The other day, while waiting for the lava lamps to warm up (before taking the pics for the panorama shot in AV system pics) I chucked in Godzilla for a look see again.....

Had forgotten what a difference the superbit releases make!!

Gorgeous colours and a generally sharper picture, Crouching Tiger is another great example showing off what the extra disc space can bring.....so.....

.....why haven't there been more releases.....????

Do the studios just think hdmi will do, and the new blue ray/high def discs will take over.....??

Does anybody else own any superbit flicks and know what I'm on about.......

Cheers,
Ali

I have about 4 of them and then all better than the normal ones.

I've only got Gladiator on SB, but even to this blind git, the difference is huge.

TECHNICALLY, as far as I can see, the new 4 disc special edition of Titanic is also effectively superbit, as all the extras are on seperate discs, the film is spread over 2 discs, and has DTS/DD.

...and it looks phenomenal (full bit rate too )

Check out Tears of the Sun Superbit!!!

I think its a really underated movie and has some stunning visuals!!!

Yes, MPEG2 encoded carefully gives some quite stunning results....

So why don't they make more discs.....???

Like everything else in this world, it's probably down to cost I guess....

AFAIK, there are a few superbit DVDs which did not improve on the original that much. Add this to the total lack of extra features and the vast majority of users who can't see the difference because they're using low quality DVD players/TVs and Superbits will remain niche market products.

Once Superbit get it into their thick heads that they should be doing 2-disc versions of everything so people get almost the same extras, then maybe they'll do well.

Personally, I asked them 4 years ago - and chased them since - when they would make an R2 version of Fifth Element and they simply refuse to bring is out in R2. They have it in R1, so we get left without. I hate having to swap regions on my DVD player and anyway it's wrong in principle.

Does anybody watch the extras more than once anyway? Some of the so called extras are a bit of a stretch and quite often just put trailers and web site stuff altogether in a handy package.LOTR extras were very good IMO saying that.
I would personally prefer a better picture/sound to lots of extras.

H

Here Here!

Or as Frank suggets, put them on another disc!!

.....keep chasing them Frank.

Cheers,
Ali

I think most folk just buy DVD's to play on there supermarket players.

Hence you don't see them in Tescos for sale.

They wouldn't know a superbit from a not so super one.

And of course, with HD on the way, who's to say BluRay or HD-DVD won't wipe the floor with any standard DVD offerings?

quote:

Originally posted by Frank Abela:
...when they would make an R2 version of Fifth Element and they simply refuse to bring is out in R2. They have it in R1, so we get left without.

I don't know why they bother - NTSC is low resolution compared to PAL anyway (barring refresh rate) so it's not like they'd notice the difference between NTSC Superbit and normal anyway.

A PAL non-superbit will probably still look better than an NTSC superbit anyway

This depends on the source material used to make the superbit discs. Do you remember Mobile fidelity sound labs?....They allegedly use audio master tapes/source rather than the copying masters to create the re-mastered discs.

We (who?)compared Fifth Element Supabit via DVI/HDMI with Stanard PAL, Standard NTSC versions and the Supabit NTSC version wiped the floor.

Superbit DVD are on sell for 15 Canadian dollars each at HMV in Toronto {Canada} this week.

Thanks for the hint, i'll check in Montreal if they do the same.

Emmanuel
Euphonie

I for one will be buying more NTSC discs in future after some experiments with discs of the same film in different formats.

It was prompted by a slight dissatisfaction with some films when played on my DVD5 via Infocus 4805 onto 100in screen. On some films I could see mosquito noise, some jaggies, and a general lack of sharpness where really I would expect none. Certainly I knew that the DVD5 was not the culprit here but I couldn't tell what was...

Intrigued, I got an NTSC and a PAL version of the same disc (Star Wars Episode 1 - both formats just happened to be lying around in the factory) and compared them. To say I was astounded is an understatement. The NTSC disc was sharper, with better colours and had absolutely NO mosquito noise, jaggies.. in fact I was blown away by just how good the picture was.

It didn't make sense. I thought PAL was theoretically better but here I was clearly shown that the NTSC disc was superior and by a big margin.

