Quote:
Originally Posted by DocScience
I disagree. While the original KK DVD was excellent, the HD version is noticeably clearer and with more color depth.
Viewed on 60" RP in 1080i with Xbox360 HD-DVD vs 480P (with Faroudja DcDi upconversion to 1080).
I point you to several scenes to check.
1. the filming on the ship scene - in the DVD, the sequins on the dress are discrete only in close-up, in HD they remain distinct in all shots. The sky too seems to have more colors in it. Quite pretty. Look whenever the camera pulls back, the DVD goes soft and fuzzy while the HD stays sharp (except for camera focus errors, which show up in the HD)
2. Kong on the mountain with the girl/sunset "beautiful"... again, in the HD version, kong's hair can be seen individually moving in the wind in the wide shots, not just the close ups. Also, the color depth between light and dark is higher. Sky colors are quite nice.
3. The night time NYC Empire State scene. In HD, the windows in the far away buildings are distinct, as are the head lights of the cars below. In the DVD, the far building lights are blobs and the streets show no details of cars.
All in all, my wife and I thought the difference was quite apparent.
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The HD version is an improvement over SD (as I noticed the same improvements as you and more), BUT it does NOT measure up to Riddick, Serenity, Batman Begins and others... The problem is the movie length and the bitrate. Unforunately the birate had to be lowered to allow the movie and extras to fit on the 30GB disk (45GB disks in the future should resolve this). The result is some scenes do not have the bang effect (that you notice in the scenes above). Color separation is good but the lack of other details such as "facial features" (pores in skin, etc) are not present. Also, the lower bitrate brings out the film grain effect used in the movie. Film Grain is done on purpose, but at lower bitrates, Film Grain looks bad. Microsoft should have used a better movie for the HD-DVD release. That is why I used Riddick to review the 360 HD-DVD drive.
Later...