Blu-ray Review HTF BLU-RAY REVIEW: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1 Viewer)

[Citizen87645]

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate FactoryRelease Date: October 20, 2009
Studio: Warner Brothers
Packaging/Materials: Single-disc Warner Digi-book
Year: 1971
Rating: G
Running Time: 1:40:00
MSRP: $34.99

THE FEATURESPECIAL FEATURESVideo1080p high definition 16x9 1.85:1480i or 480p standard definition; 1080p high definitionAudioDolby TrueHD: English 5.1 / Dolby Digital: English 5.1, French 1.0, Spanish 1.0, German 1.0, Portuguese 1.0Stereo and monoSubtitlesEnglish SDH, Spanish, French, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, SDH, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese and Swedish (movie and select bonus material)English SDH, Spanish, Dutch, German SDH, Italian and Portuguese (on select bonus material)

 

[Mike Frezon]

With an MSRP of $34.99, I saw this disc @ Target this past week for $29.99 (stickered price).
It'll have to come down quite a bit (or pop up in a used bin) for me to bite. Love the film...but that's a bit steep for me.
Thanks for the review, Cameron! /img/vbsmilies/htf/thumbsup.gif

 

[Ronald Epstein]

How does $24.49 from Amazon sound? Click on the button inside the review.

 

[Vincent_P]

The HD-DVD of this was one of the early Warner titles that suffered from terrible jaggies. Am I right in guessing the Blu-ray is a new transfer that eliminates this serious flaw?

Vincent

 

There were no jaggies on my copy, from what I could see. The only mild criticism I have is that the film's opening credits were windowboxed. I have been seeing this more and more on Blu. I don't know why the windowboxing is so severe either. However, this is a mionr issue.....pick this one up!

 

[Brandon Conway]

Credits are windowboxed to prevent overscan and names being cut off on some monitors, thereby keeping them within the "title safe" area. This is only usually an issue with films made prior to the 1980s, where home video viewing took off. It's also why even on Pan & Scan versions of WS films the credits are often in WS.

 

[benbess]

Brandon Conway: I understand the need to do this in the pan and scan vhs era, but anyone playing a blu-ray has a 16:9 hdtv, right? And the films on blu are always (or almost always) formatted to their original and proper aspect ratios. I haven't seen what's being described yet (WW is on my nextflix queue in blu), but it sounds like something from the bad old vhs days. Back in those days, as you said, the only time you saw the film in its ws format was for the credits.

I guess I'm dense and I just don't understand why this is needed on blu...

 

[Brandon Conway]

Well, many films pre-80s had the credits near the border of the film frame itself. A lot of TVs still have enough overscan that without windowboxing these credits would suffer some letters being cut-off on the display. When a video master is prepped from a film, part of a studio's specification is usually to decree that all film credits/text are within the "title safe" area, which is usually well inside a standard TV frame.

Here, found a picture.



If the outer-most white line is the TV Screen, the second white line in is the "title-safe" area for 16:9. Therefore, on older films, in order to make the credits fit within that area the credits need to be windowboxed.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Ben: I think this might be a good example for you. I've got a 26" Samsung CRT HDTV.
We just had a discussion in the 2009 MLB Thread about why my TV is throwing half a TBS network graphic (their "PitchTrax" device) off my screen. See image below:

Another poster showed me how the graphic looks on their home screen. The entire graphic is visible...leading most to conclude that my CRT HDTV has an inordinate amount of overscan.

I suppose that if the credits on a film extend to the far left & right edges of the screen, there could be some concern that people like me might be wondering why the film was so poorly framed for home viewing that some of the letters might be missing.
OTOH, I've had this set for many years now (d'uh...it's a CRT after all! /img/vbsmilies/htf/biggrin.gif ) and have been blissfully unaware that I have had ANY overscanning issues.

 

[Brandon Conway]

Mike, sometimes there are settings in the TV set-up that may help reduce overscan. Have you looked for that yet?

 

[Mike Frezon]

I sure have. The TV (Samsung TXN 2668 WHF) only has the most basic of video menus: themed settings for color/brightness/etc (custom, movie, sports...).
Others are advising me that it's probably something that can only be dealt with in the service menu.
Maybe it's an issue that I should start a thread about in HT-Hardware. But, honestly, until the baseball playoffs aired on TBS, I never knew it was an issue. Blissful ignorance.
Thanks for your input.

 

I understand the need to windowbox. What I am saying is that on this particular title, the windowboxing is quite severe.

 

[benbess]

ahhhhh. I finally understand. Many thanks Brandon and Mike./img/vbsmilies/htf/thumbsup.gif

 

I watched this again tonight because my nephew wanted to see it. The windowboxing isn't as severe as I thought it was. I'm still impressed by this transfer. Is it the most beautiful thing I have ever seen? Nope. Is it the best that Willy Wonka has ever looked on television? By far.

 

[PaulMSchneider]

I decided to buy this at Costco because it was on sale for $10.99.
I'm sorry to report that the Blu-ray is a giant step down from the old widescreen Warner DVD release. It's way too dark overall, details are lost and muddy. It's over-saturated and at times looks blotchy, like big globs of paint. The old DVD (up-converted on my same Blu-ray player) looks much better. I'm so disappointed! At least I didn't pay a lot for it.

 

[RolandL]

Caps-a-holic has a comparison to the DVD. In some scenes a lot more picture info is shown on the Blu-ray.