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House Of Flying Daggers R1 - April 19 (1 Viewer)

Vincent-P

Second Unit
Joined
Jan 19, 2004
Messages
337
finally had the chance to watch this tonight. I'm pretty happy with the transfer. once I adjusted some of my settings. I saw this in the theater and at first thought it was very desaturated and washed out, but besides the Peony Pavillion, I couldn't really remember much of how it looked, until I got to the Bamboo Forest. I remembered that those sequences were very saturated with color and deep green. So I adjusted my color, tint, and brightness settings and was able to make it look just like I remember it from the theater. Going back and rewatching the earlier parts it looks a whole lot better and very pleasing to me.

The main concern I have, besides the cuts to even the US theatrical showings, which I did not know about until after I saw it in the theater (please Columbia, if any film needs an "unrated" version, give House of Flying Daggers an uncut release, and "Kung Fu Hustle" if it will be altered on DVD) is that there is no subtitle/translation to the title card of the film. Why does it not say "House Of Flying Daggers" during the opening? I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it was there in the theaters, and DVDBeaver shows a title card with an English translation that must come from some release. I can't believe I haven't seen this mentioned in any post or any review. Anybody have more information about this situation?
 

David_Blackwell

Screenwriter
Joined
Jan 30, 2004
Messages
1,443
The only problem I had with this disc is that it doesn't want to play very well on my Sony DVD player after the layer change around chapter 16. I thought it was a defective copy, but the replacement copy sent to me did the same thing. So my Sony player has issues (where the Emerson DVD Recorder and a DVD player of a friend plays the disc without problems).
 

Rich Malloy

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Apr 9, 2000
Messages
3,998
I don't have the R1 disc, but that wouldn't be a big deal for me, Vincent. In fact, just from an aesthetic standpoint, I might rather prefer that the title card doesn't have a translation superimposed over it (it's not as though I don't know the name of the film I'm watching). The R3 Edko release doesn't translate "The Peony Pavillion" signage/card when the film moves to that location, and though it's rather obvious for those of us familiar with the film, I think that's a worse omission.
 

Brian_cyberbri

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Dec 30, 2004
Messages
202
I have the R3 2-disk Edko version of this movie, and wanted to check out the R1 version as well. It came at a perfect time, as I upgraded to a new subwoofer that had arrived the same day (BIC Acoustech H100).

I only compared the Echo Game sequence, but I found the R1's picture quality to be of better quality. The image seemed more stable than the R3 Edko, especially with regards to compression artifacts, overall picture tightness, and the quick-cut sequence near the end of the last part of the dance (before she grabs the sword), which has some bad (de)interlacing on the Edko. The R1 also appeared to be slightly sharper, with slightly more solid colors.

One thing I also noticed was that with the Edko's full bit-rate DTS track, I had it at about -40 to -35 on my receiver (H/K AVR125), while the R1 DD track needed -35 to -30 to achieve the same volume (I watch LOTR-EE versions at -45 to -40, sometimes as low as -50 for loud scenes - I'm in a duplex). I didn't do any specific comparisons of the audio however, although I think what some reviews/comparisons are saying about the R1 DD being "boosted" may be true.

So, like other reviews/comparisons have said, IMO R1 has the edge for PQ, and for audio it is probably a toss-up between the full bit-rate DTS on the Edko, and the pumped-up DD on the R1. I somewhat wish I had waited and just gotten the R1 version, but I'll probably double dip once the HD version comes out...

After seeing this, and thinking about it a little, it's now clear to me that DVD Beaver doesn't actually compare the DVDs. They only compare a small number of screenshots, and at small sizes as well. This is fine for certain things, but it doesn't give the whole picture (no pun intended).
 

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