DVD Review HTF DVD REVIEW: "Alien: Quadrilogy" w/ ton's of screenshots! Highly Recommended! (1 Viewer)

[Grant H]

Nelson, I have a problem with the exact same point, but it didn't seem as severe on my player.

For me the audio dropped out for about a second on Dallas' line there on both DD and DTS. Otherwise the scene played fine on the DC, but when I tried it with the theatrical cut the video actually froze up for a bit too.

Philips 963SA coupled via digital out to a Pioneer receiver (not sure if I'm remebering the right model number for the receiver so won't post).

Otherwise, I was surprised I didn't seem to have any problems with the branching audio-wise since my player drops out on layer changes, especially long with DTS. I really expected problems in places where it skips scenes (like the coccoon seen. Hovever, it played seamlessly on both versions.)

I did notice on the Theatrical Cut that the video had a slight problem with Ash talking to Mother. Just a very slight pause, but a discoloration of the image at the bottom of the frame gave it away.

 

[HankM]

I have some pixelation during some of the featurettes on the Alien3 disc 6. I haven't watched Alien Resurrection yet, I hear that it has many DTS drop-outs. I'm wondering how my gear will handle it.

 

[Grant H]

I have to say after watching Alien 3 last night, I'm not convinced that Alien looks better. The Alien 3 transfer just looked a little more natural to me. Alien doesn't look as "over-processed" as say, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, but I thought Alien 3 looked a bit more film-like for how pristine it was.

I did some brief comparisons of Alien compared to the original and it is a vast improvement for the most part. As has been said, contrast and black level is excellent. The shadows sucked on the old disc and really fell aprart in compression. I really saw a lot of things I could never see before on any video version. The bowels of the ship come to mind. I kind of always thought a lot of things in the movie were supposed to be lost in shadow, but maybe not. The lack of color bleeding was a welcome change. On the old discs, skin tones in particular tended to bleed. Color is nice and tight on the new disc, but I have to say I'm not sure I agree with Scott's new color timing. Having to live with it in the theatrical cut as well as DC especially is upsetting. I actually have qualms about giving away my original DVD because of this. I find the new warmer look a bit too pretty for this type of film. I liked the original, cold look for the coldness of space and the creepy feel of the movie. There are nice spot-on skin tones now throughout the whole film making everyone look really healthy, but I really thought the old look was more atmospheric. Brett looking for Jonesy just seems entirely too different now. Where'd all the gold or brass come from? Why does his skin-tone look so pink and healthy even when he's in the dark? Why Scott changed his mind about the look, I don't know. I remember when the 20th Anniversary DVD was created, Scott took special care to restore the color-timing to the film's original look. A few years later, he tosses all that effort aside? The old DVD has a greener cast to it and more muted colors overall. I found myself being distracted by the vibrance of the new image at times, like Brett's Hawaiian shirt. Also, Alien and Aliens used to match each other better than they do now.
I think the new color timing is partly to blame for the perception of the Aliens transfer as completely inferior. It seems slightly warmer tones compress better than cooler ones, so the new prettied-up version transfers quite nicely. Maybe that's what Scott was really thinking about. Who knows? Aliens is probably about as good as it can look. I think a lot of the gripes really are the film's look itself and shouldn't be modified. I really noticed this time around how the image can become really pristine at the rare time there's any bright light. When it gets back to being dark it's much more grainy even in the same shots. Just the film used and likely intentional as has been said.
Great clean-up job on Alien, but the new color is too pretty. I think the movie is better ugly.

 

[Nelson Au]

Grant-

Thank you for chiming in on the freezing problem. I had tried Disc 1 on 2 computers and my first DVD/LD combo player Pioneer made in 1997. On the older player, it froze, but got past it. On the new computers and my new Pioneer DVL-91 player, it froze and stopped the disc.

I took the AQ set back and exchanged for a new one. I checked the scene I described earlier right at the "Kane's Son" chapter and it played through fine! I'll have to check the rest of the movie when I have a free 2 hours, but this tells me maybe there is a varience in the manufacturing process. Doesn't sound likely that they can have a tolerance of quality, but this is the second time it's happen this year and I wonder if the manufactures of DVD's is getting a little slack in the quality side. I've been buying DVD's since '97 and I never had so much trouble till recently. Of course I realize branching was not a feature in 1997.

Nelson

 

[Enrique B Chamorro]

I was looking at the Noble Gates website and would
love to have some of the documentaries!
Can we get them as mpg's or on a disc?
(If on a disc, I guess it would be PAL format,
but I can still play that on my hacked DVD player.)

 

[Grant H]

I haven't played through Resurrection yet, wanted to last night, but couldn't wake myself from my nap.

If that plays fine, I may want to contact Fox and see if they'll replace Disc 1 for me. I did want to try it again too because I thought I saw what looked like some dust specs on it, in the middle of the disc, but maybe it's actually a flaw in the disc. If anyone knows the best route to go in contacting Fox, please let me know.

 

[David_Virdefors]

great review! I'm off to buy that box right now!