*** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

I purchased Betrayed, Bhowani Junction and 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse which are all MGM titles. That would be great if the MGM titles are included in the WB Archives. Now if we can get Fox to start a similar service titles like the Egyptian, Esther and the King, King of the Kyber Rifles and Seven Cities of Gold would become available.

The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Glenn Ford, Ingrid Thulin, Lee J Cobb) and Bhowani Junction (Ava Gardner & Stewart Granger) were shot in widescreen 2:40 x 1 and are released in anamorphic widescreen 16 x 9. The audio is 2 channel stereo. I just viewed a small portion of each DVD and the video I saw was excellent.

Betrayed (Clark Gable, Lana Turner and Victor Mature) was shot in 1:33 x 1 and is presented in Full Screen with the audio in mono. Again I only viewed a small portion of the DVD and the video was excellent.

This service is great and hopefully the next group released will include the Naked and the Dead, Dark of the Sun and PT 109.

The DVD's were shipped via UPS and I received them 3 days after ordering.

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If you have a DVD drive, can you check if these two are dual layer discs (over 4.7 GB)? 4 Horseman is over 2.5 hours long, so it should really be on a dual layer disc. If it was on a single layer that would be just 4.2 Mbps, which I think is too low (It seems that recently Warner usually aim for about 6 Mbps.)

I suspect that both of these films were prepared for regular DVD releases, I am sure Bohwani Junction was part of DVD Decision 2006, and I can recall Warner talking about the likelihood of releasing more Minnelli films during a chat.

I would love if Fox did something like this too so we could get access to rarer CinemaScope films like Blue Denim, On the Threshold of Space, The Way to the Gold, and even a new transfer of Beneath the 12 Mile Reef would be great.

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Great idea to have a thread to discuss the received DVDs. Thank you for sharing with us!

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4 HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE has already been released by WHV as a 'traditional' retail DVD as a region 2 in France and the review by Gary at DVD Beaver says it was dual-layered disc - but this is no guarantee that the 'on-demand' version in dual-layered as well of course.

Feedback on all these releases is really welcome, thanks very much to all.

Sergio

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BETRAYED was protected for Academy, but was composed and intended for widescreen presentation.

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How is the artwork? Does it look like a regular dvd?

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DREAM LOVER (1986)


VIDEO: The image is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen from a rather grainy and speckled element. Darker scenes, of which there are many, are rather murky with ill-defined contrast and compression blockiness. Exterior daylight scenes fare quite well with decent contrast and lighter grain, though the transfer never quite reaches beyond simply average even during its best moments. The encoding, however, introduces some major problems.

Aside from the disappointment of being an interlaced encode, there is some strange vertical strobing in many of the dark scenes with the infrared lights. The images below were captured using VLC in PNG format and then saved with the least amount of compression as JPEG files. The excessive color strobing seen here is NOT an artifact introduced in the screen capture process - the image actually looks like this at times. I also have not deinterlaced the images at all so you will see the combing in these captures (if you look for it - I tried to use frames with the least amount as my Sony BD player perfectly deinterlaces the image with no problems, as I'm sure many other DVD players can do as well).




We go from this highly problematic shot...

on to this acceptable one...


Overall, of the 5 titles I purchased, this release had the worst video quality. I would've given it a 2.75/5 if it weren't for the shoddy compression. The encoding is what really killed it as the flaws were distracting enough to draw my attention away from the film. 1.5/5

AUDIO: Though the packaging states mono, DREAM LOVER is presented in 2.0 Dolby Surround, and in some scenes is quite effective! I didn't have any problem with the soundtrack at all, save for it sounding a bit thin. The mixing is rather odd in that sometimes during the key flashback that plays over and over in the film there are some sound effects that are sometimes in the rear channel and sometimes in the front channels without any apparent rhyme or reason. The film was presented theatrically in Dolby Stereo, and that is the soundtrack on this DVD release.

