JAMES BOND ULTIMATE COLLECTION (1 Viewer)

[jim.vaccaro]

Normally I'd agree, but this is one of those cases where the format war makes the "wait for an HD release" option less than enticing, as it looks like it will only be offered on one format. I can spend $200 on DVD now, or drop $800-1K on a BD player and another ~$300 on the movies in HD.....and spend another $400-500 on an HD-DVD player so I can play all those Universal titles I want. Ugh. Neither option is a perfect one.

Anyway, I have all the Connery Bond SEs already, I'll see if I can pick up the excellent OHSS used somewhere and just wait out format war.

 

[Eric Emma]

At first this pissed me off but someone pointed out it's cheaper and plus it will be easier on a college kid's wallet like mine. As for HD, I'm a college kid, I'm not going have a HD TV or DVD player for a long time so my SD-DVDs are fine for a long time.

 

[dailW]

i dont care how they bundle these , back in 99-2000 when they released them i only bought two and the rest on vhs while having a dvd player at the time i had a thought and it sounded good at the time. now that i have an HD television now i want these.badly.i dont want to wait around for blu-ray.

 

[Matthew H]

I don't see why they can't release them all at the same time individually. All I want are the Connery and Brosnan ones.. and of course Lazenby. They can keep the other ones.

Damn MGM.

 

[Dharmesh C]

I don't know which version is suppose to be legit. Someone needs to bring this to Sony or Fox's attention because this will surely affect the Region 1!

 

[John H Ross]

It'd be really cool if one of the HTF reps could take this forward on behalf of the membership and report back. How about it guys?

It's the long-term future of Bond we're talking about here since, if there ARE serious problems with colour timing, framing, etc they're sure to be carried over to whatever HD format comes next.

John

 

[Robert Crawford]

I'm with RAH, my next purchase of Bond films will be on a HD format.

 

[Robert Crawford]

John,
Report back on what exactly?

 

[John H Ross]

Report back on whether MGM or FOX or whoever are aware of the probable (pretty obvious IMHO) mistakes on these titles, particularly Goldeneye, and find out if they'd be willing to address the issues prior to the R1 release of these titles (particularly the ones that aren't out until next May).

Failing that, prepare them for a bunch of unhappy customers at the next studio forum chat!!

John

 

[Robert Crawford]

We don't have any chats schedule with MGM nor Fox and there probably won't be any in the future. Also, I still don't understand what issues you guys are talking about? Are we talking about PQ issues from prior dvd releases or something specific about the upcoming release date?

 

[Eric Emma]

 

[Eric Emma]

-double post-

 

[MarcoBiscotti]

Why does the caption of St. Petersburgh for the new transfer of Goldeneye look so blown out?

 

[Robert Crawford]

So this isn't a Region 1 release? You know that different elements might be used for this upcoming Region 1 release?

Again, I would stay away from this upcoming SD-DVD release, knowing that the James Bond films will be huge releases for Blu-ray and will probably be done using MPEG-4 and perhaps 50GB discs.

 

[John H Ross]

Robert, I highly doubt that a completely different master will be used in R1. I mean Lowry Digital won't have purposefully discriminated against R2 surely? The only things different that R1 can look forward to are, apparently, that the burned-in captions are restored as are the original mono soundtracks - both of which are greatly appreciated. The framing etc will, I'm sure, be equally bad across both regions. If everything is miraculously corrected then I'll be the first to eat humble pie. But let's not take the chance, eh?

And, will all due respect, if these new prints are what Sony intend using for Blu-Ray then they can shove them up their corporate asses along with their flashy new system! A misframed image compressed with MPEG-4 and on a 50GB disc will still be a misframed image!

John

 

[rich_d]

Eric,

Thanks for the post.

Robert:

I think (one) of the points that John is making affects any video format. If they have mucked up the aspect ratio on GoldenEye R2, what makes us think they will correct it for R1 or hi-def? Particularly if the consumer doesn't demonstrate pointed concern and displeasure - - after all, isn't that one advantage of a group forum?

Take a look at the LICENCED TO KILL title shot. It is suspected that they allowed a computer to change the colors so the girl's face has more natural facial tones even if that was never the original intent - with the change really mucking up the rest of the image.

Or GOLDFINGER. The famous scene will Jill Masterson (the golden girl) ... well she is not as gold anymore. Is the color of gold really that subjective? Perhaps the people working on this project weren't able to secure any samples of gold paint. Or perhaps the color of gold was different in the 60's? After all, it's not like that stuff is just walking around. Oops, time to go, let me check my watch.

I guess they really wanted that phone next to her (that should be reflecting a bit of gold as well as artificial light) to be pearly white.
Old (Region 1)



New (Region 2)



The point that hi-def Bond is around the corner is well taken. Our point (John, correct me if I'm wrong) is that if the digital images are not right, it doesn't matter that R1 SD and hi-def are around the corner, both will be disappointing.

Edit: I see that as I was more long-winded, John got to the point faster.

 

[John H Ross]

Yes, that's exactly our point.

Sadly I'm guessing (my opinion only of course) that a lot of people have already written off SD-DVD in favour of the oh-so-superior new formats that are disappointing... I mean... emerging into the marketplace. But they're forgetting that the HD masters used for recent and forthcoming DVDs are likely the same HD masters that'll be used for HD-DVD and, in the case of Bond, Blu-Ray. So it's important to get these things fixed now I would have thought.

JR

 

[Frank@N]

My suggestion to R1 Bond fans who are troubled by the apparent mixed benefits of the recent transfers...

Let the new transfers hit R1 and be fully digested/reviewed by the DVD community.

Problems will be reported and hopefully these issues (framing, excessive color timing changes, subtitles, soundtrack) will be corrected in the HD releases.

I've been pouring over the R2 reviews since they were posted, but the typical HTF guy won't really care till these are out in R1.

I'm also willing to holding out a glimmer of open mindedness to maybe hear that the color timing changes were designed to better create the time-of-day/look originally imagined by the film makers.

At any rate, I'm looking at these DVDs like the 1997 Lucas special editions, the first stab at a major work in progress.

 

[John H Ross]

Yeah, this is what I suspect will happen. Oh well, it's only $200 or so down the tubes on a set of DVDs that we highly suspect, going in, are imperfect. Sigh...

God bless HD :-/

John

 

[Robert Crawford]

Let me ask a dumb question. How do we know that the reframing is not correct? Just because you have more picture on a prior dvd release, doesn't mean the framing was correct. The same question applies to the color timing issue.

If there are problems with color and framing, I think it's too late for any corrections for this upcoming SD-DVD release. Unfortuantely, for the most part and there has been some exceptions, this is based on prior experiences with how these studios deal with such issues.




Crawdaddy