DVD Review HTF REVIEW: Howl's Moving Castle - VERY HIGHLY RECOMMEDED (1 Viewer)

[Brian L]

Anyone notice any captioning weirdness with Denon players??? I am seeing this on a 3910 and also an older 1600.

We watched the film last night with the English soundtrack, captioning and subtitles turned off (which appears to be the default setting, but I manually set it to Off anyway).

But whenever there is any signage in English (the AA Beers trolley car toward the beginning of the film, for example) I get a player generated English "translation" on the bottom of the screen! Nothing comes up for dialog...just when there are English signs on screen.

We first saw that on the title screen, but the translations appeared throughout the film. VERY ANNOYING!

I did some additional testing with the 1600, which does the same thing. It appears that if I toggle the language to something other than English, play the scene, reset to English and play it again, I can make it stop. But even that did not seem to work consistently.

I did play around with the subtitle button on the remote but that did not seem to affect the issue.

I will try this out on a 1st generation Sony and see what happens there.

EDIT: Tried it on my computer...same behavior, although I could toggle Subtitles Off in the computer and get it to stop. I will revsist that with my 3910.

Brian

 

[Max Leung]

Brent, sounds like you ran into the forced-subtitles feature. This is normal - some players allow you to turn this off, some don't.

Hardcore fans reauthor their DVDs to remove these "features" (like forced commercials, FBI warnings, etc.).

 

[Howard Tom]

That was Blythe Danner as Suliman.

 

[Eric F]

Did anyone catch the clip of this in HD on the Oscars? Blew me away! Can't wait for a Blu-Ray version (sans edge-enhancement).

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Yes...that HD clip was GORGEOUS!!!

I paid special attention actually so I could compare since I reviewed the DVD very soon after. There was a VAST amount of resolution increase in that native HD clip on the Oscars...and absolutely no ringing from EE!!!

BTW, that subtitle issue...happened with me too and with all 3 of these releases. I should have commented on it.

It's not just "forced subtitles" because as Brian explained, it only subtitled "signs" and written-words in the movie...no dialogue. It was like some sort of subtitle feature that just translated anything that was written that in theory you would have been able to have read in Japanese...street signs, people's names written on letters etc.

All 3 GHIBLI DVDs just released do this...and cycling through the subtitles back to "off" stops it. Bizarre because I can't turn it back on after turning it off and even when it does it the subtitle setting says "off"...bizarre...

 

[Brian L]

Thanks David...

FWIW, I did send a problem report to Disney via their DisneyDvd.com/support site. Will see what they say, if anything.

Brian

 

[Brian L]

Follow-up on the subtitle issue...

I got an e-mail from Disney asking me to call then to further explain to issue. I did that, and the fellow I spoke with said that the workaround was to simply cycle through the subtitle options until you come back to off; pretty much what David said he had to do.

I have not had a chance to try it yet, but have no doubt that the fix is good.

The Disney rep did say that it was authored that way because the original release had the signage in Japanese. He did not actually say the words "its a problem". I did advise that for future releases, it would be better if they did not author the discs to do that.

I also passed along David's observation that all three of the new titles were affected. The rep did not seem shocked to hear that.

FWIW, while I still consider it an authoring bug, the workaround is simple enough that I don't see any point in making a big deal out of it.

Brian

 

[StephenP]

As far as the ringing, I have come to the conclusion that many Disney dvd's are intentionally made to look worse than possible on DVD to emphasize the improvement when HD is released. I'm glad it doesn't affect every release, but what other conclusion can be made with examples like this and say Cold Mountain (overly filtered)? An extra step in the creation process must be done to achieve these things, and there is no way a person could look at the before and after and say there was improvement made. I honestly believe "they" don't want people to watch these things on large screens until the new media is released.

 

[TheLongshot]

Just watched my copy last week. As DaVid said, there is definitly EE here, even tho not the worst I've seen. Course, I generally don't see it unless I'm looking for it, so it doesn't bother me that much. It is particularly obvious in the face of The Witch Of The Waste, with all those lines...

This is the first time I've seen the sub, since it was dubbed when I saw it theatrically. I'm going to have to lean in favor of the original language a bit, even tho I thought the dub was fine.

Jason

 

[Steve Christou]

I got my region 2 copy today from HMV with an exclusive slipcase featuring alternate coverart, and with 3 artcards included inside, all for just £15 not bad.



The 2nd disc included interviews, John Lasseter and a 20min featurette on the CG used in the film, mostly on the moving castle itself.

