The HD revolution...

You know ever since I got my HD tv I have been on the HD revolution bandwagon. This changed literally yesterday when I saw my first Bluray on a super HD tv in Best Buy. I was in the Magnolia center when I saw King Kong on one of the TVs. Lets first establish I am not a fan of this movie, but I am a fan of the visual effects. They are gorgeous... Until I saw them in HD. In SD the artifacting of the medium gives the effects a nice soft edge, and actually cleans them up to the point where they work well with the surroundings. In HD the effects were so harsh that it didn't make sense. The compositing was obvious, and the Occlusion on the shadows was not dark enough to create a convincing shadow under the models. Granted the only scene I got to watch was the fight in the jungle between the trexes and kong, but in SD it looks so much more impressive than it did in HD. Not to mention that in HD the effects strobe as a result of the sharpening filter that is present. I also caught a glimpse of Chicken Little in a different room. When I went to look at that I was not happy with the result. It had somewhat of the same problem the shadows were not dark enough, but the texture were also a problem. They were not detailed enough for HD, and it created a somewhat bland scene. Granted ILM uses overly large textures for their effects. It was rumored in TF that they used 16k and 32k textures. Those are gigantic but given how insanely compact the UVs had to have been it is fairly warranted. But chicken little was made before the advent of HD and unfortunately it seems fairly obvious.