OVERALL: Well, at least this disc also came with a non-anamorphic widescreen trailer. Oh, and the movie is in anamorphic widescreen. Some of it looks okay. Sorry, not a lot of good words for this DVD, or for the movie. It was a blind purchase because I've recently been exploring some of McNichol's films.

re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

THE BABY MAKER (1970)



VIDEO: Another interlaced, 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation, though with a seemingly better encode than DREAM LOVER by a wide margin, even though the print used for the transfer is also less than optimal. And make no mistake, it is a print. There are cigarette marks (is that what they are called?) at the end of reels and a bit more dirt on display that one might expect from a studio DVD release. The image is very soft and sometimes appears to be out-of-focus, though this was a low budget independent film from 1970 so expectations must be held in check. Color is quite nice though variable as whites tend towards being slightly yellow or pink, often varying shot to shot. Contrast is quite strange as the sides of the image have a steep black level drop off while the center of the frame lacks contast and has blacks that waver from being slightly reddish or bluish in tone. Opticals, partically the opening titles, appear quite grimy. Still, there is an unprocessed and unrefined look to the transfer that suits the source and is quite watchable. Compression artifacts were not a problem, and even with its flaws I was quite pleased with the result, warts and all. Or maybe that's because I liked the film so much, I dunno. It was another blind purchase (as were all 5 of the titles I obtained), and one I was glad to discover. 2.5/5

AUDIO: Dolby Digital mono encoded at 192 kbps. Flat with slight hiss, though not sounding noisy like a typical optical track from a print might, the audio was neither so good or so bad that I look exception to it.

Again, the images below (save for the one noted) were not deinterlaced. And yes, the strange vertical color strobing seen a lot in DREAM LOVER is on the National General logo but rarely seen anywhere else in the movie.









The same shot deinterlaced...


OVERALL: I was glad to discover this rather unusual and dated film. The idea of a surrogate mother now isn't so radical, though this film takes things a bit further by having the father impregnate the surrogate the old fashioned way while the wife is in another next room. Talk about having faith in the strength of a marriage... I can understand that a film like this probably doesn't have a large market and so I'm grateful to have it on DVD in anamorphic widescreen even though it appears no effort was made to correct some of the color and contrast fluctuations in the print.

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Save for the substandard printing, yes. Even the face of the disc itself looks quite nice. It could be mistaken for a very, very good bootleg, as far as the disc and packaging goes. Do the actual movies look like regular DVDs? Well, that's up for debate on a per title basis....

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Are you certain about the audio on "4 Horsemen"? The audio was mastered in 5.1 on the laserdisc.

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Thanks for the reviews Chuck!

The Baby Maker is one of the films I was interested in buying (at a later date due to money restrictions). Barbara Hershey looks lovely in your screenshots

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I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though a print was used for the transfer, one with variable color and contrast at that. It has the look of still photos from that era, though without the extreme fading. I had hoped a trailer would be included and that it would be a progressive transfer, but still - don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, or whatever that expression is - lol.

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Thanks for this thread ... It's very much appreciated!

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Yes, it is for the more obscure films like this, where I really see the enormous benefits of this service. These are films that I never thought I would ever see or see again, and now I will have the ability to actually own them...it is a tremendous boom for us film fanatics!!!

I just wish their pricing would come down some...but we will see.

Thanks again for your detailed review. I look forward to any others you might be posting.

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Any member that wants to post their review comments regarding the PQ of any Warner Archive DVD release is welcome to do so in this thread.






Crawdaddy

Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

THIS WOMAN IS DANGEROUS (1952)


VIDEO: This is the oldest film of the five I purchased from the Warner Archive and yet it has the best image quality! The image is framed at 1.33:1 and is impeccably clean with a grand grayscale, one that unfortunately shows up the limitations of the encoding. Many shadows and background elements "hold and shift", something I often see on independent DVD releases and some early studio efforts. I rarely see this kind of digital artifact on major studio releases, but it is here, albeit not to a severe degree. It can be glimpsed in the screen captures below, though it is easier to spot in motion. Aside from this being an interlaced transfer and the inadequate compression, I was quite pleased with this disc. Edges are sharp without appearing enhanced, and grain is quite fine and film-like. There are a few shots that appear to be dupes, with a sudden spike in grain and a slightly diffuse quality to them (the capture in the car below is an example), but overall the image quality is quite satisfactory. 3.75/5 (It would rate a solid 4.5 if it were progressively encoded with better compression).

AUDIO: Presented in its original mono (Dolby Digital 2.0 - 192 kbps), the film sounds as other films from the era do: a bit shrill and sharp, but quite distinct and intelligible. Surface noise was never a problem, and I didn't detect any distortion or optical track funkiness.

OVERALL: I'm pleased with the result, even if the fact that it is interlaced and features substandard encoding does give me pause. The theatrical trailer is also included, though not noted anywhere on the packaging or the Warner Archive website.

Again, I haven't deinterlaced these captures as I probably should've, so you'll see a bit of combing in all of them.

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I sincerely hope that they release the next batch of titles with progressively enhanced transfers. It does make a difference and - as Warner really wants to give us the best quality available when it comes to this Archive Collection -I hope they might at least consider it.

Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

THE GRASSHOPPER (1970)



VIDEO: Presented in an interlaced, 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, THE GRASSHOPPER is quite watchable with only minor flaws consistent with the vintage of the film. Like THE BABY MAKER, THE GRASSHOPPER is a 1970 National General release, but that is where the similarities end. While THE BABY MAKER is extremely soft with variable contrast and transferred from a somewhat iffy element, THE GRASSHOPPER is sharp with firmer contrast, more consistent color values, sporting moderate grain with very little dirt and damage. Even the National General logo looks better here than on the other release, only showing a slight hint of the vertical color strobing far more apparent on some of the other Warner Archive releases I've seen.
Dissolves and opticals appear grimy with thick grain, but that's the norm from what I've seen of films from this era. The last screen capture is one such example, probably the worst looking shot in the film. There is some macroblocking to be sure (check out the hood of the car in the screen capture), but the compression job is better than I anticipated at handling the grain structure after seeing less than ideal results on some other Warner Archive titles. There is so much activity and moving camera work on display that there doesn't seem to be much time to nitpick the limitations of the image quality. 3.5/5

AUDIO: There isn't much to report about this mono (DD 2.0 192 kbps) track: crisp-sounding music with low noise, lower in volume than I expected with no low end to speak of.

OVERALL: The film is far from perfect (it's entry in the Bad Movies We Love book is what prompted my purchase), but it is a lot of trashy fun. I imagine the film was quite bawdy for its time, though it would probably rank as a PG-13 today. The DVD from Warner Archive is satisfactory and better than I expected, though I do hope that progressive encoding as well as improved compression grace future releases.

Again, these captures have not been deinterlaced. Miss Bisset is in nearly every shot and scene!

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Aside from the interlacing issues and the "cigarette burns", those captures look quite good, IMO.

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Much better than recording them off of television, for sure. And even if there were recorded from TV they wouldn't be in anamorphic widescreen and would probably have logos in the corner or something.

Bottom line: The titles I got are better than the alternatives by a large margin (the alternatives being VHS releases from decades ago or a TV broadcast) - but still not up to the most basic standard studio releases.

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Chuck, thanks for the in-depth reporting, and going to the trouble for the screenshots. The Grasshopper and Sweet November were two of the titles I was planning to order this week (note the past tense). In other words, this is substandard product (for a major studio bare bones dvd release in 2009) sold at a premium price.
I was just tickled with this program from a conceptual standpoint. I still think it's a great idea. But my assumptions were that the modest rollout (150 to start, 20 per month thereafter) was arrived at because that was the inital number of titles they had digitally remastered (for HD...we are in an HD studio archiving era, are we not?) and had a 'disc image' of the full dvd release for retail sales that either had been imminent (within the next 12 months) or had been postponed from an earlier planned release and never found their way back on schedule.
Essentially, I was expecting a generally high quality, progressive, well compressed and authored disc...just one delivered burned rather than stamped.
These all sound like they've simply taken a master (interlaced and in some cases, masters from the mid 90s or earlier created for cable broadcast or LD) and used a one-size-fits-all compression system set to auto-pilot.
This dampens my enthusiasm for this whole program quite a bit. I wwas NOT one of the people strenuously complaining about the $20 per cost. However I expected to be be seeing quality equivilent to their $10 bare bones retail catalog discs. That is clearly not the case here.

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Well, I don't think they were making anamorphic widescreen transfers of films like THE BABY MAKER and such in the 90s. Heck, of the 4 anamorphic widescreen titles I got NONE had EVER been released or shown before in widescreen anywhere. If these were recycled LD masters, that would be one thing, but they aren't.

Now, as far as always using the best print for their source and doing any additional color correction or dirt removal...

I wouldn't have a problem if the titles weren't interlaced and had better compression. Those are really my only major gripes, and the compression quality seems to vary from title to title as does the transfer quality.

