HD’s making me blind as a bat

Got The Dark Knight on Blu-ray on Monday.  I was slightly disappointed by the picture quality, with certain scenes receiving extra edge enhancement/sharpening and some scenes which would have benefited from such processing, were a blurry mess.  That said, those faults don’t spoil what is a fantastic film with great characters and set pieces.  Heck, they even saw fit to throw in the scenes shot in IMAX as part of the main feature too.  I kinda wish the entire movie was shot in IMAX now because the difference in picture quality is astounding due to the resolution (70mm vs 35mm).  The extras are also good, if few in number, with a psychology of Batman feature really standing out.

Also picked up Kill Bill volumes 1 and 2 on Blu-ray as part of an HMV offer.  Not such a great picture here though it could be argued that it’s down to Tarantino’s visual style.  Much better than the DVDs which never upscaled well on my Samsung DVD player.  Oh, and where’s my Pulp Fiction in HD??  Get it out, Miramax!

All of these are being run through my new Sony 32 inch 1080p screen, which was meant to be a Chrimbo present for my parents.  I saw it on sale in Debenhams with a free 5 year warranty and duly snapped it up.  My folks have been harping on about moving over to an HD set for the last year or so and since they watch so much TV, I figured this would be an ideal pressie.  So, I get it into my Yaris (a highly comical feat) and get it home to them.  I present it to them with a huge grin on my face and they give you that ‘thank you, but no thank you’ look.  They say that they don’t need such an advanced HDTV and suggest I take it and they have my old Samsung HDTV.  I was between minds whether to actually take the Sony or not because I was more than happy with my Samsung, and I already have a helluva lot of AV equipment hooked up to it.  So, I begrudgingly took the Sony and began setting it up.  Wowoweewow, the picture quality is a huge step up from the Samsung.  There’s no dead pixels whereas there were 3 on the Samsung, and the contrast ratio is much higher at 30,000 : 1 compared to 8,000 : 1.  I can’t say I notice a significant difference between a 720p picture and a 1080p one, but then I can’t really make a true side by side comparison.  The features are also much better than the Samsung, with the ability to edit out unused connections like RGB scart and composite, allowing for cycling through active connections to be much faster.

I knew I should have never gone with Samsung!

Feeling Blu

Joined the world of Bluray recently after Asda started stocking the fantastic Sony S350 Bluray player for £171 (thanks to Mike for mentioning it).  Included in the box is a retail boxed version of Hancock, Wall-e, and Mama Mia as well a registration CD which further nets you Casino Royale and Batman Begins too.  It’s capable of a full 1080p picture for both Bluray and upscaling DVDs, which it does a great job of processing. I’ve also managed to make it multiregion for DVDs using a One4All universal remote control from Argos, which I promptly returned afterwards…  I’m gonna pop into town after work and pick up The Dark Knight and Iron Man to really put it through its paces.

I still have my HD-DVD drive for my Xbox 360, but it churns out so much noise that it becomes distracting at times.  Great at the time but now that there is a winner from the format war, the consumer is reaping the rewards because the average price of a Bluray disc is around the £15 mark online, only £2 – £3 more than the retail price for a new DVD these days!

Welcome to the next gen

So, I finally got my 360 Elite and boy is it one hefty piece of kit.

I went to Gamestation on Friday to pick up my bundle of pre-orders. I arrive at the store to find a queue of maybe 10 or so people in front of me including one girl, though Khang believes it’s more likely that she was in the queue for her other half. I ran downstairs beating the crowd and was the second person to be served.

I walked away with an Elite, a play and charge kit (in black), Bioshock limited edition, Bioshock collector’s edition, Lost Planet, and the 360 HD-DVD drive. Both copies of Bioshock were more or less free; I traded the free copy of Blue Dragon in immediately against a copy of Bioshock limited edition and the guy bagged it up. Due to my rather long list of purchases and returned deposits, the guy decided to put the trade in transaction through at the end. He decided to ask me again which version of Bioshock I wanted and I asked for the collector’s edition instead so he bags that up for me. I leave Gamestation and check my receipts and bags moments later to find that I’d only been charged £7.99 for one copy of Bioshock. I should’ve also been charged £9.99 but because the guy thought I’d paid £2 for a deposit (which I didn’t), I received a further discount! If anybody wants a collectors edition or limited edition Bioshock, get in touch and we’ll work out a deal.

I’m quite surprised by how loud the fans are on the 360. They’re not that much of a problem since I’m used to the whir of my hard-disks but it could be a touch quieter still. I am very impressed by Xbox Live; the signup process was very simple (unlike the original Xbox Live) and connectivity is faultless. The joypad is also great with the ability to switch the console on remotely.

So far, I’ve played Ridge Racer 6, Dead Rising, Bioshock (demo), and Gears of War. Ridge Racer 6 left me a little uninspired but it will improve once I unlock more cars and higher engine classes. Dead Rising is fantastic despite a few shortcomings. It is Shenmue meets Resident Evil and it’s an incredible feat for Capcom to have created an entire world which lives and breathes. Some missions are hair pullingly tough and require several attempts whereas some are possibly too easy. The boss battles are very creepy, especially Adam the clown with his high pitched helium voice. I’m a little disappointed that you can only have one save file which means you have to start from scratch again if you want to try something different in the game. Gears of War is brilliant. I love the look of the game and it makes me wonder why all 360 games can’t look this good, especially the ones which look marginally better than the best Xbox games. The combat system is also novel as is the emphasis on evasion. I regret not getting the collector’s edition of this game. The Bioshock demo looks amazing and is very atmospheric. The plasmids and their versatility is very well implemented. Definitely a cracking title but I found it too creepy – I can handle creepy games so long as they’re not of the FPS variety.

The HD-DVD drive is very good and the two movies I’ve tested look great. The amount of detail visible is insane. It’s a great add-on considering it can bought for less than 100 squids and even if it becomes defunct, there’s enough new and released discs available that people will keep it going much like how laser-disc and Betamax still have their supporters even until now.

It’s great to get back into gaming, really it is.