'Happy Feet' - High-Def Digest Review

[jed]

Peter's review of 'Happy Feet' on Blu-ray is up. Boasting reference quality video, this 5-star video transfer is sure to leave Blu-ray fans dancing. Unfortunately, the included Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround EX track, while also quite good, is a step down on this Blu-ray edition when compared to its HD DVD counterpart's Dolby TrueHD track. Of course, such differences will only be obvious to hard core audiophiles, so unless you count yourself as one of this, this one's still a must-own.

Full review here:
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/happyfeet.html

[illegalprelude]

oohh. Cant wait for this one. It seemed like a great movie as I like animated flicks and why not for some reference material

[Drunkin-Monkey]

I can't believe this movie is already coming out on DVD/Blu-Ray. It's still in theaters here.

[D3lta]

Damn Warner... give us TrueHD... this is annoying!

[hstewarth]

This movie should be my 50th Blu-ray. I am surprise it got a 5 star video rating - its only BD25. I wonder if its going to be like Departed in sales compared to HD DVD.

[BostonMA]

Originally Posted by hstewarth

This movie should be my 50th Blu-ray. I am surprise it got a 5 star video rating - its only BD25. I wonder if its going to be like Departed in sales compared to HD DVD.

if the disc is 25 gb instead of 50 gb, it should have the best PQ possible. the less gigabytes on a disc, the more room for space and great PQ. all a 50 gb disc is is a lot of extras and a disc that was harder to make a good PQ.

[BostonMA]

Originally Posted by Drunkin-Monkey

I can't believe this movie is already coming out on DVD/Blu-Ray. It's still in theaters here.

where the hell do u live?? is it an encore experience or something?

i live in boston and the departed came back a week before its release for an encore because of how good i did. idk if the departed was encore everwhere or just the boston area because of the films heavy setting of it.

[BostonMA]

i'm not big in these movies anymore but since most of the animated high def releases have gotten amazing PQ reviews, i decided that i was going to buy one hd movie from the high def genre and one animal documentary or discovery or national geographic hd movie for the genre as well. i herd good things about open season and its PQ but this movie was the one i completley decided to buy for the genre. and with this site and dvdtown saying that the PQ is perfect, i'm planning on picking this up with high confidence.

[hstewarth]

Originally Posted by BostonMA

if the disc is 25 gb instead of 50 gb, it should have the best PQ possible. the less gigabytes on a disc, the more room for space and great PQ. all a 50 gb disc is is a lot of extras and a disc that was harder to make a good PQ.

That might depend on the movie, if it is a short movie than with full audio and video settings on it could fit on 25G. But with longer ones, I believe they need 50G.

I just reading a lot that most people find that 50G disks are better quality than 25G disks in general. Eragon is a 25G and I thought the quality was very good.

[illegalprelude]

Originally Posted by BostonMA

where the hell do u live?? is it an encore experience or something?

i live in boston and the departed came back a week before its release for an encore because of how good i did. idk if the departed was encore everwhere or just the boston area because of the films heavy setting of it.

we also got an encore but in bigger cities is where this happens and hell, you can still watch Casino Royale here and there in LA

[madFloyd]

Peter,

Can you please tell us the bit rate of the DD track? I prefer BD over HD DVD because of the audio. Let me explain:

When one doesn't have HDMI inputs on their receiver and must use digital outputs, there is a significant difference between formats.

HD-DVD cannot output DD with bitrates higher than 448k and must ues DD+, which is convereted on the fly in the Toshiba player at the cost of delayed audio. BD players can output DD at 640k for example (without any delay) and sounds great. Unfortunately not all DD tracks on Bluray titles are encoded at 640k.

I would like to know what the DD bit rate is on BD titles.

Thanks!

[LembasBread]

Originally Posted by Delta_FX

Damn Warner... give us TrueHD... this is annoying!

Yet another example of Warner giving BD the finger. And they continue to call themselves neutral. Please, they're as much neutral as I am the queen of England.

[dkny75]

Originally Posted by madFloyd

Peter,

Can you please tell us the bit rate of the DD track? I prefer BD over HD DVD because of the audio. Let me explain:

When one doesn't have HDMI inputs on their receiver and must use digital outputs, there is a significant difference between formats.

HD-DVD cannot output DD with bitrates higher than 448k and must ues DD+, which is convereted on the fly in the Toshiba player at the cost of delayed audio. BD players can output DD at 640k for example (without any delay) and sounds great. Unfortunately not all DD tracks on Bluray titles are encoded at 640k.

I would like to know what the DD bit rate is on BD titles.

Thanks!

Don't mean to take this off topic but where did you read that? The DD+ on HD DVD is outputed at 640k and is equillilent to regular DD on BD at 640k. That being said though, Warner really should have put some sort of lossless track on this title if they did so with the HD DVD version. Since they did that with the Departed, I can't see why they wouldn't do so on Happy Feet. It doesn't make any sense.

[krammer]

Obviously time was an issue for Warner to get an LPCM track ready for the BD to be released the same time as the HD DVD.

Happy Feet on BD & HD DVD (DD+) are both 640kbps

I'm gonna go Blu on this one anyway. Tired of HD DVD glitches.

[hstewarth]

I went by Bestbuy today and the Blu-ray version of Happy Feet was on the cover of this weeks ad. HD DVD was included in smaller section on Page 8. Blu-ray was $5 cheaper also.