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Quintus

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2001: A Space Odyssey on Blu Ray just blew my mind. It looks bloody amazing! The opening shots of the sunrise in the Dawn of Man segment are stunningly vivid. Damn!

I haven't watched it yet, but it's on my shelf. After seeing what Blu could do for CE3K compared to the DVD release, I have high expectations for 2001.

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CE3K is sitting on my shelf waiting for the right moment. This week I've gone a little Blu-Ray crazy as I've bought all 13 Bond movies that are available in Blu! Here's my complete Blu library so far:

Dr No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball

Live and Let Die

The Man With the Golden Gun

Moonraker

For Your Eyes Only

Licence to Kill

The World is Not Enough

Die Another Day

Casino Royale

Quantum of Solace

CE3K Ultimate Edition

The Brothers Grimm

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Total Recall

Usual Suspects

Nature's Most Amazing Moments (gotta love David Attenborough!)

This Is It (gotta love MJ too!)

2001: A Space Odyssey

Dark City

Pan's Labyrinth

Patton

District 9

Robocop

Die Hard Collection

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Ultimate Edition)

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Ultimate Edition)

The Prisoner (complete '60s series)

The really scary thing is that I've only had the Blu Ray player for 2 weeks! Aaaaargh! Somebody stop me!

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Bond on Blu isn't something I'm interested in investing in at the moment. They haven't been selling well, no wonder at the prices they're charging. I'll probably just buy a select few of them separately, in other words, just Goldeneye.

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Close Encounters does not look any better on blu as it did on dvd. I was very disappointed.

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Yeah I saw that going cheap online. I was suspicious of its low price enough to give it a miss.

Watched The Thing the other night. Pic always looked good anyway on DVD, so the benefit of BR wasn't especially amazing, the interior sets and photography remain as stunning as the they did in '82, thick with atmosphere throughout. A real classic movie.

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Yeah I saw that going cheap online. I was suspicious of its low price enough to give it a miss.

Don't be, it's great and it has all three versions on one disc. It's cheap undoubtedly because it's an older title (released 2007).

I disagree with Joe, CE3K looks beautiful. It's not perfect due to the print and the age, but it looks far better than on the DVD I have. The colours alone are incredible.

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Close Encounters does not look any better on blu as it did on dvd. I was very disappointed.

Contrast seemed better, I remember the DVD often looking very grayish because of all the effects layering going on. Plus resolution helps a lot with all those night skies,.

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Bond on Blu isn't something I'm interested in investing in at the moment. They haven't been selling well, no wonder at the prices they're charging. I'll probably just buy a select few of them separately, in other words, just Goldeneye.

If you don't mind dropping a small fortune in one go it's worth investing in the 10-disc set. I paid $130 for a sealed copy from Amazon Marketplace. It's in pristine condition and contains 4 Connerys, 3 Moores, 2 Brosnans and Quantum of Solace. That's just $13 per movie which is a bloody amazing price considering how stunningly good they look on Blu. Plus they have all the special features the 2-disc DVD sets had including those wonderful Patrick MacNee narrated documentaries. Great stuff.

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So far, I've only bought FYEO and CR on Blu-ray and I'm very satisfied with both. The terrific Lowry picture remastering job which already looked killer on the DVD now looks even better while CR boasts one of the best picture transfers I've ever seen, it's really flawless (I've got the Deluxe Edition). :P

My last Blu-ray buy was Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and I'm also very happy with that one, the picture looks great.

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Close Encounters does not look any better on blu as it did on dvd. I was very disappointed.

The DVD doesn't look great either. Maybe it has something to do with the original film. Spielberg might have used bad film stock or the soft sharpness is 'intended'. It's either this or Spielberg doesn't want his old films to be 'restored'. I mean, Jaws doesn't look super either.

Alex

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I don't really see anything wrong with the Jaws DVD (the sound is another matter).

