I just previewed the Cowclops V.2 Episode IV disc, and I must say.......
Poopoo.
I completely disliked it, hated it, couldn't watch it. This is a personal opinion, so please nobody get offended here:
Besides the way-too obvious off-black bars (which you can get past by adjusting contrast as Rik stated), I was seriously taken aback by the amount of blockiness on motion AND still scenes. After seeing other people hype this as the best thing next to the X0, I expected alot more. I don't know if it was Cowclops' encoding, or maybe a rotting LD player, but....very bad. I see they used CCE for the encoder, and it is hands-down the best encoder out there. But I think maybe they didn't do enough passes, or possibly the Q factors were set wrong, or the VBR bias...whatever it was, movies encoded with CCE should definitely not be blocky. I much prefer any other set, because, again, I seriously could not watch this. You know, props for trying, but...whatever.
I certainly hope the X0 guys do AT LEAST the max 9 passes in CCE's SP version, hopefully the max of 14 or whatever is allowed in the corporate, or regular CCE version. Because it sure is a shame when your encoder screws up your meticulously edited and transferred video
Video Rating : * (okay maybe a two)
Audio Rating : **** (nice and loud)
Viewing Equipment : Asus z71v WSXGA 1680x1050 resolution monitor (yeah, that's right, I see ALL video faults).
Needless to say, I will not be wasting any more time or bandwidth downloading the remaining two discs of this set, so if they are awesome - too bad.