the "experience" that the DVD gives you, and HD DVD beats the crap out of Blu - Ray in terms of everything being dynamic. You can do things in with your HD DVD, like pick your favorite scenes in 300, create a mini-trailer, and then upload it onto their server so you can download it onto your computer. It's really cool.

On top of all of that, when you're on the go, if you have Vista, all you need is to take the HD DVD drive with you. :) It configures correctly and assuming your DVD playing software supports HD DVD (PowerDVD or something) then you can have it on your computer. You don't even need your 360 to play it on your computer.

Just my opinion. But like others said, it's an 80's movie that wasn't filmed in hi-def. They may clean the images up a bit and re-contrast it. So if you really want the best image and best experience, go for HD DVD.
 
Is this the version one that was shown in Venice recently with all the reshoots added, and AICN have been drooling over?
 
The Monkey said:
What's the point of having HDDVD/Blu-ray when the movie was made in the 80s? It won't make any difference in quality.
Click to expand...
That's absolute nonsense. The picture was shot on film, not digital. When you make a hi res digital transfer, the quality will be much better than a standard DVD transfer can deliver.
Look at it this way: say you have a 20 year old photo negative which you want to digitize. What you're saying is that it doesn't make any difference if you scan this at 640x480 or 1600x1200 resolution. Of course it will, the detail on the higher resolution scan will be much better. The age of the negative doesn't have anything to do with it.
 
The reason why I'm not getting it on Blu-Ray is because the blu-ray version doesn't have the same amount of extras as the 5-disc DVD version in Europe. Only has the the Final Cut and the dangerous days documentary; well I can't find a blu-ray version that has the same amount of features as the 5-disc DVD extras (don't really care about the toy car, keyring etc.)

Edit - Does anyone know if I import the blu-ray Blade Runner (region 1 - US), which has the same features as the 5-disc DVD package, if it will play on a european PS3? Is the blu-ray disc region free?
 
Iced_Eagle said:
It depends what sort of goodies they add in. With HD DVD they can make the experience pretty cool with being able to open up director's commentary PiP while the movie is playing without leaving the actual movie :cheese: The menu just fades in (in 300 it scrolls in from bottom and King Kong it comes from left side). It's really cool.

If I were you, I would get HD DVD.

If you have a 360, it's even more of a no-brainer.

You can buy the HD DVD player, and get King Kong and 5 HD DVDs of your choice for free. Every week there are other deals that you can find. Two weeks ago Best Buy had the option of including three other HD DVD's at time of purchace. That's a total of 9 free HD DVDs! It's awesome the deals they are giving people.

Plus, the picture quality is excellent. The differences between Blu-Ray and HD DVD are negligible in most movies that are coming out now (anytime there is a edge, 9 out of 10 times it goes to HD DVD). The determining factor now is the "experience" that the DVD gives you, and HD DVD beats the crap out of Blu - Ray in terms of everything being dynamic. You can do things in with your HD DVD, like pick your favorite scenes in 300, create a mini-trailer, and then upload it onto their server so you can download it onto your computer. It's really cool.

On top of all of that, when you're on the go, if you have Vista, all you need is to take the HD DVD drive with you. :) It configures correctly and assuming your DVD playing software supports HD DVD (PowerDVD or something) then you can have it on your computer. You don't even need your 360 to play it on your computer.

Just my opinion. But like others said, it's an 80's movie that wasn't filmed in hi-def. They may clean the images up a bit and re-contrast it. So if you really want the best image and best experience, go for HD DVD.
Click to expand...
I already have a HD-DVD player (well, my family does).

But no good movies have been released in HD quality yet. I'll wait until they start filming the movies in HD quality, then I'll buy them. But Blade Runner was released long before even DVDs existed, so I don't get the point of making it in HD when the quality will still be at DVD level at best.
 
Try Sin City on HD-DVD. It's shot in native 1080p format and looks great.

But anyway, about what you're saying about quality; I think you don't really understand the technical part about film and digital media.
Real film has a much higher resolution than even Blu Ray or HD-DVD. Age doesn't matter in this case (unless the original wasn't preserved well enough). It's the quality of digitizing which is very important.
The way you're thinking about it is: Ah, it's a 15 year old negative so it can't be any good, they didn't even invent the digital camera back then.
DVD is like the first few generations of digital cameras; pretty OK but nowhere near the resolution of the original. Blu Ray and HD-DVD are the next step and yes, the HD version of Blade Runner will be far more detailed than the DVD version.
A standard 35mm frame has a resolution between 2 and 20 MP (although you can't really call them "pixels"). HD digital is also 2MP so you see a single 35mm film frame can still hold more information than even HD movies can show.
http://pic.templetons.com/brad/photo/pixels.html
 
Edit - Does anyone know if I import the blu-ray Blade Runner (region 1 - US), which has the same features as the 5-disc DVD package, if it will play on a european PS3? Is the blu-ray disc region free?
Click to expand...

it's not region free
 
I had both a Blu-ray drive and a HD-DVD drive at the start of the Format war, sufficed to say I now only have a HD-DVD drive (connected to my 360).