I think there's a certain disconnect with BD, where it's this shiny new thing where everything is supposed to look pristine, but it won't, because it's only ever going to look as good as its source material, in this case as you say Alex, whatever film stock was used and how it was used.

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The DVD doesn't look great either. Maybe it has something to do with the original film. Spielberg might have used bad film stock or the soft sharpness is 'intended'.

According to the documentary stuff on the DVD, there was quite a lot of contrast and blackness to the excessive layering of effects. And that was noticeable on the DVD. As I said, I didn't notice the same problems on the Blu release. That actually did look really good when I watched it.

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The DVD doesn't look great either. Maybe it has something to do with the original film. Spielberg might have used bad film stock or the soft sharpness is 'intended'.

According to the documentary stuff on the DVD, there was quite a lot of contrast and blackness to the excessive layering of effects. And that was noticeable on the DVD. As I said, I didn't notice the same problems on the Blu release. That actually did look really good when I watched it.

Well, I was referring to the film in general and not just the scenes with SFX.

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Resolution at least helps against pixelled-ness when you have a large screen. Some (mostly) older movies don't gain much beyond that. I thought CE3K, considering its moderate age, looked fine, and in any case better than the DVD (which looked ok).

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So far the only Blu Ray I haven't been impressed with was Total Recall. I only watched the first 5 minutes and was shocked how grainy and degraded the transfer looked. It surprised me as I'd rather naively assumed that all Blu Ray releases would be remastered before being upgraded. Oh well. Total Recall was the most expensive film ever made when it first came out (I remember it was the first film to reach the $70 million mark) so surely it looked better than that on it's first release. Last night I watched Dr No (1962) and it absolutely blew me away with it's brightness and clarity. Previous versions of Dr No have had that slightly soft, brownish tint of an older film, but it looks completely modern now. The beach scenes with Ursula Andress are striking, you can see the textures in the grains of sand! Amazing! If they can achieve that with a 1962 film it's a bit of a shame when Total Recall can't be given similar treatment. I can't imagine that the original print of TR is in anything like as bad shape as the original print of Dr No before the Lowry team cleaned it up.

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There were a few so far I haven't been overly impressed with. Most recently, Twelve Monkeys. Either the original film material is in rather poor shape, or it is indeed the same average transfer they used for the DVD. Still, while the DVD looked bad, the Blu looks quite ok. Like an average quality (but unscratched, which is a rare thing in theatres here) print in an average theatre.

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Close Encounters does not look any better on blu as it did on dvd. I was very disappointed.

The DVD doesn't look great either. Maybe it has something to do with the original film. Spielberg might have used bad film stock or the soft sharpness is 'intended'. It's either this or Spielberg doesn't want his old films to be 'restored'. I mean, Jaws doesn't look super either.

Alex

Jaws looks great, looks great on my tv anyways. There is nothing wrong with Jaws, course Jaws is not available on blu. There is nothing wrong with the look of Close Encounters just that the blu doesn't look any better than the dvd and I've compared them back to bac,

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wrong question Alex, because blu looks exceptional on my tv most of the time. I can see the difference in most of my blu dvd's. Up looks glorious, it isn't nearly as good as on regular dvd.

My player up converts all the dvds I have so everything looks great, I just expected the blu to be exceptionally better than the dvd and it wasn't but I suspect the rerelease of the movie on blu will be.

As for the tv, its a sony bravia, 46 inch.

also CE3K is one of the 3 or 4 best shot films of SS's career.

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Maybe you still had an old TV so I thought I'd ask. Come to think of it, there isn't much difference between Deliverance on DVD and HD either. Deliverance also has a very soft image. I guess "soft" simply doesn't become much sharper in HD.

Alex

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Unfortunately, some of the studios are putting out DVD masters on their Blu-Rays. I've heard of some just being upconverted 480p transfers, so it seems to be the case of jumping on the bandwagon without realising why the bandwagon is popular.

