'Chronos' - High-Def Digest Review

[jed]

We just posted Peter's Blu-ray review of the IMAX classic 'Chronos,' and Blu-ray supporters will be happy to see that distributor Koch Releasing has given this one an overhaul since its HD DVD release late last year, with both the video and the audio getting a welcome boost.


Full review here:
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/chronos.htm

[Paul Cordingley]

"there is a short series of images of Egyptian statues that suddenly appear marred by splotches and the like"

Again (as has been mentioned in the discussion of the HD DVD review) these "splotches" are in fact birds. I can't see how you can't tell that - it's quite obvious on a large display.

[Gandolf]

Originally Posted by Paul Cordingley

"there is a short series of images of Egyptian statues that suddenly appear marred by splotches and the like"

Again (as has been mentioned in the discussion of the HD DVD review) these "splotches" are in fact birds. I can't see how you can't tell that - it's quite obvious on a large display.

Plus the commentary says so. I mean if you turn on the commentary.

[Josh Z]

I have a couple of corrections for the video portion of the review.

The movie wasn't "remastered in 1080p" at all. The HD DVD is mislabeled as 1080i due to a misunderstanding of the terminology by the head of R&B Films. The data on disc is encoded in 1080p24 format with 2:3 sequence headers for decoding to 1080i, just like every single other film-based HD DVD on the market. The player can read the headers and decode to 1080i, or (when the feature is available) can ignore the headers and output 1080p24. Just like every other release from the major studios. The R&B rep nonetheless insists that the case should be labeled 1080i, which misleadingly implies that the content is encoded as interlaced fields, which it is not. He has had this explained numerous times, but refuses to budge on the issue.

The Blu-ray disc is the exact same master, just without the 2:3 sequence headers (because Blu-ray doesn't require them), and so despite the fact that the data is otherwise exactly the same as the HD DVD, R&B feels that only the Blu-ray can be labelled 1080p while the HD DVD must be labeled 1080i.

The review says, "According to the disc notes, the company went back to the original 65mm film elements for a telecine supervised by director Ron Fricke himself." The disc notes included with the HD DVD state the exact same thing. This is in reference to the HD master that both discs come from, not the Blu-ray edition specifically. It's the same master on both formats. R&B is a small operation and can't afford to strike two separate HD masters when (at this point) they're not going to break even on either format.

Any differences in picture quality noted in the review can be chalked up to the playback hardware or to placebo effect.

[Grubert]

Originally Posted by Josh Z

The Blu-ray disc is the exact same master, just without the 2:3 sequence headers (because Blu-ray doesn't require them), and so despite the fact that the data is otherwise exactly the same as the HD DVD, R&B feels that only the Blu-ray can be labelled 1080p while the HD DVD must be labeled 1080i.

But the encode may be different due to the larger bandwidth of Blu-ray.

[Josh Z]

Originally Posted by Grubert

But the encode may be different due to the larger bandwidth of Blu-ray.

The larger bandwidth was used to squeeze in a new DTS-HD MA track. I doubt they touched the video at all. The HD DVD didn't suffer from any visible compression artifacts, and so there was little reason to justify the expense of a new encode.

Besides which, my point was that citing the Blu-ray as an all-new 1080p master is incorrect.

[whitesanjuro]

Unfortunately, as of this writing, current Blu-ray hardware is unable to decode DTS HD to its fullest, so I was relegated to enjoying the track's 1.5mpbs "core" DTS track instead.

I don't understand the bit about no hardware being able to playback the DTS HD stream - the PS3 can transcode the DTS HD stream to multichannel PCM.

[Josh Z]

Originally Posted by whitesanjuro

I don't understand the bit about no hardware being able to playback the DTS HD stream - the PS3 can transcode the DTS HD stream to multichannel PCM.

It doesn't decode the Master Audio lossless extension, just the main DTS core.