Blu-ray movies in VC-1: Up to par with HD DVD?
The reviewer at High-Def Digest says yes. Warner has shipped four movies on Blu-ray we already saw on HD DVD, three (Blazing Saddles, Firewall, Lethal Weapon) that use the VC-1 codec for video compression, and one (Full Metal Jacket) that doesn't, but they are all "virtually indistinguishable" from their HD DVD counterparts. The discs all contain the same extras and roughly equivalent soundtracks, even Firewall, originally released on HD DVD/DVD combo with only 15GB of space for the movie. It's hard to say if this is a positive or negative for Blu-ray, on one hand at least recent Blu-ray releases have met the standard expected of high definition DVDs and whenever dual-layer discs become prevalent will have plenty of room for extras, or we can say that despite a player that is still higher-priced and has a 1080p output the films only look the same. This could even affirm Sony's view that on a 25GB disc, MPEG-2 can look just as good as newer codecs. We'll be watching carefully to see if future releases keep the PQ level high.
[Thanks, zombieflanders]
