Comment by Phil

Phil — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:39:31 +0000

Thanks for the report.

One of my favorite parts of the movie wasn't in the movie: namely, the "construction welding" stuff that was featured in the pre-trailer preview.

Is there more of that on the disc? My guess is that the construction welding stuff was created only for the preview, and wasn't pulled out of actual footage that didn't make it into the movie. A bummer for me on any count.

My fave visual scene in the movie was probably the slow-panned shot of the Enterprise with Saturn immediately behind. Holy crap.

I saw the movie twice (a rarity for me) -- once at a regular theatre and once at the IMAX. As kind of expected, I was sad that IMAX theatre really only meant bigger screen and sound -- not more visual detail. Oh well.

Blu-Ray

Ken — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 23:56:04 +0000

I bought the Star Trek movie on Blu-Ray to showcase my new system... but not before I had put it on my NetFlix queue. So with both the DVD and the Blu-Ray disc here at the same time, I figured this would be a good chance to compare quality. I can tell you: even from ten feet away, the difference is noticeable.

Here's a closeup comparison. Click on the thumbnails for a larger image (a bit less than a quarter of the full screen).

I wasn't convinced before about how much I'd notice the difference... but I think it's safe to say that any movies that I purchase in the future will probably be Blu-Ray.

In other tech news, I'm a bit concerned about the new TV... on occasion, it's refused to display a picture from the HDMI inputs. I'm concerned because this is exactly the same problem other people on the Internets have complained about with this model. It seems to require some power-cycling and resetting to get things to work again... if the problem doesn't go away, I might have to (shudder) call for tech support.