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I do believe that there are alot of films out in blu that are being pulled for a better release in the future. I suspect they didn't use the best transfer possible.

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In most cases blu ray movies look vastly superior (not to mention: sound vastly superior) even on my small 22 inch TV with stereo speakers and a sub-woofer. There are only a couple of blu rays that were not worth the money: Terminator basically looks the same the DVD did, meaning: atrocious (but at least the sound is uncompressed and very good), and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is very grainy/noisy and full of artifacts and is thus not a pleasure to watch despite the higher resolution and additional detail. Exceptional blu rays I encountered were: I am Legend (spectacular picture quality), The curious case of Benjamin Button (likewise), and even some older discs like Speed and The Matrix (the latter looks amazing).

Although I originally did not want to do that, I now often upgrade to blu ray even though I own the DVD; I just can't stand standard definition and lossy sound any more...

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I'm with you paleo. When I spot a DVD I haven't watched in awhile, and go "Oh man I wanna watch that." I get it on Blu. If the price is reasonable of course. I've been selling a lot of my DVDs to Amazon and upgrading them to Blu.

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Although I originally did not want to do that, I now often upgrade to blu ray even though I own the DVD; I just can't stand standard definition and lossy sound any more...

I'm glad that I don't have the urge to replace my DVD collection. It would be fairly expensive and rather difficult since so many titles aren't available in HD. In fact, I still buy a lot of DVDs. They are cheap as dirt (if you have the patience to wait 6 months) and a good DVD transfer still manages to impress me.

Alex

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The only DVDs I still buy are older TV series (many of which were shot on degrading videotape) which have no higher definition to benefit from.

Red Dwarf, Yes Minister/Prime Minister, Blackadder, that sort of thing.

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Bond on Blu isn't something I'm interested in investing in at the moment. They haven't been selling well, no wonder at the prices they're charging. I'll probably just buy a select few of them separately, in other words, just Goldeneye.

Due to various sales and well timed Amazon gift certificates (earned by using an Amazon card) I've never paid more than $2.50 for a Bond film on Blu-ray, and I have them all, including Never Say Never Again.

Neil

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Bond on Blu isn't something I'm interested in investing in at the moment. They haven't been selling well, no wonder at the prices they're charging. I'll probably just buy a select few of them separately, in other words, just Goldeneye.

Due to various sales and well timed Amazon gift certificates (earned by using an Amazon card) I've never paid more than $2.50 for a Bond film on Blu-ray, and I have them all, including Never Say Never Again.

Neil

Nice!

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Although I originally did not want to do that, I now often upgrade to blu ray even though I own the DVD; I just can't stand standard definition and lossy sound any more...

I'm glad that I don't have the urge to replace my DVD collection. It would be fairly expensive and rather difficult since so many titles aren't available in HD. In fact, I still buy a lot of DVDs. They are cheap as dirt (if you have the patience to wait 6 months) and a good DVD transfer still manages to impress me.

Alex

Well, I'm certainly not upgrading my entire collection, but I basically stopped buying DVDs (other than old TV stuff that will never look better anyway and is unlikely to appear on Blu Ray in the foreseeable future). I upgrade only movies that really benefit form the format (i.e. ones full of beautiful landscapes, visual effects, an intense sound design etc.). I have no interest in upgrading movies I rarely watch anyway. For example, whenever I'm interested in watching something like The Gift (mediocre, visually not very exciting), the DVD is just fine.

By the way, it's often actually cheaper to buy the Blu Ray than the DVD version; I have never paid more than $20 for a feature movie (most of my blu rays, even of new releases, were between $9 and 15. Angels and Demons, featuring the extended and the theatrical versions, all the extras, and the theatrical version on DVD, was cheaper than buying the bare theatrical version on DVD, for example...

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Well they've already released the "Alien - Predator Total Destruction Collection" on DVD, but it's eight movies on only eight DVDs. So a BR equivalent of the Quadrilogy was inevitable.

