The Leopard BFI Blu Ray HMV Exclusive Released Nov 2 09 (1 Viewer)

Cover art appears to be the image of Cardinale and Lancaster dancing that has appeared on TBC artwork online for months.

http://hmv.com/hmvweb/displayProductDetails.do?ctx=285;5;-1;-1;-1&sku=217698

Disc is rumoured to be region B, and has been up for preorder on Amazon with a release date as far back as February 2010; but this same disc has just appeared as an HMV exclusive, with no press release or announcement as warning, like Gremlins and the Wizards of Oz exclusives in the US.
Posts your findings here if you're in the UK and able to get to an HMV, so we know whether to import!

Ben
Sydney, Australia

 

[shazzerman]

Bought this baby yesterday and popped it in for a quick look...My untrained eyes saw a magnificently detailed picture and a wholly acceptable PCM mono audio track. And that was before Miss Cardinale entered the frame. I will be watching this after I have dealt with my recent purchases of The Wizard of Oz and From Russia With Love, but for the moment I say, "Import young man!".

 

I imported the second I heard some reports that it wasn't terrible.

My viewing of it suggested that I'd had a very bad experience viewing it in a theatre, with the filthiest print that ever graced God's Green Earth, and a projector with lenses out of alignment, which produced a massive blurry patch in the dead centre, where the actors liked to dwell.

So, the blu ray was a MASSIVE improvement for me, also in the audio department. The audio at the live screening was screachy and thin; just horrible! But its far better preserved here.

Viewing on a 50" plasma, something bothers me about movement on this disc. Despite its tremendous detail, there are two issues I had with it. 1) jet blacks are often used as a compliment. Sometimes the blacks were so dark here that Cardinale, who is a brunette, appeared to have black hair. Surely some strange adjustment must have happened to cause this.

edit: initially I reported errors in movement on this disc there are none, it was my TV.

 

[ChristianLiemke]

The BFI used the Giuseppe Rotunno approved master from 2003 or 2004 that was used for the Criterion DVD, too.

The movie is segmented into 4 files on the BFI Blu-ray playing in this order:

00002.M2TS | Time In: 0:00:00.000 | Length: 0:57:25.066
00003.M2TS | Time In: 0:57:25.066 | Length: 0:55:26.114
00012.M2TS | Time In: 1:52:51.181 | Length: 0:01:37.013
00011.M2TS | Time In: 1:54:28.194 | Length: 1:11:00.464

Something went wrong with file 00011.M2TS, because for the last 71 minutes of the film, contrast (or gamma) and color on the Blu-ray aren't correct anymore. The first 114 minutes color and contrast values are the same for the BD and DVD.

Two screenshots to show the differences. The one from the BD is at 123:33 minutes, the one from the Criterion DVD at 124:11 minutes. There's a difference in the length of the movie on both discs because of the Criterion, 20th Century Fox and Titanus logos at the beginning of the Criterion DVD, so the time codes aren't the same.

#1: BFI Blu-ray
#2: Criterion DVD


Here are two more screenshots similar to the ones I posted above. They are made with the same codecs and settings. The one from the BFI BD is at 94:08 minutes (it's on the 00003.M2TS file), the one from the Criterion DVD at 94:46 minutes.

#3: BFI Blu-ray
#4: Criterion DVD

I checked the BFI BD with three different software players, two different codecs and on my standalone player. The heavy blacks from screenshot #1 are always visible.

Gary Tooze at DVDBeaver praised the disc but now he added a note about this issue. He was made aware of this fault, after I wrote about this at two different DVD forums.

 

[ChristianLiemke]

Yesterday I finished my screenshot comparison of the BFI Blu-ray, the Criterion DVD and the German DVD set from Koch Media with all screenshots in 1920x1080.