The Fast And The Furious Limited Edition complete box set is now GBP17.99, for those who like FnF quadrilogy this is a good price....
Amazon UK FnF Complete Box Set

Catch up viewing on older titles.

Slumdog Millionaire
PQ is stable throughout. Golden Hues and some colour timing corrections done by Danny Boyle. However, the details are pretty solid. Did not catch any artifacting or aliasing. AQ is a good test of sub qualities for tightness and bass accuracy in a film track. Soundtrack has LFE moments that will not test how low ur sub can go but how well it handles the soundtrack. Drum beats good and solid. Surrounds used very well and effective. All in in all a good PQ/AQ title.

Movie is pretty ok. Very good acting, from the kid actors to the main actors. No real melodrama, a simple love story and a rags to riches storyline. Danny Boyle stays clear of traditional Hindi movies except at the end. But Boyle tends to do that in his movies anyway. Sunshine comes to mind.

Battlestar Galactica
Fathil shd stay way clear of this. Grain abundance. Also in some scenes hard to distinguish if the grain is grain or digital noise. Camera to camera seems to have variation. Also there are clear signs of artifacting, macroblocking and aliasing on some shots. It seems to tighten up as it goes, I'm pretty sure its in the source. However, I'm not sure why. This is based on the 1st disc. AQ is a very strong DTS-HDMA track, hard to fault, except that on some scenes the centre channels tends to slightly muddle up and seem distant.

Series seems pretty good. Definately, keeps the momentum going. Will see how this turns out. Not sure if the 1st season is as such due it being VC-1 encode. Will check out Season 2 and give my opinions.

ROTF was already pretty difficult to watch...without MeganFox, I wonder how no3 will be.

Another catch up title review. I am unlike some people who are up to date with the current releases. Still hv quite a few older titles not watched yet. More than a few actually.

Movie : Burn After Reading
Typical dark comedy. Some stellar acting. Clooney's character is well played, McDormand is darn good, Pitt is well, Pitt. Malkovich is very convincing. Fun movie to watch, with weird twists and large cast. Pokes fun at the intelligence agency of the states. Slightly slow in parts, but enuf to keep u grossed.

PQ :
Good, not reference material, but strong details. Some yellowish hues, directorial intent, I believe. Colours not vibrant but also intended. Good transfer.

AQ :
Dialogue heavy, so that shd say it all. Surrounds and sub used sparsely, just for dramatic moments. Centre channel is well defined, clear as it has to be since it is heavy talking.

I enjoyed the movie. Quick 1 1/2hrs. Decent way to kill the time.

Best case, u shd receive it within 5days, typical 7-12days (including weekends). 7 is when I receive most of the stuff from Amazon UK. The expected delivery date, is well, expected. If it does not arrive by that time, then u send out a mail to them, and they will ask u to wait some more b4 the process a replacement.

But as I said, most of the time it comes within 7-12days if u r in West Malaysia. Most of those from East Malaysia normally takes slightly longer.

Use the Visa Exchange website and add 1 - 1.5% transaction fee imposed by the bank, that is the closest. Based on the day when they charge ur card.

This post has been edited by anfieldude: May 21 2010, 05:34 PM

Was in Music Valley (I think) yesterday and noticed that they actually had a healthy quantity of BDs.

Most Disney BDs were priced at RM99.90 and u r entitled for 10% discount. All were single discs. That brings 1 BD to almost RM90. Decent for Disney titles. The odd thing was all had HVN logo (distributed by). I wonder where they are pressed? Anyone tried any of the HVN Disney titles? Any complaints?

Then on another rack, there were a lot of BDs with "Tulen , KHDN holograms". The price was RM49.90. On the BDs was also written BD25G. All had slipcover. SA told me that these were China BDs. Not sure what she meant, but RM50! Anyone tried this?

At The End of Daybreak Review

Hmm, a Malaysian directorial BD release.....Is this the 1st BD from a Malaysian?

Also publicity of this film in Malaysia must have been low, or I just missed it!

Its a Universal Picture release so its official.

The lower bitrate on the Minority Report on the UK version does not hinder the PQ from what I have been told. The bitrates on the US version are very very high, the comment that is floating around is that it is as though someone just turned up the bitrates and went to sleep.

Actually on Minority Report the audio from the EU/UK is actually higher bitrate than the US counterpart by almost 33%. Would it make a difference? I doubt it.

Possible issues would be softness (instead of a sharper image), slightly more artifacting/aliasing. Again, unless someone really messed up with the encodes, it would only be apparent in the very big screens and with people with discerning eyes.

However, when the encode is not done correctly or there are problems with the source, u would detect it easily. I hv seen moire, artifacting/aliasing, digital noise, EE and DNR on 1080p encodes. Theoretically, it shd be almost zero, but remember the source is film which is higher resolution than 1920 X 1080. Depending on how they transfered to 1080p, it is very possible to induce all the problems. All this is not even taking into account the bitrates.

In short, bitrates are not everything. Most of the time the encoding and the amount of effort spent in restoring the movie from the masters is where the problems lies.

12 days....Maybe will come tomorrow. If held up by kastam, u will receive a letter.

Mine purrs like a air blower after 10 mins of viewing. Does not turn off, works fine just blows air loudly....

Took it to the shop some time ago. He opened it up to maybe 60%, then he could not get further to clean it up, he just did not know how to open it anymore. Just plain irritating. Mine was Sg set 40G.

Seriously not worth the effort. I'm all for DIY but it does not bitstream and I'n not a gamer....Its been demoted...

If u r looking for cheap, get the Philips BD player, RM460 or something.

Catch up title review

Rio Bravo

Great ole western, that sums up the movie. John Wayne with his swagger in HD. Westerns were made for John Wayne IMHO. Nice western, slowly builds up. Typical Howards Hawks fare, a drunk, an old man and a sheriff and the customary young gun. Dean Martin and a young Ricky Nelson deliver good performances, Walter Brennan is stellar as the old man. Nice end to it, life was simpler in the wild west.

PQ : I had this one on VHS. So the HD transfer is heads and shoulders above this! I do sense some DNR but it did not distract and was only on some shots. Transfer is very good, no dirt and scratches and the print is pretty good. Its a 1.85:1 transfer. Colours are representative of the West and the age of the film.

AQ : Full Mono, but good separation. Dialogue is very focused and clear at all times.

A must have or watch for Wild West Lovers done the old way.

Are u using a projector? Or a fixed pixel display?

Full HD or HD Ready?

Turn off overscan on the display. Use Just mode on the Panny. What zoom mode did u set the Oppo to?

Somewhere along the lines, the wrong zoom mode was used.