I own and have watched several Blu-Ray movies. The one with really outstanding PQ is Crank. Guess its because it was shot entirely in HD as well.
If anyone is interested, I don't mind temporarily trading with another title and so that you can see for yourself how 1080p should really look!

If interested, I have 11 blue ray titles available for exchange, but the others even the newer titles like In Pursuit Of Happiness or Casino Royale can't match Crank's PQ.

This post has been edited by yjtay: Apr 13 2007, 11:05 PM

Technically MPEG-2 is inferior to H.264/AVC which in turn is inferior to VC-1.
Also technically with the approriate hardware, VC-1 advance profile, L4 is able to reach a maximum bit rate of 135 Mbit/s at 1920 x 1080 / 60 (1080p) .
However what is technically true may not be true to your eyes and ears!
I have personally tested out the following 4 titles :
Casino Royale - Codec AVC,
The Prestige - Codec AVC,
The Departed - Codec VC-1 and
Crank - Codec merely encoded on MPEG-2
on a Sony VPLVW100 SXRD Digital (Ruby) Projector with a 100" Screen paired with a Denon AVR-4806CI 1080p receiver on my PS3, at a friend's place. Guess which I personally felt clearly came out tops and second for PQ -
So to me, sometimes technical specs should not be the only concern for PQ, there lots of other factors to consider especially how the film was taken! Personally, its what you see and hear which is most important, not only technical specs. You don't need to believe me or even take my word, just get the 4 titles and compare to see and even hear for yourself!

My offer to temporarily trade Crank and the other 3 blu-ray titles still holds if you seriously want to compare!

This post has been edited by yjtay: Apr 15 2007, 12:19 PM

Yup definitely without a doubt agree with your above statements under perfect conditions VC1 is currently the best codec!

However I personally feel, let me take from your example, most Miss Universe without makeup will still look pretty, but an ugly person with the right stylist and maybe the right cosmetics will and can look pretty too!

In simple terms never judge a book by its cover alone! Sometimes even a paltry DVD might match a Bluray transfer. Sometimes even an Mpeg2 encoded bluray could have an amazing PQ which would not be discernable even when or if it is retransfered from source and re encoded in VC1 (my wild assumption).

Its like the argument 1080p is better than 720p. I have no doubt it is better and I am infact watching my materials, movies and playing games using the heavily marketed (touted) Full HD tag, but frankly when I think about it, most of the time I can't see the difference or don't noticed the difference between 720p and 1080p, even on my friend's 100" screen. Its only when I paused the movie or know what to look for and focus on the whole movie then I will see the difference. Guess I am no videophile or audiophile just an easliy influenced consumer!

Anyway as a disclaimer, this is only my personal opinion. Let me reiterate, as video camera technology gets upgraded, VC1 encoding can and will potentially outshine the other mentioned encoding formats.

For details of the not so "bias" lay person Blu-ray and HD-DVD software PQ rankings click either Bluray software tier rankings or HD DVD software tier rankings. Take those AVS forum threads as a guide only and let your senses be the judge. Afterall beauty is in the eye of the beholder!

I do agree that MPEG2 is an archaic codec when compared to VC1 which could be up to 3 times more efficient. The reason why I think Crank had such a good PQ even with MPEG2 is that the bit rate/ video quality was bumped up through utilisation of the additional capacity a 50GB discs Blu-ray gives. However if VC1 was used it could reach the same quality with maybe less than half the size, but the strange thing is, Crank has enough space to hold uncompressed PCM Audio !

One popular conspiracy theory why Sony insist on using Mpeg2 from a videophile name Pat is
"Blu-ray supports the same compression formats that HD-DVD does. It's just that the studios aren't always authoring VC-1 content for blu-ray. Sony's line is that their discs can hold so much more stuff that they can continue to use MPEG-2 and just crank the bitrate up, but that's not actually true. I think the theory behind it is that Microsoft gets licensing fees for VC-1 when it's used, because it's based on a standardized high-fidelity version of WMV, so Sony doesn't like using it, despite the better quality."

Also from the same guy one of the reasons why Mpeg2 is comparatively more expensive to author : "VC-1 became mandatory in the blu-ray spec originally for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it requires VASTLY less processing power than MPEG-4 (by using integer math instead of floating point), yet produces comparable results. That drives down everyone's costs, and the hardware manufacturers appreciate that."

Lastly click on Sound and Vision Mag for an interesting article by David Ranada, who is the media's leading engineering authority on digital audio and video, from a year ago which led me to believe that sometimes, one should not just rely on the technical specs. His sentiments in last paragraph really made me think!

This post has been edited by yjtay: Apr 16 2007, 12:22 AM

Just click Unofficial Blu-ray Audio and Video Specs to check the bit rate. Btw do take note too, Crank is one of the few Blu-ray titles with LPCM 7.1 too ! You really should order the title and be impressed with both the sound and visual quality!

The blu-ray with the highest bit rate encoded with Mpeg2 is Click, however it pales in comparison with Crank. So like I always believe, eventhough technical specs are important, it should not be the only criteria used to assess AV quality, always let your eyes and ears make the decision after all only you know what you want!

This post has been edited by yjtay: Apr 16 2007, 10:35 AM