If I gave a rat's bum about Blu-Ray, I would just wait for the inevitable box set that features both Ridley Scott's Alien prequel and Robert Rodriquez's Predators movie.

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I'm picky about what I buy on Blu, I reserve it for my absolute favorites. Right now all I have Blu is the new Star Trek and the complete Doctor Who specials collection.

I'm willing to double dip, but only, again, for my favorites (original series Trek movies, LotR eventually) or to replace REALLY old DVD releases (Patton, maybe Blazing Saddles).

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Anyone else dig the Blu-ray books? I don't even look through the books, but I like the packaging. Initially I didn't. I just wanted to keep all my BD packaging consistent, unlike my DVDs, which are all different forms of boxes and cases that fill the shelf ridiculously. Now I want more of the books.

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They are indeed really nice. I don't even know how many new Blus I got. My brother is continuously selling to Amazon and upgrading. I know I got The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile books. I looked at them for the first time earlier today, and I was impressed with the packaging.

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I'm picky about what I buy on Blu, I reserve it for my absolute favorites. Right now all I have Blu is the new Star Trek and the complete Doctor Who specials collection.

I'm willing to double dip, but only, again, for my favorites (original series Trek movies, LotR eventually) or to replace REALLY old DVD releases (Patton, maybe Blazing Saddles).

I'm trying to do the same, although with the prices sometimes not being much more than new DVDs, I buy a lot of newer films on BD. But yeah, it's generally my favourites (such as Trek), and the Pixar movies. I'll occasionally buy something if I don't have the DVD and it's a good price, but I still buy DVDs occasionally for movies I haven't seen when they get real cheap (I bought CLOVERFIELD for £3 the other week).

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I just picked up CE3K Blu-Ray at WalMart for $15, so when I find time to check it out I'll post my thoughts on the picture quality.

Also, yesterday Newbury Comics had a B1G1 free used bluray/dvd sale, so I got:

Godfather Trilogy for $25 ($8.33/movie)

X-Men Trilogy for $25 ($8.33/movie)

Watchmen - The Ultimate Cut for $10

Pan's Labyrinth for $7.50

Superbad for $7.50

Quantum Of Solace for $6

The Fugitive for $6

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I've been seeing Quantum of Solace on sale, but I kind of want to wait for a special edition like they did with Casino Royale. It seems prime for a double dip.

Today I got (500) Days of Summer for 12.99 at Target and Bonnie and Clyde book for 14.99.

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Cool Trent what'd you get?

I see your listening to The Toadies - love that album! I love "Hell Below / Stars Above" as well.

Oh yea, I forgot that I also just ordered Blade Runner from www.deepdiscount.com. It was $13.99 with free shipping

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I got the Batman 1989 book at Best Buy for like 22 bucks. I decided to pull the trigger on the book rather than the Anthology since they're releasing them all separate in a couple months.

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neither film is of much interest. I have no desire to watch SPR over and over, and I worry for those who do.

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neither film is of much interest. I have no desire to watch SPR over and over, and I worry for those who do.

That's what I thought, but these may be the first in a row of Spielberg releases hopefully.

I can't wait to watch Always in HD

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Cool Trent what'd you get?

I see your listening to The Toadies - love that album! I love "Hell Below / Stars Above" as well.

I got Valkyrie on dvd because I really wanted to see it. The other 9 are blus:

Live and Let Die

Thunderball

(500) Days of Summer

1408

Hart's War

Tears of the Sun

Live Free or Die Hard

The Day The Earth Stood Still

X-Men: The Last Stand

I spent $65. Newbury's first B1G1 sale was in December, I'm hoping they will have another sale in 2-3 months. I had been looking forward to this sale ever since the last one. Newbury Comics is the only store I go to for cds and movies.

Toadies are great! They are classic 90s grunge, which is probably my favorite genre.

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