Basterds looks ridiculous, great audio too.
Finally cracked my copy of Jingle All The Way. The extended cut includes a bunch of funny bits I’d never seen before. Great addition to the holiday collection.
AQ:09/10 - a good 90’s era DTS-HDMA mix with heavy LFE in some parts.
PQ:07/10 - Clean throughout, nothing mindblowing.
Hell yeah.
Inglourious Basterds and Up are both awesome movies with cream of the crop Blu-ray transfers.
Didn’t watch Terminator though, and didn’t buy the Blu-ray.
Terminator Salvation sucks. It may look pretty, but that story is total shit
how are the Terminator:tscc blu ray extras ?
better than the dvds ?
Anyone ever check gohastings.com, I shop there alot and alot of used shit is stupid cheap along with thing like buy 2 games get the 3rd for a buck. Used games are retard cheap too.
I have a Future Shop gift card that I want to use blu-rays. They’re having a sale and I want to get some movies. I’m thinking of getting Million Dollar Baby ($7), heard that was good. I ordered Up online, so I got that covered. What else should I get? How’s District 9 (probably won’t be cheap since it’s new)? I’m pretty much open to anything, though I like action movies, martial arts, and comedies.
Get D9 or Star Trek
There are some decent deals for Blu-ray Discs at Best Buy. Scooped up The Last Samurai for 10 bucks.
From Best Buy I picked up 28 Days Later, Fargo, the Truman show, Heat, and Blazing Saddles for $62. On amazon I got the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Die Hard, A History of Violence, Fight Club, and Raging Bull for $61:rock:
Digital projection is nice, but the screen itself can have imperfections that ruin the experience. My audio setup can’t compare to a theater’s, though.
On the other hand, I like being in the comfort of my own home, being able to control the movie’s progression, and being able to choose my company.
Nothing compares to the theatrical experience when the equipment is running properly and the people in charge are competent. That said, many theaters will (among other stupid things) intentionally run the picture dim, in order to save on bulb life.
That’s not true at all, considering how good home theater is these days (but then I remember you being a tech Luddite who thinks DVD is “good enough.” This may have changed in the last couple of months, though). You get the same uncompressed audio codecs in a smaller room with less distracting noise. In terms of video, you are sitting much closer to your smaller screen, so 1080p is functionally the same as a huge screen displaying 4K (or, worse, 2K) resolution. These days, Blu-ray is also capable of handling shifting aspect ratios for IMAX shots, and a firmware update will soon enable them to play 3D projections (which is the focus of CES this year).
I think the only real advantage theaters offer is that they show the movies sooner.
Assuming an appropriately high end home theater, I’d call the argument fair enough, save for what I’ve bolded. Not necessarily because I think it’s implausible, but because of how difficult it is to equate the effect of a cinematic-scale screen with just sitting close at home. Even if you were to work out the precise geometry of the screen and your sitting position, I’m not sure the effect is equitable.
It’s worth noting that my original “good enough” comment was not made in a vacuum. It was with respect to the tradeoffs between sticking with your original system and upgrading to new tech that, at the time, was still gaining steam–and with respect to the leap forward that the new tech represented, which, at the time, did not have the same magnitude of advantage over DVD that DVD had over VHS in its early days.
And bear in mind, I’m also a skeptic of digital photography. While it does offer some clear advantages to filmmakers, there are certain things about the look of real film, projected on a massive screen, that digital cannot replace. And I don’t think that can be reduced to the mere grousing of a “tech Luddite.”
I’d definitely say one of the biggest reasons I watch movies at the theater is to see it on a gigantic ass screen. Certain movies are just made for the big screen (Avatar comes to mind).
On the topic of Blu-ray. Does anyone else get a kick out of the ‘slogan’ at the end of the Blu-ray trailers?
“The best way to watch movies at home… Ever!”
Yeah. I guess the experience would not be exactly the same no matter what, but I would personally consider the home theater experience to be better. Even on my modest?but properly calibrated?set up, my friends and I can see a clear difference between upscaled DVD, 2K movie projection, and BD, and the BD always looks better. But I suppose if you’re going to compare the screen itself, home theater doesn’t have the cover-the-whole-wall effect. I’ll gladly that off to not have strangers in the room with me, though.
I guess the only time where a giant screen size does matter is with IMAX 8K, which looks stunning on a real IMAX screen (and not that IMAX Experience shit, which is just a regular screen). Most theatrical movies, even on IMAX screens, display at 4K, though. I remember I could see the pixels in Spider-Man 3 IMAX because of the gigantic screen size, and that shit bothered me. With BD at home, my screen is small enough that that doesn’t happen, even at 1080p.
I have a pretty big ass LED tv and just added 7.1 in my movie room…starting to like my home theater (for reasons mentioned by SP) way better than the stress of going to the movies
what the hell is the movies?
i gotta hurry an get my crib so i can blast my surround sound… oh an sopranos blu ray is crazy an band of brothers…my lord that shyt looks good an planet earth just looks beautiful…
I suppose that’s the boundary of my argument. The cinema experience is certainly a different one from the home experience, but that’s not necessarily to say it’s a better one. What makes it better or worse is ultimately an individual thing, and as you’ve pointed out, the home theater experience has plenty going for it. It’s cutting edge, whereas movie theaters are mostly operating on an increasingly obsolete business model.
(Some of them are coming around, though. They’re starting to host special events and depend slightly less on a steady diet of mostly awful feature films. Maybe chains are starting to recognize that movies are no longer the ubiquitous part of pop culture that they used to be.)
When I first heard about the IMAX Experience, I didn’t understand what people were talking about. I didn’t realize that some theater chains were basically lying through advertisement and charging the same money for inferior facilities. It’s one of the more underhanded scams the movie industry has pulled in a good long while. I’m fortunate to live not too far from a legit IMAX screen, though most of what they show on it is shit.
i got those as well
up is freakin beautiful…i mean damn they keep pushin the bar… story is cute
iglorious basterds is nice… love the movie (tarintino fan anyway)
terminator salvation…eh… its a dark toned movies thus you wont get all the perks u think.