As the super-duper-hyper-amazing home theater plan moves into high-gear, I’m discovering an unfortunate side-effect from high-definition television. Lots and lots of shows and movies don’t look any better in high-def and, in fact, many look worse. We have a couple of sources of HD programming including HD shows on our Verizon Fios cable, HD downloads from the iTunes store and Blu-Ray disks via a Samsung BD-C6500 player.
The other night we were flipping through HD movie channels and hit on a movie we really like, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. But in high-def, there was too much snap to some of the colors and the actors faces frankly looked a little too real. Then again, the Blu-Ray copy of James Cameron’s epic western in space, Avatar, looked stunning and fantastic in HD while the also-included DVD paled in comparison.
This all ties in to a great post Jason Kottke wrote after some people started giving one-star reviews to the Blu-Ray version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy because the included movies were the theater cuts and not the director’s cuts. Some people, particularly people in the content producing business, whined that it wasn’t fair to trash a disk just because a desired version wasn’t yet available. But Jason made the absolutely brilliant point that in this day and age, formats and versions matter, especially when big book publishers and Hollywood studios want you to pay two, three or four times for the same basic content. He concludes:
Newspaper and magazine reviewers pretty much ignore this stuff. There’s little mention of whether a book would be good to read on a Kindle, if you should buy the audiobook version instead of the hardcover because John Hodgman has a delightful voice, if a magazine is good for reading on the toilet, if a movie is watchable on an iPhone or if you need to see it in 1080p on a big TV, if a hardcover is too heavy to read in the bath, whether the trailer is an accurate depiction of what the movie is about, or if the hardcover price is too expensive and you should get the Kindle version or wait for the paperback. Or, as the above reviewers hammer home, if the book is available to read on the Kindle/iPad/Nook or if it’s better to wait until the director’s cut comes out. In the end, people don’t buy content or plots, they buy physical or digital pieces of media for use on specific devices and within certain contexts. That citizen reviewers have keyed into this more quickly than traditional media reviewers is not a surprise.
So at least as far as collecting HD content to own, where is a poor Blu-Ray buyer to turn? Here are a couple of ideas and please — please — add more of your suggestions in the comments.
1. Amazon.com customers have posted zillions of different kinds of lists and in the Blu-Ray area everyone is focused on Kottke’s exact point: which movies are worthy of Blu-ray treatment. To find some of these lists, go to pretty much any product page and scroll down until on the extreme left side of the page you see the box called “listmania” which includes two relevant lists and a search box. Type “blu-ray” into the search box. Some great lists come up including ones I’ve perused by Elizabeth Hinton (“This is a list of Blu Ray films that I have found to be worth spending the extra money for– Even if you already own it on DVD”), Porfie Medina (“Blu-ray Disc movies you can show off on your 1080p HD TV”) and Thivanka Rukshan Perera (“The myth: old movies won’t look good in high-def”).
2. Obviously, movies that have won — or even been nominated for — the Oscar award for best cinematography are likely to be great choices for HD viewing. Sure, you can go to the official Oscars site but that’s not nearly as user friendly as the CinemaSquid site’s search engine. Here, you can find all the winners and nominees for any award that are already out on Blu-Ray in a sortable list with viewer ratings specific to HD features, links to buy in different countries and so on. Check out their best cinematography listings to see what I mean.
3. Ask around. Early adopters have been watching Blu-ray movies for a couple of years now so before you buy a disk, ask a friend. I can tell you that so far, I am 3 for 3. I bought Blu-Ray versions of Avatar, Star Trek (the recent rebooted version with Chris Pine) and Pride and Prejudice (the recent one starring Keira Knightley) and all three look magnificent in high-definition.
Other suggestions for sources of Blu-Ray advice are, as I said, extremely welcome in the comments.
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