Even though Blu-ray has the higher bit-rate / disk space I still find HD-DVD to be superior. Plus HD-DVD is a finalised spec... they're still toying with the Blu-Ray spec, so chances are if you buy a player you'll have to firmware upgrade... not a big drama for most, but annoying I think you'll agree.

Anyway, with regards to the comment above about it being an 80's film... so what? I have 2001 on HD-DVD and that's a 60s film. Anything that was filmed on 35/70mm no matter when will definitley look better in high definition. IIRC most films nowadays (even ones like this that are digitally restored) are scanned at 4000 lines of resolution, so even HD @ 1080p isn't showing it at it's full potential.

Have a look at this review to see what HD DVD can do for older movies: http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/498/casablanca.html I mean it's Casablanca ffs... a 30s movie!

But yeah, I'll be getting this sucka on HD DVD

One final thing: HD DVD = Region Free, BR = Not. half of my HD collection is US imports. FTW!
 
The Monkey said:
What's the point of having HDDVD/Blu-ray when the movie was made in the 80s? It won't make any difference in quality.
Click to expand...
No you got it all wrong. Nisei is right but I will give you more of an incentive to get it in HD. When I saw it in Zeigfield, I wasn't lying to you people. When I said that the film was cleaned up to such an extent that it looked real and brand new, I meant it. Also the sound was just amazing and HD puts out the 7.1 which I highly recommend. I already made a thread on this: http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=129154&highlight=Blade+Runner I would go for HD-DVD because HD-DVD players can also play standard DVD's! :cheese: The players cost a lot right now so I'm getting the ultimate HD-DVD package. Then I will probably pirate or something the deleted scenes until the players get cheaper. You gotta have a little faith in me bro. Until you see the actual final cut then you will believe. Also some news popped up recently saying that we get to see Decks mom. She has been in every version of the movie but the picture really hasn't been shown. It's actually had to spot. That's what I read on bladezone.
 
Get a hold of the 720p version of Chronicles Of Riddick, it's been imported directly from the celluloid, daft amounts of detail :O
 
The Monkey said:
But no good movies have been released in HD quality yet.
Click to expand...

Not so. Movies are shot at a far higher resolution than DVD supports - which is why Blu-ray and HDDVDs are such an improvement. Titles as old as Casablanca on HDDVD look far, far better than they do on dvd. The same goes for Goodfellas, Casino, The Thing .... and basically every other movie realeased in HD.
 
Nisei said:
That's absolute nonsense. The picture was shot on film, not digital. When you make a hi res digital transfer, the quality will be much better than a standard DVD transfer can deliver.
Look at it this way: say you have a 20 year old photo negative which you want to digitize. What you're saying is that it doesn't make any difference if you scan this at 640x480 or 1600x1200 resolution. Of course it will, the detail on the higher resolution scan will be much better. The age of the negative doesn't have anything to do with it.
Click to expand...

Actually, it does. You can't magically transform a 1980's picture to have the same quality as a digital, high resolution image. It's not like there is "unreleased potential" in a negative, or for that matter, a slide of negatives.

Unless the entire video is re-recorded on newer cameras, the quality won't be much improved.
 
Pesmerga said:
It's not like there is "unreleased potential" in a negative
Click to expand...

Agreed, the detail is already present on the original film (when ppl first saw Blade Runner at the cinema it was in 'HD').

I read somewhere that digital device would need a resolution of 5300 x 4000 to match the detail of 35mm film - the reason we haven't seen such detail before is because dvds aren't up to the job. The recent HD release of 2001 is a great example - it looks absolutely stuning in HD.
 
Pesmerga said:
Actually, it does. You can't magically transform a 1980's picture to have the same quality as a digital, high resolution image. It's not like there is "unreleased potential" in a negative, or for that matter, a slide of negatives.

Unless the entire video is re-recorded on newer cameras, the quality won't be much improved.
Click to expand...
Wrong. Even when transferring a high quality movie film print to 1080p high def they have to drastically compress the data to fit both blu-ray and HD-DVD. Film isnt digital so there is no finite definition in comparison to digital and as such is only limited to the medium its transferred to and the quality of the original print. Your point would only apply for sloppy DVD to HD DVD transfers or for tranfers from really poor quality film. Ive seen plenty of HD DVD movies from the 80's that were shot originally on film and they do indeed look far superior to their original DVD counterparts. This new version of blade runner has been cut together and cleaned up using techniques that greatly improve upon the original films quality and although i have yet to see it you can garuntee it will look far superior on high def disc than it will on dvd...
 
Go to a Tweeter store or something and ask about HD. I'm confident that they have something showing like The Incredibles or something.
 
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