Considering that
Iron Man is the best selling Blu-ray Disc
of all time, it makes sense that there are countless reviews of it out on the web. If you've somehow held back from picking up a copy of your own, you'll be glad to know that pretty much everyone in existence agrees that this film rocks. The most noticeable positive was the absolutely outstanding video transfer, making this flick one you'll undoubtedly pull out when trying to wow your friends with your system's capabilities. Amazingly enough, critics on the whole were even more impressed with the audio, with
TweakTown going so far as to say that the soundtrack " almost single-handedly justifies the cost of a home theater." The only real knock that we could find was that blacks fell a tad flat in a few scenes, but really, that's neither here nor there. The critics have spoken, and this is a must-own title for any BD fan.
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posted Oct 9th 2008 12:00PM
SD for me. I played the DVD on my PS3 on my Samsung 40" and it looked great. So, I'm sticking with that.
Awesome, glad to hear it. So why do you have an HDTV then?
VHS for me. It looks fantastic on my Panasonic 42". No need to spend the extra dough for the BD or DVD for that matter. I guess you could say I wasted my money on an HD set.
This website is called 'Engadget HD'.
@JimC Maybe he bought it so he could play his PS3 Games @ 1080p. Of course he'd have to sit no more than 5' from his set to get the full benefit of 1080p or no more than 7 1/2 feet for 720p.
http://www.carltonbale.com/home-theater/home-theater-calculator/
WebDev511
"he'd have to sit no more than 5'", which again I ask, why HD? If you're not getting any benefit then whoever buys smaller 1080p sets are morons, either that or the benefit is subjective.
My point is that it seems rather pointless to spend a premium on HD sets only to watch SD content. Even if you play HD games, fine, so why come on here and brag about being incapable of distinguishing SD from HD content? Seems rather pointless to me.
Anyway, "HD" games on consoles aren't fully 1080p and imo look better on lower resolution sets. I say this because I have a ps3 connecting to my 1920x1200 monitor and it looks fuzzy stretched to that res. I usually use my monitor's feature to put it at the game's native res, which is usually about half the size of my monitor.
I have to agree, this movie " almost single-handedly justifies the cost of a home theater.".
The PQ was good, but I was most impressed with the SQ... Iron Man seems to use the woofer (or .1 if you must) channel better then any movie I have yet experienced. The scene where he exits the cave made my entire apartment rattle, flipping sweet. Usually only DTS movies pack that kind of punch. Well Done!
I just wish the movie didn't use Dynamic Range Compression, have to turn it off from the Receiver every time I start up toe move to get the full awesomeness of the soundtrack.
yeah, jesus...especially the first scene where he uses the suit in the middle east and uses his RTs to blast those guys. The sound that his repulsars make is AMAZING
I'll be picking the movie up just as soon as somebody's selling it for under $20. I have a feeling my patience will be rewarded in another month or two with all the Christmas sales.
Me? I'll wait until the hype wears off and pick it up at Half.com.
I'm waiting, too. I'm sure there'll be some sales of the disc come Christmas.
I just picked up the SD version (2 discs) for under $19 at my local grocery store. Seems like a great price for 2 discs. They had the BD version for $24.
Selling over 250k in the 1st day and 500k in the 1st week...I'd say its a must own by those stats!
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3iced839ebc80856000c1b9629c27100d2
Sounds like Blu-Ray is well on its way and will be around for a long time!
I'm waiting for them to reissue the movie with the DRC Flag disabled. I don't want to have to manually deactivate DRC every time I want to watch the movie.
Any timetable on that, Engadget insiders?
I rented the movie, the story was only so-so, so this BD fan will be avoiding. Why buy something you would never watch a second time. Then again, I'm not a fan of any Marvel character based films.
Thanks for including our Review guys!
I'll wait until it premieres on Xbox Live.
I'm going to wait for the HD DVD version ;)
(Actually I have no interest in Iron Man whatsoever. But when Cinemax HD shows it I'll probably take a look then given I said the same thing about Transformers and 300, and ended up watching them on the Max anyway.)
I recommend Hi-Def Digest http://www.highdefdigest.com/ as another great review site.
Seconded.
Highdefdigest is one of the best sites imo for reviews. DVD beaver is good too, especially for SD/HD comparisons, although the site is extremely messy. Blu-ray.com also has reviews that are semi-useful but the movie rating is often so horribly skewed that overall rating cannot be trusted. I wish disc review sites would take the movie score from a site like Rotten Tomatoes and just focus on reviewing the disk.
These comments are great! I picked up my copy on 8mm and the 8-track tape is what I use for the soundtrack. No need to step up to a cassette for audio or VHS for video. This movie looks and sounds great!
On a side note, IGN is a joke at reviewing blu-ray movies. They gave casino royal a 10/10 in video quality and (I think) they've given NO other movie the same score since. Basically implying that it is one of the best transfers ever. VERY wrong.
Well..I havent upgraded my receiver for HDMI yet. I'm still in the old Dolby Digital 5.1 realm with my set up. I do have a HTPC W/A Blu-Ray player installed. But here is the thing. Nobody is talking about the fact that there are Blu-Ray movies out there with no regular English Dolby Digital 5.1 track on the disk. At least in all the reviews I have read anyway. It might say Dolby Digital on the package. But it could be a DD 5.1 track for another language only. And you may only get an English 2.0 channel mix as is what happened to me with this movie. So right now I'm forced to hear this movie in Dolby Pro Logic or upgrade. I realy feel like I'm being rail-roaded into upgrading my equipment by the bean counters of the movie industry so I can hear the TrueHd 5.1or 7.1 tracks with the new blu-ray titles. So people with older equipment better be careful and beware. Cheers :)
You need better playback software. PS3 can downmix TrueHD 5.1 to AC3 5.1, there's no reason PowerLink's software can't do it too.
Well, in truth, for all of 2008, the norm has been to expect good transfers. That is why I could not help noticing the poor blacks in Iron Man. Go ahead and watch it again. Keep in mind that "black" on your screen is the color of the borders on the top and bottom. Now watch, say, most of the footage in the terrorist cave, where it's generally dark, and tell me you think the BD devs did a good job with the blacks in this movie. Remember to compare with the black borders.
Almost every other BD I own has better blacks than Iron Man. Even oldies like Blade Runner and Close Encounters. The devs of this disc were lazy. A major disappointment.