Best Blu Ray Discs About?

[Anonymous]

Hi

Cars is absolutely brilliant on BluRay, as is Black Hawk Down, Apocalypto, Batman Begins and Band of Brothers. Ratatouille, I Am Legend, Hancock, We Were Soldiers and Rambo are also good.

Can't wait for Lord of The Rings Trilogy, Saving Private Ryan and Brotherhood to come out on BluRay.

A few of the older films I wouldn't recommend are The Getaway, Bullit, and the old Rambo films as the sound was very poor. The pictures were fab though. I suppose with an old film the audio technology was way behind the film technology at time so it's understandable.

 

[Tom Moreno]

paulusmasonus:
Hi

Cars is absolutely brilliant on BluRay, as is Black Hawk Down, Apocalypto, Batman Begins and Band of Brothers. Ratatouille, I Am Legend, Hancock, We Were Soldiers and Rambo are also good.

Can't wait for Lord of The Rings Trilogy, Saving Private Ryan and Brotherhood to come out on BluRay.

A few of the older films I wouldn't recommend are The Getaway, Bullit, and the old Rambo films as the sound was very poor. The pictures were fab though. I suppose with an old film the audio technology was way behind the film technology at time so it's understandable.

You're absolutely correct about the sound. Older films have been filmed on 35mm film for quite some time so, with a bit of care and restoration, lots of resolution is there to be gotten out of the prints. However with regards to audio, films made before the early 90s when "Dolby Stereo Digital" first brought 5.1 channels to the cinema often present a great challenge in trying to resource the original mag reels to attempt to "open" the mix up to more channels. What I find more often than not with these films is that it's easiest to get hold of the score's original reels and so they tend to open up the score to 5.1 or 7.1 for re-release but the rest of the mix tends to be quite static with occasional pans.

I watched through quite a few of the Connery Bond BDs recently and, while an excellent job of getting the best out of the mix as possible was done, when you pay attention to what is happening in the sound field you can hear some of the tricks being employed to extend what was originally a mono mix to 5.1.

Still BD remains the best way to enjoy the film, and if you are a true purist the only way to watch it really is to select the mono/stereo original mix that's often included on older films.

 

[ElectroMan]

paulusmasonus:
A few of the older films I wouldn't recommend are The Getaway, Bullit, and the old Rambo films as the sound was very poor. The pictures were fab though. I suppose with an old film the audio technology was way behind the film technology at time so it's understandable.

Unless, of course, you want to watch really good films (the first two you mention, at least)!