Live at Budokan Blu-Ray CONFRIMED.

[me7]

If you were annoyed by the compression errors on the Budokan DVD (and especially the Score DVD) this Bluray will be a godsend. It still leaves a lot to be desired IMO but I assume that the footage was edited this way and a real fix would require reediting the whole thing - which I know will never happen.

[me7]

I decided to make a few high quality screenshots of the Bluray to show you how it looks like so you can decide for yourselves whether it is a worthy upgrade from the DVD. The screenshots from the linked review are very compressed and taken from random scenes, these ones are uncompressed and taken from some of the better lit moments. The concert doesn't look this good all the time though, the "dramatic" lighting of the show is pure torture for a camera and results in a lot of blurry shots.


You may think now that this looks great and wonder why I complain about the quality? Take a look at this screenshot:

It looks like two images combed into one another. This basically is "telecine", you take the 24 pictures shot each second, mix a few of them into new ones and add them to the video to turn it into a 30 pictures per second video. Two out of five frames look like that, you get three good ones, than two bad ones, then three good ones and then again two bad ones... throughout the whole concert. Your player will attempt to blur them to make the combing less obvious and it isn't as bad as it looks on still frames.

What annoys me is that there is no technical reason why it needs to look like that. Originally all pictures looked "good", but in order to produce a NTSC DVD you need to have 30 pictures per second, therefore you add these bad pictures into the mix. Blurays don't require it though.

[DarkLord_Lalinc]

JP really looked awesome back then.

[FlyingBIZKIT]

Watching it now. Looks fine to me, but I'm not an expert.

[snowdog]

It really sucks seeing shoddy work done for products like this.  I'm interested to see how it looks in motion though.  Personally I always felt the original DVD didn't look that great either.  But that was probably due to the compression issues more than anything else. 

Another reason I would like to have this on BluRay instead of DVD is to avoid the worst layer-change I have EVER seen.   Putting it in between songs of a concert is distracting as the crowd stops cheering.  But it was placed in the middle of Trail of Tears.  That IMO is inexcusable.  I personally  think this should have been split into two discs.

[Andreas]

I decided to order this one today after reading this review, https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Dream-Theater-Live-At-Budokan-Blu-ray/29117/
I'll post my thoughts after watching it, hopefully i'll get in within a few days!

[Wolfpacker96]

I like BluRay, and it does obviously look better (and sound better in many cases), but I have no problem watching something on up-converted DVD (not to mention, many more recent DVDs are 720p to begin with*). For me, it often comes down to if it's a film that greatly benefits from being in high definition, or if the price is right.

*While a 720p DVD played on a DVD player will only play at 480p, it will play at 720p on a BluRay player, often still up-converted to 1080p. You do need a TV capable of displaying 720/1080 of course. Obviously not every DVD is encoded at 720p, but many are these days.

All that said, I am buying Budokan on BluRay.

If someone put 720p video on a DVD they would only have about 36 minutes of space on a dual layer disc unless they compressed the crap out of it.  Why would anyone release a commercial DVD like that?  I've never seen one.

[Wolfpacker96]

A review of the Blu-Ray release. Not so pretty...

https://www.blu-raydefinition.com/reviews/dream-theater-live-at-budokan-blu-ray-review.html

He only hated on the performance, not the quality.  And he only hated the performance because he hates Dream Theater!  Quality of the blu-ray is excellent according to this guy. 4/5 on the video that was recorded in 1080i 7 years ago on a Dream Theater budget!

[Wolfpacker96]

Not saying that a PS3 is cheap, but those of you that have an HDTV and like games at all should really consider investing in a PS3. It is one of the cheapest bluray players out there and it can do so much more.

If you don't care about games, bluray players can be found for much less than 90 dollars at places like amazon.

Except the new ones can't play SACDs anymore.  What's up with that!  But a $80 Sony blu-ray will play SACDs over HDMI.

[snowdog]

I got this for my birthday.  I haven't finished it all, but I'm about 2 hours through the concert.  Overall the video quality blows away the DVD.  I was worried when I saw the blurred screencap, but I definitely don't notice this in motion at all.  Though my Bluray player is also saying it is playing it at 60 FPS so I'm guessing it is doing its own processing as well.  The lack of compressed video makes a huge difference in the quality.

[cramx3]

I got this in the mail last week and have watched my favorite parts and can see a big difference in video quality and the sound is better too, but my ears arent good enough to notice a big difference in sound. My dvd is now obsolete.