Bad quality Blue-ray problem?

Blacksky

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0k, I don't know if this is something that I should be posting somewhere else, but since I notice it on a Sony HW50 projector I thought I should ask here.

Basically it is like this, while copies of new blue rays play fine, there is something really badly wrong with the quality of blue-ray copies of older films. They look very low resolution and grimy and the colours are often way off what they should be (sometimes they seem worse than DVD). I realise a lot of people are going to dismiss this because of the age of the films, but here's the thing - one of the reasons I bought a projector in the first place was seeing a clip of an older film in a demo room on a comparable projector and being blown away by the quality of it. I've gone to plenty of re-showings of these older films, so I know it really isn't a case of the film itself being at fault. Is it that studios just don't care about the transfer of some of their older films to blue ray, or is it something I'm doing wrong?

I have a PS3 and recently got a Darbee, but I noticed this problem before when it was just the PS3. The films I've tested are Back to the Future (all three), The Shining, and several others.
 
It depends on the source material and the level of restoration.

Something like Terminator retains its grainy, low-fi look, with much of the optical compositing far too visible, whereas other movies are "restored" and digitally re-mastered to better than new. It all depends on the quality of the existing master or negatives and how far the director is prepared to allow the process to go.

What you are finding is that Blu-ray and projection will show off deficiencies more than lower resolution formats, which tend to mask them to a certain extent.

You could try calibrating the projector, as you may have the brightness and contrast incorrectly set, so the black level is too high. High chroma settings will have a similar detrimental effect on the perceived image quality.
 
I don't think it is deficiencies in the film because I've seen these films with far better clarity in the cinima and then bought blue-ray copies and found that the details are very indistinct and look a lot like low-quality youtube videos on a larger scale. I realise that the cinima has a better projector, but what I am comparing here is different films I have seen on my projector at home that have an almost 'pirated' quality to them even though they are the official releases.
 
Have you got some specific examples?

Also, I assume you are running 1080p direct via HDMI and not scaling or using component?
 
Also, I assume you are running 1080p direct via HDMI and not scaling or using component?

I do have it all set up that way. For specific examples, all of the Back to the Futures, The Shining, Terminator II, just about every film made before DVD came out, really. It's honestly not the low-fi look because I know how clear these films look in the cinema having seen recent re-showings of Ghost Busters, Gremlins, and many others. I will try changing the settings you suggest, though.
 
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all of the Back to the Futures,
Terminator II,
Ghost Busters,

Back to the Futire got good review of picture quality both in US and UK.
Blu-ray Review: Back to the Future: 25th Anniversary Trilogy | High-Def Digest
Back To The Future : The Ultimate Collection Blu-ray Review | AVForums.com - UK Online

Terminator 2 got also good reviews:
Blu-ray Review: Terminator 2: Judgment Day | High-Def Digest
Terminator 2: Judgment Day Blu-ray Review | AVForums.com - UK Online

First version of US Ghostbusters wasn't perfect but the remastered in 4k-version has good picture, as do the UK version:
Blu-ray Review: Ghostbusters (Mastered in 4K) | High-Def Digest
Ghostbusters Blu-ray Review | AVForums.com - UK Online

Reading the different reviews it seems that problem isn't in source material.
 
It's well known that the various picture processing facilities can sometimes make things worse, especially if set at maximum, so try turning these off.

Can you feed a good HD TV source (Freeview, Sky, Virgin) into the projector and make sure all is OK?
 
I can't feed in any of those but I have been playing games and new films and they work perfectly. I'm going to try turning all the processing off but before I do is there a way to save my current settings?
 

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