Dynamic Range of HDX movies?

[Douglas]

After viewing several HDX titles I can see that the dynamic range has been compressed. The format seems to favor increased contrast over a larger color gamut.

I presume this is a bandwidth issue, and probably is only important to people that have the proper equipment, and come from a Blue Ray reference point of expecting the best possible film presentation.

My thoughts are maybe Vudu needs a fourth format, that adhears to the statement, "The best sight and sound possible". Quite frankly, since I have to wait four hours to view the film, what do I care if it takes 6 hours or 12 hours. Charge me more, if the option is to by the blue ray disk, or rent it for $8.00 it is still a bargain.

What are your thoughts and observations on HDX?

Douglas

[Patrick]

Douglas,

With what titles in particular are you seeing an issue?

[HeadHodge]

Originally Posted by Douglas

Quite frankly, since I have to wait four hours to view the film, what do I care if it takes 6 hours or 12 hours. Charge me more, if the option is to by the blue ray disk, or rent it for $8.00 it is still a bargain.

Right On!! You are preaching to my choir!!!!

[Citizen Erased]

$8.00 may be a bargain compared to $30/$35 for a blu-ray disc (okay, $20/$25 on amazon) but it's not going to work with rental stores offering discs for $4/$5 with longer than 24 hour rental periods. Not to mention netflix.

Renal prices ultimately need to come down and the 48 viewing window offered by most of the indies needs to be the standard for all rentals.

Anyway, as for the dynamic range compression, I can't see any evidence of this on my setup. What equipment are you using?

[Rusdude]

Aside from putting an HD codec in HDX movies, the next logical step would be to be able to access a full Blu-Ray disc (extras and all) though a VUDU box. But given how most services are still content with 720p, I doubt we'll see that in a near future.

[Douglas]

Patrick,

As to what movies to compare dynamic range between Bluray and HDX, well really any.

Try Gigi, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Once Upon a Time in the West, Tin Cup, Field of Dreams. These are all Bluray disks that I have compared.

Overall, it appears on both luminance and chrominance. Reds are pushed, and shadows are black instead of graduated. I use a Sony Bl-500 with HDMI, and a Sony XBR5 and the same model cable of HDMI for Vudu.

I have tried tweaking the input settings as that XBR model allows, but the signals are defiantly different and probably are a result of encoding. I have never found any information on how Vudu obtains their HDX format, whether that is an internal operation or one that comes from the studios.

As always there are bad transfers from film to Bluray, but that is not what I am referring to here. I am just comparing Bluray to HDX.

[NA9D]

Wow! I think that's a record time between a question posed by a Vudu person (who is no longer with Vudu) and the answer back from the customer - Seven months. That's pretty good!

As for the problems you see - I guess you can see and hear things better than I can. I'm not worthy to comment!

The audio quality on the Vudu is pretty much limited by the fact that the Broadcom chipset can only support an output of DD5.1. It makes no sense to send down a higher quality audio stream as the chipset can't support it.

[chris_b]

Originally Posted by Citizen Erased

$8.00 may be a bargain compared to $30/$35 for a blu-ray disc (okay, $20/$25 on amazon) but it's not going to work with rental stores offering discs for $4/$5 with longer than 24 hour rental periods. Not to mention netflix.

Renal prices ultimately need to come down and the 48 viewing window offered by most of the indies needs to be the standard for all rentals.

Anyway, as for the dynamic range compression, I can't see any evidence of this on my setup. What equipment are you using?

Just what I was going to chime in with untill I saw this. I see a lot of comments with charge more its still a bargan..I guess you guys go to the car lots and say , 'heck 35k for this car? charge me 45K its still a bargan to me!'

I'm definitely not rich and 5.99 is still a bit high for a rental in my eyes...(should be like 4.99 or so) So I don't rent nearly as much as I would like to on vudu. If prices jumped to 8.00 per rental per 24hr period, it makes no sense for me to keep renting. Ill stick with SD quality and rent from the local store for a buck or two. A good movie is a good movie, and HD quality isn't going to make a crap movie any better. 8.00 is almost a 1/2 tank of gas in my VW. I like the idea of $5 HD rentals for a 24hr period.

I think their codec is great from the stuff I have watched and don't see an issue with the dynamic range. Some things can look contrasty but to me that could be an issue with the movie itself with the TV settings etc..certainly not more contrasty than some things I've seen on broadcast TV lately.