When you're Blu

[bcholmes]

I broke down and bought a Blu-Ray player this week. 'cause, hey, watching movies is my big vice.

The first Blu-Ray disc I bought was Batman Begins because I think it's sufficiently visually interesting and I've seen the standard DVD version enough times that I can compare the two fairly effectively. My conclusion: Blu-Ray is pretty.

I had to fuss with a few configuration settings to get (what I consider) the right settings. My TV is surprisingly dumb about incoming formats. It has a few options to support 4:3 versus 16:9 output. But it seems happiest making images to use the entire TV screen space. Invariably, this involves scaling the image, which I kinda hate. I don't notice horizontal scaling (such as scaling old 4:3 films, like Casablanca, to 16:9), but vertical scaling (such as a 2.40:1 blockbuster film) looks really wrong to my eyes. Even some very recent TV shows, like The Wire are only in 4:3.

Eventually I found a setting by which the Blu-Ray player could emit the image with appropriate letterboxing so that the original aspect ratio is preserved, and the TV doesn't try to do its weirdness. But I do find myself confused about why people might prefer stretching (to the extent that that's the default set-up). Hm.

The first film I thought about buying on Blu-Ray is Solaris: it's such a visually gorgeous film. Sadly, it's not out on Blu-Ray yet. I won't replace the whole DVD collection -- that'd cost a pretty penny. But a few choice films -- I could see that. I'll probably rent more on Blu-Ray when it's an option.

Comments

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Blockbuster has Blu-Ray now, as does zip.ca.

We have a few movies on Blu-Ray if you want to borrow them. The Fall is gorgeous on Blu-Ray. I haven't watched Persepolis or Chronos yet.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

My local DVD place also stock Blu-Ray, but usually only one of each title. It's nice and independent, and doesn't have the (problematic, in my opinion) habit of sometimes asking for Blockbuster-specific cuts of films.

I bet The Fall is gorgeous on Blu-Ray. I was a bit disappointed by the overall story, but, yah, gorgeous film.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Does Blockbuster Canada get involved with asking for special cuts of films? I was under the impression that Blockbuster U.S. did that but not Canada. (I could be totally wrong about that though -- I do remember that when the U.S. company was refusing to carry certain movies at all that the Canadian chain carried them, though.) I keep wanting to patronize the little independent video store at the end of our street instead of Blockbuster, but the reality is that every time I've gone in there, they haven't had anything I wanted to rent, either because they didn't carry it at all (they're tiny) or because their only copy was out. :/ I tend to do most of my "renting" through zip.ca as a result.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

My neighborhood video store has a pretty good selection and a great TV-season DVD rental policy: ten or twelve bucks for the week, depending on the number of disks involved.

Rogers the last time I rented a TV season from them priced each disk as a full movie.

[professor-booty.livejournal.com]

Not every film benefits equally from the higher resolution. Many older movies are always going to be grainy, because of the original film stock. But I would definitely recommend Blade Runner. And the two Kubrick movies I have (2001 and The Shining) also look amazing. So much detail!

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's fascinating how much difference there is between film stocks. One of the films I picked up is Bram Stoker's Dracula, which I enjoyed at the time, and it's fascinating how grainy the film stock looks.

[the-other-j.livejournal.com]

I recall being in a rental place once, and overhearing an angry customer complaining to the clerk because got home and discovered that the movie he had rented was letterboxed. He was livid, demanding his money back, declaring that it was a form of censorship that the movie did not occupy the entire screen of his television.

Probably an extreme case, but if the manufacturer gets enough letters from their customers complaining about the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, or people returning the product because it's "broken", I can see why they'd make that stretch feature the default. People smart enough to understand aspect ratio will take the time to figure out how to disable it, and the company doesn't have to deal with the angry clueless herd.

Angry Clueless Herd

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

I'm starting a band with that name.