ITV1 HD arrives with a bang (or should that be a growl?) on Good Friday evening with Peter Jackson's King Kong at 10.15pm. Still very little HD content on the channel though.
Over the Easter weekend 4HD has the inferior (but still fun) 21st century version of The Italian Job on Saturday at 9.05pm, followed by Pan's Labyrinth at 11.15pm and One Hour Photo at 1.25am.Sunday at 5.35pm is Eragon.
Not a stunning line up for movie fans. Filmflex meanwhile has 40 films in HD for under a fiver, including the Oscar-laden The Hurt Locker which I watched a few weeks back. It's a great film, but I don't think it's a great example of HD - the Filmflex version looked grainy to me.
8 comments:
ITV arrives for some people anyway, thanks to Virgin's bungled HD launch.
As for 4HD, anyone who hasn't seen Pan's Labyrinth shouldn't miss it. It's possibly the finest fantasy film ever made. A real masterpiece in every possible way. Just don't let any kids see it, as it's definitely VERY adult.
As I understand it we're all getting ITV-HD on April 2nd. It's E4HD, Eurosport HD and SciFi-HD that are delayed - for some of us at least.
With reference to the FilmFlex quality - I watched a HD film a few weeks back through On Demand and whilst the picture quality was stunning, the audio was terrible. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but channels were mixed up, delays were incorrect and the center channel was not normalised in the slightest. My system is correctly configured too as i used the Pink Noise facility built into my processor. Any body else had problems like this?
THe Hurt locker was a grainy movie in theaters, and the HD version of it would retain that quality, hopefully ! Which I personally like. This is film afterall, not HD video sourced material, so expect grain. I love grain ! Grain is the expression of the silver on the film, so why not embrace it and love it for what it is ?
Looking ahead a bit, looks like we may have to drop down to SD for episode 2 of Ashes to Ashes - looks like Golf on BBC HD instead (Fri 9th).
@tvsersity agreed, Pan's Labyrinth is superb, a must-see.
Staphanie Ceretti speaks with truth and knowledge. Despite what the numbskulls over at the BBC HD blogs would have you think, film grain is something to embrace, and Hurt Locker was shot on delicious 16mm Fujifilm, which makes this otherwise tedious fare at least a visual treat.
I watched Hurt Locker on blu-ray and the grain seemed fairly average to me. Not too much, and not digitally processed away either. It looked great and sounded even better. (lossless BD audio is always a treat)
Amazing film too, a worthy oscar winner. (although I had 'An Educatio'n won, I'd of been happy with that too)
Don't get me wrong - I do "embrace the grain" - I just meant that if you're looking for HD sharpness, this ain't necessarily the film for you. District 9 is another one where I have heard folk say that they were disappointed by the HD version - it isn't meant to be Avatar sharpness (and is better for it).
I watched my recording of 4HD's The Departed last night. Awesome film, excellent PQ. Shame it was such a disc-hogger
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