The Woman in Red on HDnet vs HD Cinema

[Sean Mota]

The Woman in Red is playing on HDnet. I had a chance to watch it on HD Cinema and want to compare against HDnet movies. First, both are shown in 1.78:1 (16x9) OAR. Both versions show the same grainy moments and both show the same great HD good moments. Watch and compare... Hard to convince me that this movie looks any better on HDnet than it looked on HD Cinema.

The mgm DVD was leveled as Anamorphic Widescreen - 1.85 which gives you the most vertical lines of the picture without distorting the picture and maintaining the OAR of the movie. I would have to assume (but not sure) that the HD transfer was done in the same way. It looks like most mgm DVDs movies follow Anamorphic Widescreen - 1.85. I wonder if Voom is doing the same when doing the HD transfer of these mgm movies.

 

[Sean Mota]

I did a search on AVSforum to see what comments people made about this movie. It has been showing on HDnet since 5/20/04. Here's the only post with one post.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=403829&highlight=woman

 

[DarrellP]

Sean, I have to disagree with you on this one. How big of a screen are you viewing on? Though the PQ has come up on the Cinema10, they still don't hold a candle to HDNET Movie quality. I've compared A Chorus Line and The Sound of Music and Voom doesn't come close in PQ. Voom may look fine on a RPTV but when you blow them up on a big screen the difference is readily visible. Voom really needs to cut loose some bandwidth for all of the HD channels. Whenever I switch from Voom to HDNET, the difference is very apparent, it's like taking a lens off that had a light coat of Vaseline smeared over it. (Ok, not that bad but you get the idea).

 

[Sean Mota]

Sean, I have to disagree with you on this one. How big of a screen are you viewing on? Though the PQ has come up on the Cinema10, they still don't hold a candle to HDNET Movie quality. I've compared A Chorus Line and The Sound of Music and Voom doesn't come close in PQ. Voom may look fine on a RPTV but when you blow them up on a big screen the difference is readily visible. Voom really needs to cut loose some bandwidth for all of the HD channels. Whenever I switch from Voom to HDNET, the difference is very apparent, it's like taking a lens off that had a light coat of Vaseline smeared over it. (Ok, not that bad but you get the idea).

DarrellP,

you read my entire post wrong. I agree with you about A Chorus Line and others I have seen on HDnet. But "The Woman in Red" I saw no difference whatsoever. It looks very similar or equal to what HD Cinema played a month ago. I wonder how A Chorus Line would have looked if it was played in OAR in HD Cinema. I am making the comparison of one movie. Not the entire library of movies.

P.S. The Woman in Red was shown non-oar on HDnet. I was expecting OAR and looked for AVS members to go nuts on this but only could find one comment about it without much discussion.

 

[DarrellP]

Thanks for clarifying Sean. I never watched Woman In Red on either channel, just tuned it in for a few minutes on HDNET and it looked pretty good.

 

[Sean Mota]

Thanks for clarifying Sean. I never watched Woman In Red on either channel, just tuned it in for a few minutes on HDNET and it looked pretty good.

Compare to others I have seen there was a lot of grainy in the picture on both HDnet and HD Cinema. The transfer was ok. My point was that it looks like they both used the same non oar hd transfer and both channels it looked the same. There were moments were it looked great but there were moments when grainy show.