The first Blu Ray movie that I watched was House of Flying Daggers and I was underwhelmed by the the picture quality. Pirates at World's End- again, I didn't think it was all that good. The animated stuff looks great, Cars, The Ant Bully, etc...
I watched Con Air and I was blown away. It is drop dead gorgeous.
yeah...but it's still Con Air.
I seem to remember liking Con Air a lot, but I was also, oh, 18.
Some Blu Rays are mastered better than others. The cartoons tend to have a digital source, whereas Flying Daggers and POTC are most likely film based - meaning encoding errors are prone to pop up, especially if the movie is a "legacy" film (mastered into digital without the forethought of a later high def version). I have only heard good things about the POTC discs, though.
Make sure that your Blu Ray player is set to output in either 720p, 1080i, or 1080p - whatever your TV's max resolution is and make sure that it isn't downconverting the movie into 480p or anything.
Also make sure (I'm sure this is the case) that you have it hooked up with at least component (HDMI even better) cables. (This last bit is pretty remedial, and I apologize for that, but you never know).
The bottom line is that some discs are just mastered better than others. Why they spent so much time on the dreck that is Con Air and (apparently) so little time on the visual jewel that is Flying Daggers, is a mystery to me.
I not so secretly enjoy Con Air. I bought POTC World's End because I read how good the picture quality was in 1 and 2. The only part in World's End that I think looks good is the good bye scene on the beach.
An interesting article to google is about The 5th Element. The first high def release was atrocious, the second much better. I can't remember if it was HD DVD or Blu Ray.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind also looked pretty darned good. The picture isn't smooth as glass but overall it looked great. The last time I watched it on DVD it looked awful.
Imho Ratatouille still has the best PQ in 1080p of anything on Blu-ray, there have been quite a few others that are extremely good in both animation and movies.
As a side note Iron Man comes to Blu-ray on Sept 30, I'm really looking forward to this one.
Lampshade,
Pirates at World's End is supposed to be one of the best blu-ray's for picture quality out there. I haven't seen the blu-ray but I do have Pirates the Black Pearl and it is definitely the best blu-ray that I have seen that isn't animated. From reviews that I have read all three Pirates movies are supposed to have the same top notch picture quality. Is your display calibrated with a test disc of some sort? Hopefully you are not using torch mode (or dynamic).
House of Flying Daggers is supposed to be one of the worst for picture quality though.
- Nick
I've gotten into the habit of reading Kris Deering's movie reviews before I buy any. He's been spot on with every one so far.
http://www.hometheatermag.com/moviereviews/
My display is calibrated and looks great. Just for for fun, if you all can suffer through the two movies can you report back on your findings. Netflix carries both in Blu Ray format.
I have them all on BR. Other than just thinking part III sucked, I didn't notice any difference in video or sound quality between the three (but wasn't trying too hard to evaluate them either). None were earth shattering, but on par with the rest of the NON-reference level disks I have. I also have a couple BR disks that don't look any better than the SD version, but they do sound better so they weren't a total waste of money.