Of course, the penny dropped, further experimentation showed that the faroudja scaler in the projector, while pretty good, was no match for a dedicated outboard magabuck device and so some of the problems were being introduced with the downscaling process.

However, even comparing on a native 576 projcetor, the NTSC discs looked sharper with better colours. The big question is... why???

I have been informed that it may be because of the mastering of the discs themselves; that NTSC is how the film is mastered to video and that PAL is a bit of an afterthought. It would be great if anybody on this forum can answer this with any authority...

I am intrigued....

Also, have you notice Richard, that PAL films are 4% faster than their NTSC counterparts....

This also means that the soundtrack pitch is shifed by around about a semitone.

The quality may have something to do with 4:3 pulldown effect of the NTSC->PAL transfer. Effectivly you drop frames to compensate the 25 frames/sec change

I personally would say that PAL is actually a better quality format, mainly baecuase it utilises a phase correction system that NTSC does not have + it uses a 576 (625 line) setup whereas NTSC uses 480 (525 line).

....but as most commercial films are american based, they are transferred to NTSC first and then PAL.

Thus the Superbit films would "appear" to be the best format to use for most american films as they are already in NTSC format.

Anyone else got any ideas?

oops sorry 3:2 is used on film to NTSC..

converting NTSC to PAL causes a temporal resolution effect.

One way to answer would be to compare versions from an European movie (mastered in PAL).

Richard, bring with you a couple of those disks when you`ll visit us in March; french Reg1 disks are available here for exemple.

Emmanuel
Euphonie

quote:

Intrigued, I got an NTSC and a PAL version of the same disc (Star Wars Episode 1 - both formats just happened to be lying around in the factory) and compared them. To say I was astounded is an understatement. The NTSC disc was sharper, with better colours and had absolutely NO mosquito noise, jaggies.. in fact I was blown away by just how good the picture was.

Hmmmmmmm, that does seem odd. I don't have any films on both NTSC, but I do have episode 1 on PAL and episode 2 on NTSC which I would guess would be of similar quality. I have a Arcam DV89 and an inFocus 5700 projecting onto about a 100" screen. I've noticed quality differences between dvd's, but never really attributed it to PAL/NTSC and I have probably a 60/40 split of my DVD's in favour of PAL. I'll try and do a comparison over the next week on mine and see if I can see any major differences.

Another advantage of NTSC against PAL is NTSC runs at 24 frames per sec whereas PAL runs at 25 fps. So what do the mastering studios do to resolve this discrepancy? On the PAL master, they just cut out the extra frame and run the audio 4% fast! That's quality for you!

So, as an interim summary.....

am I better off

sticking with my muti-region Pioneer 717 DVD player and getting my Canadian daughter to send me NTSC supabit DVD discs at $15canadian a shot

or

buying a DVD5 and buying uk PAL DVD discs at £15 a shot ???

Cheers

Don

Both Don, both

Superbit NTSC dvds are amazing played by the DVD5.
And at 15$can...
I've only bought 2, that's all they have left at the first HMV store i have visited (the Fifth Element and Desperado). I'll try to find more.

NTSC runs at 29.97 frames sec..not 24, that is film.

Nope - NTSC runs at 24fps as does film so there is no discrepancy nor awkward messing around with speeds in the mastering of NTSC discs.

Ooh, this one is going to run :-) I thought film was 24fps, with PAL converted to 25fps and NTSC to 30fps (ish). I thought the conversion of 24 to 25 for PAL was practically direct, providing the slight speed up. The conversion used for NTSC is more complex, but results in no speed up.

Sorry Franck,

AV@naim
''NTSC runs at 29.97 frames sec..not 24, that is film.''

Emmanuel

quote:

Originally posted by Frank Abela:
Personally, I asked them 4 years ago - and chased them since - when they would make an R2 version of Fifth Element and they simply refuse to bring is out in R2. They have it in R1, so we get left without. I hate having to swap regions on my DVD player and anyway it's wrong in principle.

Frank,

In fact The Fifth Element was released on region 2 superbit as Le Cinquième élément - Superbit.

Bas Wolke