Comments on: Spears & Munsil: High Definition Benchmark – Blu-ray Disc Review

By: Denny Frank

Denny Frank — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:45:59 +0000

… It might not have everything you need to get your Home Theater dialed in perfectly …

So what do we need? That’s the whole point of what we are trying to do.

By: James Segars

James Segars — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 17:43:39 +0000

ChuckZ:

Yeah, you’re right about Stacey shooting it on his RED One. The montage is really eye opening, and stellar.

As for the codecs, I wrote a bit about that above, under the video quality section: “While the majority of the video segments and test patterns are provided in HD, Spears & Munsil have taken it upon themselves to include the option to switch your desired program codec. Choose between: HD VC-1, SD VC-1, or SD MPEG-2.”

It would appear that the multiple HD codec idea didn’t make it to the final release. As you see above, you can switch the codec for some of the evaluation material, but it’s only SD/HD and two different codecs.

At the same time, we are given all of the Lossless audio options on the opening montage to choose from.

Thanks for the comment!

By: ChuckZ

ChuckZ — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 09:38:47 +0000

I believe Stacey shot of the video content (save for some recycled test clips) on his RED One digital cinema camera. He hand encoded the disc as well.

I think he also mentioned (but you did not), that he encoded the demo scenes in all three codecs so you could test compare between them. Did you notice multiple video streams for the HD content? This may have been removed in the final release, but I distinctly remembering him talking about this.

By: Gerald

Gerald — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 19:00:38 +0000

Nice review James.I have used the HQV Benchmark to test my system in the past but will look into this for future products perhaps.Have a good weekend.