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Any title that has the Turner logo preceding it, as well as severely windowboxed title cards, to me sounds like a 90's era master created by Turner for cable broadcast or an LD release. I wasn't refering to your reviews Chuck, but others I've read so far. The widescreen films being anamorphic, should be exempt here (unless Warner feels they can get away with slipping in an upconvert here and there ), but the Turner logo and the windowboxing has been noted on *some* pre-widescreen era titles so far.
And frankly, while anamorphic is well and good, I consider that to be a baseline attribute at this point in time. And it's only one aspect of what contributes to a good presentation. If the vast majority of people are going to be watching these on sub 32" CRT sets, then the weak encoding and compression artifacting might not be a distraction. On a large display or a front projector they will be. I'll still be ordering Grasshopper (and others possibly) at some point as I've wanted to see it for a long time now. But overall quality factors into the sense of value, and value is becoming a bigger and bigger criteria for me. These archive titles (especially ones I haven't seen feedback on) will just get shuffled to the bottom of the deck in terms of priority.
And just to clarify, I'm not expecting digital restoration on these either for the garden variety speckles and emulsion scratches. Compression artifacting and combing are the issue for me, as is the hit and miss nature. For $20 a pop, I'll have to let others be the guinea pigs here. While the preview on the site is a nice gesture, it is woefully inadequete in ascertaining how these will actually look on a proper set up-unless your only criteria is print quality.

Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

I do not understand the criticism on this forum regarding the quality of these discs.

After all of the negative things I have heard, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the DVDs I have received this week from Warner Archive. Granted, I have done spot checks on only 2 discs so far, so I cannot speak to the quality of the other 148.

I purchased Westbound (1959) with Randolph Scott and Doc Savage (1975) with Ron Ely. Both films are anamorphic widescreen in their original 1.85:1 aspect ratio.

Westbound is the only collaboration between star Randolph Scott, producer Harry Brown, and director Budd Boetticher that had not yet been released on DVD. I found the video and audio quality to compare favorably with the other restored versions of the "Ranown" films on DVD. This film is seldom shown on TV and even when it is shown it is typically pillarboxed. It is a joy seeing this film fill my widescreen TV. It is worth noting that this Warner Archive version of Westbound does not suffer from the "focusing" effect that stood out like a sore thumb on the DVD restoration of Seven Men From Now. On that DVD, the screen went noticeably in and out of focus during scene transitions. This effect was clearly not a deliberate artistic decision made by the producers of the film but rather a byproduct of restoration of footage during scenes followed by lack of restoration on transition scenes. I have not observed that glitch on the Westbound DVD by Warner Archive. Based on this, I do not agree that these DVDs are inferior to regular standard releases.

Doc Savage has some minor (very minor) debris in the first few minutes which shows that it might receive further restoration in the future. The picture quality of the remainder of the film seems almost pristine. A trailer for the film is included on this DVD, and if you want to see how bad this film could look, then look no further than this unrestored trailer in 1.33.1 aspect ratio. Compared to the trailer, the film (which is 1.85:1 like Westbound) looks great.

I have some standard studio DVD releases in my collection that are inferior in quality to these DVDs. I look forward to future releases in this collection and I hope to see the other studios follow suit in releasing films that might otherwise not see the light of day on DVD.

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The French DVD, which I have, is 2 channel surround.

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If the reviewers could note the nature and size of their display, the source component, and the distance from the screen they are viewing from, it would be a big help in the future.
This is not a criticism of any post in this thread, just a general issue I see when people post their impressions about various media. It's really aggrevating when you go into the HD forums. Too many variables that can swing someone else's perceptions from worthwile to worthless.

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I'm viewing the discs on a Sony BDP-350 Blu-Ray player via HDMI on my Polaroid 47" 1080p monitor.

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DREAM LOVER has that old logo at the beginning of it, but it is an anamorphic widescreen master, so go figure.

I think there is a clear difference between the people who are watching their discs on analog displays and interlaced vs those with HD displays and upscaling capability. Those older displays with composite video could cover a lot of the problems some of us are seeing. DREAM LOVER might look just fine using S-Video on a 27" analog TV (I doubt it would look THAT good though), but upscaled to 1080p on a 47" LCD, well... All of the shortcomings are loud and clear.

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Warner sent me a handful of these titles to evaluate.

I pulled out a title at random, The Mating Game and put
it in the player.

I can't say I am overly impressed with what I saw. Video quality
is quite watchable, but I would be very disappointed if this were a
major studio release.

Picture looked somewhat compressed as there were visible artifacts.

The fact I was using a upconverting BD player probably magnified the
transfer deficiencies. I mean, overall, the transfer looked just passable.

I could say the same thing about Westbound which looked decent,
but was plagued with very minor video shifting and some minor compression
artifacts.

The best thing about the the scenes I watched on both titles was the
audio which sounded very clean.

From other reviews I have read, I suppose these DVDs are meant to be
taken at face value. They aren't major restorations, probably look
decent but not superb, but fortunate enough are we to finally get these
in our libraries.

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Expecting these titles to be from HD masters is a bit too high of a standard, IMO. Investing the money into HD masters vs. the relatively inexpensive manner of this Warner Archive program are two things that just don't fit together.