I've skimmed thru the film, the PQ looks stunning, will watch it later, grabbed a few screenshots:

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Awesome Steve!

Those screen shots are gorgeous. I don't think I see the ringing in your shots that I see on my R1 version.

If you can get a hold of an R1 copy just to compare...I'd be interested to hear your impressions (specifically, the ringing/EE).

thanks!

dave

 

[Steve Christou]

Thanks David, maybe the ringing doesn't show up much on still frames, although from the bits I saw on my tv there wasn't any noticeable halo effects round the characters. I don't know anyone who has a R1 copy, maybe DVDBeaver will do a comparison test. I'll watch the whole film later and report back.

 

[Patrick H.]

Interestingly, the subtitle issue mentioned above did NOT seem to manifest on my late-model Sony carousel. This is the same player that was able to navigate the twichy authoring on the 'Spirited Away' disc to correctly display the alternate Japanese opening and closing titles. I guess it just likes Miyazaki movies. Good for it.

One subtitle issue with this disc that DID cause me great annoyance is the dumb decision to subtitle the closing song on the Japanese track. While this alone isn't a big issue (aside from having to attempt to read two different lines simultaneously), the song subtitles were stuck practically in the center of the screen! So the finale of the movie is plastered over with two different lines of text! Who's idea was THAT? Seriously, if you're gonna do it, stick them up at the top!

 

[Max Leung]

The European cover (as opposed saying Region 2, which could also refer to the Japanese version) is a lot better than the Region 1 cover.

But, I already made a custom cover that is orders of magnitude better than any I have seen for this title to date...I found a high-quality digital artwork at 300 DPI resolutions - just stunning!

[EDIT: Drat. It doesn't seem to be available anymore. It is very similar to this one, but at twice the resolution and without the text: http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/how...oland_full.jpg ]

I will try to google up the image to share with any of you DIYers out there.

Steve, it also seems your version doesn't have borders on all 4 sides - nice! (Compared to the Japanese R2 version I saw)

 

[Steve Christou]

Max thats near enough the coverart I have on the exclusive HMV slipcase, better than the R2 dvd cover (which is also different to the R1 cover). How many different dvd covers has this film got anyway!

I watched Howls Moving Castle last night there was a slight ringing on the scarecrow in some of the daylight scenes but nothing too distracting, I wouldn't have noticed at all if I wasn't looking for EE. So I'm quite impressed with the dvd, like I said stunning picture, good stereo, a commentary would have been nice, Ghost in the Shell-Innocence had one, I don't much care for storyboards and 2 hours of them was a bit much.

The worse edge enhancement I've ever seen was on a vhs video, it was an anime, either Patlabor or Patlabor 2 I can't remember, but it was horrendous, every character and object had a very noticeable halo around it, bright or dark it was always there, lowering the contrast made no difference, terrible.

 

[Bleddyn Williams]

Here's a comparison with the US, UK & Japanese releases. Looks like the UK is a winner, and it can be had for only $14.95 from CDwow right now!

http://whiggles.landofwhimsy.com/wri...mage-howl.html



Max, if you do post this artwork, please let us know! The covers for both the US & UK editions are rather poor (the HMV cover is much better than either).

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Bleddyn,

OUTSTANDING link. Thank-you.

Everyone, check out that link. While the small-size of the images makes the difference between the R1 and R2 version subtle to detect on the computer screen...I can definitely see a reduction in "ringing" when I hover over the R2 links.

 

[Steve Christou]

Wahay! About time we won something.

Thanks for the link, the Japanese editions seem out of focus or is it me?

 

[Adam_S]

thanks for the link, the one I noticed the biggest difference between the us and the uk was the fireworks/flying one, look at the detail and clarity on Howl's face when you switch from the US one to the UK one. Can't say I saw then thin halos change much between the two.

I'm very glad we don't have those Japanese transfers, ugh.

Adam

 

[TheLongshot]

Yeah, the "fireworks" picture sure looks very soft on the US version.

As for EE, look at the side shot of Sophie. That's the best example here.

Looks like the UK version is framed slightly differently, with a little more information on the bottom. I noticed when I was watching my copy that there was a black bar on the bottom.

On the last picture, there seems to be a lot of image artifacts in the UK version. Is that just the image, or is that how it looks?

Interesting that the UK version has a different logo than the US version. Personally, I like the US version better. (Interesting note: I guess Disney has stopped doing alternate angles for the different titles, like they did with Princess Mononoke. Too bad...)

While I think the UK version looks good, I'm pretty happy with what I have in the US version.

Jason