Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Is Dark Knight the new demo standard?

Curious if others were as impressed with the new Batman Blu-Ray disk, Dark Knight. As most likely have heard, they used IMAX cameras for many of the shots and the 70mm film is the best footage I have seen on my 720p TV. I thought the sound was equally impressive as the mix was clear and level with realistic db spikes for specific events. I should note, I am not able to run the TrueHD signal due to ED (Equip Dysfunction).

So my question is: Do those of you running even better setups - i.e., 1080p projectors, 7.1 DDTrueHD, etc. - find the film to be the new standard for demos, or is there still a reigning champion?

I hope to watch the disc this weekend. From what I remember about seeing it the Imax theater. . .it should be tough to beat. I hope it transfers well to Blu-ray.

I saw a thread about this at AVS, where they were finding a lot of flaws in the transfer. Different picture qualities throughout the movie, specs on the screen, etc. I haven't watched it yet, but I have a hunch you'd need to pause and use a magnifying lens to discover this stuff.

I still haven't watched the movie on Blu-ray. I just watched the first little part (what constitutes the prologue on the Batman Begins limited edition). I have a 60" screen, which I used to think was plenty big, but I'm starting to jones for a projector. I would think Baraka would be hard to unseat for picture quality in live-action, though, with Pixar movies being the highest standard, though they cheat by using computers to animate their films. Those bastards!

Watched it last night on bluray on my 50" 720p lcdrp with dolby truehd. Definitely Very good picture quality and great sound! I had never seen it before and loved the plot and all the neat gadgets like they have in batman begins...

I didn't notice one flaw or spec in the video... maybe those people at AVS forgot to clean their tv?

Having had the movie for a couple of weeks now and observing the intermittent flip-flop back and forth between the Imax and the 2:35/1 theatrical versions, I just wish they had left the Imax (full-screen 16x9) aspect ratio presentation "permanently" on the screen and dispensed with the black bars. The bigger the screen one has to view this particular movie the more impressive the Imax version is to watch. It seems some at AVS have been taken over by some mysterious mass eye ailment because I have watched the movie a number of times on my 65" RP CRT and have yet to see these "earth moving" flaws they describe.

But then they would have had to film everything on Imax film (more $$$$) and in most movie theaters that have a constant screen height, that would have presented an actually smaller picture since there would have been "black bars" on the sides of the image (covered by curtains) instead of the black bars seen at the top and bottom of your 16x9 screen.

With the variance between HDTV broadcasts in a 16x9 format (1.78:1 ratio) and many movies being near 2.4:1 ratio, there is no way around the black bars. Bars on the top and bottom of the screen for those of us with 16x9 screens/TVs when watching movies, and bars on the right and left of the screen for those people with 2.4:1 (or similar) screens when watching HDTV broadcasts.

I know that some of the AVS crowd that was upset about DK were upset about the format swap based on their expensive 2.4:1 projectors/screens. When it kicks to the IMAX images, they have screen size problems. I for one love the IMAX images. I noticed the first change, (from IMAX to film) but after that it was hard to remember that the screen had switched from 16:9 to 2.4:1. [No correction needed, I'm sure that aint the exact ratios, but you get my point! ] The stunning quality of the IMAX scenes far overshadows any switching "problem", as I found the switching to be almost imperceptible in a dark room.

And according to the extras, the BR transfer is actually better than the 35mm transfer used in local theaters. I may have this wrong, but I think they said it was scaled down to fit on 35mm (which is 9 times smaller in terms of content). But BR lets them put the full (or, more full) content for us to see in HD. The physical comparison of the 70mm to 35mm film is suprising.

And I don't know what image problems people have found. I'm sure they are there, but the images are staggering - at least on my humble TV. One of the reasons I posted this thread is that I want to know if the 1080p projector crowd has a mild or mixed reaction to the film's quality. If so, I'm less anxious to get a projector because I really enjoyed this film at home and I don't expect much better than IMAX quality in my humble theater any time soon. If they are blown away by it, then I know I want in.

I haven't seen the film at all, either in theatre, IMAX, or DVD, but are the changes implemented somewhat smoothly, at least? It seems very odd to change aspect ratios in the middle of the film.

Ken, it was noticeable in the theater, but the images were so good you quickly forgot about it. At least I did.

I don't know how my perception will change with my TV, though.