Ratatouille on Blu-ray is awesome!

[Lotus]

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

Lotus,

as good as Shrek looks, take a read of Dan's review of the HD DVD at dvdfile.com: he noticed that the movie clips *in the bonus material* look *better* than the feature film. Looks like a classic example of a studio applying a little bit of filtering to ease compression... a common practice with DVD and one that I hope that the studios learn is BAD and don't continue the practice with HDM. Not saying it's a bad image and not saying it's a problem with "HD DVD"... just noting that Paramount, for whatever reason, didn't provide an image that was optimal given the improvement that can be seen with precisely the same material in the bonus section (which is also on the same HD DVD disc).

BTW, I noticed the same problem with Disney's "Incredibles" on DVD... the clips in the bonus material were significantly sharper/detailed than the image in the feature presentation. My review of that DVD didn't leave that fact unmentioned... even though every other review I've read praised the title as having perfect picture.

Shrek looks pretty damn good and I noticed in some spots what I thought was compression related lack of sharpness... but overall the picture was actually damn fine HD material. I'd rate it on par with Cars. Ratatouie on the other hand is the best looking disc I've seen on any format.

Dead Mans chest was pretty sweet too even if the movie was imho bad.

[Westcoaster]

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

Agreed. I actually pushed for native 2.35:1 encoding. My idea was rather than "anamorphic" pixels that change to non-square shapes to capture multiple aspect ratios... just use a "constant height" digital encoding method that always makes the vertial 1080, and then just extends horizontal pixels past 1920 to capture whatever native frame shape you need. Players could be designed to downconvert horizontal resolution... and constant height projection systems would have what we've always dreamed of... real 2.35:1 images with the same pixel-density of 1.78:1 images!!!

David, So what happened? Why didn't 'they' want to do this?

By encorporating a menu selection that allowed the user to set the players output to the match the display devices aspect ratio, the entire process could have been a snap!

It's a shame that widescreen ratio material doesn't (can't) fully benefit from the storage capabilities of these formats...

[kennyt]

I am not surprised this won the award for best animated for High Def Discs, I might have to buy this one to keep around!

[prerich]

I believe it's a tie between Ratatouille and Happy Feet (hd-dvd) (IMO). Those two movies show exactly what the new formats are capable of. Ratatouille is the best Blu-ray that I've seen hands down!

[merv46]

As far as animation, Ratatouille is the best looking and best sounding on any format, with cars a close second. IMO.

[kennyt]

Happy Feet??

I wasn't that impressed with the video on that one, maybe it was I wasn't that impressed with the film (not that Rat is a great flick).

I am hoping Will Ferrel's Elf comes out in some high def format!