Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler M:I:III, EP600, HD disc formats

I don't remember where it was mentioned, but someone was saying that Mission: Impossible III had disappointing, forgettable audio. I don't know if that's just the DVD release or not, but I re-watched the HD DVD version now that I have the EP600, and I have to say it was a lot of fun. Maybe I'm just easily impressed. I thought they did a pretty decent job, and the LFE was definitely there.

Speaking of the EP600, I played around with placement today. I did the sub crawl and found that moving it just a few feet down the same wall gave much more satisfying results. It's pretty cool that at the same SPL I'm getting so much more impact.

Also, generally speaking, I'm happy with the improvement in sound quality that the high-definition formats bring. Both the video and audio seem like the step forward that they should be. I find myself more drawn in than on any DVDs I own. It's getting harder and harder to keep watching DVDs. It's too bad the format war had to happen.

It's fun to ride this wave, even if it ultimately ends up crashing against broad consumer disinterest.

Many of my friends and I are *techies* and early adopters, especially in the computer industry. All of us agree the replacements for DVD are just not worth it right now. They absolutely need to be the same price as DVD's are (if not lower). One of my friends had the HD DVD player on his 360 but ended up selling it because it wasn't worth it to him.

My HDTV is an older 50inch Samsung DLP. I watched the HD version of V for Vendetta on it and it didn't look much different then the DVD version of it. So I'm guessing it's either some titles don't take advantage of the higher resolution or you need to have a brand new, high end 1080p TV to notice the difference.

I had V for Vendetta on HD DVD (until I gave it to my sister), and it definitely seemed better than DVD on my TV. I would say that in most setups it would be hard to tell a difference, though. I'm surprised it wasn't a pronounced difference on a 50". The biggest advantage to HD has to be on front projectors, though. I plan to change to a front projector (at least, make it my main movie/game system) in around 4 years. Maybe sooner. It depends on how fast I can save up for the basement overhaul. I may want to design the room around front projection from the start. But yeah, with a 60" TV I definitely prefer to have HD versions of movies, but I think it will be that much cooler on something over 100".

I know I don't want downloadable movies to overtake discs. Not at this point. They'll cheap out on bitrate, on special features, and they'll charge just as much as a disc, despite only paying for bandwidth, not packaging. Plus, you won't be able to let your friends borrow your movies. So while I'm not a fan of the format war, I'd much rather take my chances with a disc than hold out for downloads.

Oh, man, by the time you completed your first high-definition movie download, the standard would be ultra high-definition.