High-Def DVD Review: Nature's Journey

As described by its producer, R&B Films, Nature’s Journey is an escape to a mysterious inner universe where nature and imagination meet to form a realm of extraordinary beauty and involves a mix of location filming, subtle computer-generated imagery, erotic musical soundscapes and artistic graphic enhancements that draw you deep into the magical heart of our planet. Nature’s Journey was produced in High Definition by video artist John Banks featuring a 96/24 soundtrack by Michael Sterns.

In plain English, Nature’s Journey consists of nature footage filmed in 1080i high definition. The footage consists of shots of flowers, grass, trees and foliage, waterfalls, beaches, mountains and various landscapes, with some very effective subtle and not so subtle graphics superimposed over the video. Accompanying the video is what can best be described as an ethereal, mood “ new age” music track featuring various electronic keyboards by Korg, Yamaha and Roland along with various other sound effects. The music fits the video so that bright and sunny visuals receive an airy upbeat track whereas images of stormy or wintry weather are presented with more gloomy and ominous sounding tracks.

Why review such a disc? Well, these discs present an opportunity to evaluate the claimed advantages of the Blu-Ray format over HD-DVD. In addition to greater storage capacity, the BD spec includes a higher bit rate encode capability. Here, the BD disc is presented in VC-1 encoded at 37 Mbps the highest allowed in the BD spec whereas the HD-DVD disc, while also encoded with VC-1, is encoded with the lower highest bit rate permitted in the HD-DVD spec of 26 Mbps. The audio specs on both discs are also different with the BD disc having a DTS-MA lossless audio track (@ 5.3 Mbps average and 6.8 Mbps max) with the HD-DVD disc receiving “only” a DTS-HD track at 3 Mbps. Both discs also have Dolby Digital 5.0 encodes 48/24 @ 448 kbps and Dolby Surround 2.0 at 48/16 @192kbps. The question, do the increased BD specs provide for better audio and sound quality? The answers, sort of, are below.

VIDEO 5 stars out of 5

Let me say at the outset that the video presentation on both discs is remarkable. Both are reference video presentations. if you want to impress your friends with great HD, get one of these discs. The colors are fantastic with incredible and varying shades of green, subtle variations of brown and gray on rocks, and stunning waterfalls. The images are utterly three dimensional. The views through a forest are fantastic. The discs are filled with images of running water that look flawless without even a hint of artifacts. The images of nearby trees and grass reflected on the surface of the running water are flawless as is the shadow detail. Amazing stuff. The only flaw was some banding visible at the beginning of chapter 5. The banding was visible on both discs and visible on both component and HDMI outputs. Not having seen the master, I am not sure if the banding is on the disc or the result of the video processing on my display. Either way, it is very minor and in no way distracted from my enjoyment of the visuals.

Now on to the big question, namely whether the increased bit rate on the BD disc resulted in a noticeable difference in picture quality over the HD-DVD disc. At normal viewing distances, I would have to say no. I watched both discs several times and compared segments of the discs back to back. At 8 to 10 feet from the screen, they looked identical to me. At closer distances, namely 2 to 4 feet from the screen, on just a few scenes did I think that I may have noticed a slightly more detailed picture on the Blu-Ray version. I say I think because the differences I saw were very, very minor. What I thought I was able to discern were slightly sharper edges to some objects in some but not all scenes. However, I very much doubt that I would be able to identify which disc was which in a double blind test the differences were that minor. To spot any differences took a lot of viewing at very close distances. One could very well argue that working that hard to spot differences means that there were no differences at all. Frankly, at normal viewing distances, there were none.

AUDIO
4 stars out of 5 (HD only)
0 stars out of 5 (BD only)

At the outset I should note that other than on the opening menu, I was not able to get any audio out of the analog outputs on my Panasonic BD player. I was advised by Richard Casey, the Executive Producer at R&B Films, that the audio plays fine on all BD players with the exception of the Panasonic. Apparently, there was an issue in the way Panasonic implemented the BD java spec that interferes with the way that the player outputs the audio. Panasonic was made aware of this and I have been advised that a firmware upgrade will be available on Panasonic’s website in mid October (version 2.4) which will fix this issue. Until then, I will be unable to grade the audio on the BD disc. I guess the grade should be an incomplete in regards to the BD version.

On the HD-DVD side, the sonics were excellent, with an open and airy sound that fully enveloped me in the listening position. The sound was smooth without a hint of shrillness and was very easy to listen to even at very high listening levels. While I loved the video images, most of the music on this disc is not my cup of tea. However, it was well recorded and presented very, very well. The DTS-HD track was a clear upgrade over the Dolby tracks with a smoother and more open sound. Unless you have to, I wouldn’t even bother with anything other than the DTS-HD track.

SUMMATION

Clearly, a lot of care went into the preparation of these discs on both the audio and video levels. R&B Films should be commended for putting out such a high quality product. Both the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs deliver outstanding video performance and are highly recommended. Now, let the argument from both camps begin!

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