Spartacus

OliverK · 07-28-2008, 04:28 AM

Hello Robert,

are you at liberty to tell us if there is work being done on Spartacus to prepare it for Blu-Ray release ?
And I am not talking about the second coming for the disappointing HD-DVD but something that you would be happy with.

Thanks !

Oliver

PaulDA · 07-28-2008, 09:49 AM

I too would like to know. When I first heard Spartacus was to be on HD DVD, it nearly motivated me to jump onto HD DVD in 2006 (rather than Dec. 2007) but when I learned of its poor quality and how disappointed Mr. Harris was with it, I held off from buying it and from buying into HD DVD until prices plummeted (at that point, I wanted to know if HDM was worth the upgrade and HD DVD offered me an inexpensive way to test for that). So, until an HDM version is released with Mr. Harris' stamp of approval, I'll remain content with my R2 [I believe it mirrors the Critierion R1 release, or close to it, in terms of extras] release from the UK (picked it up for very little on a trip to the UK in March 2007--before then I soldiered on with my letterboxed VHS copy

).

Jon Lidolt · 07-28-2008, 10:16 AM

Add me to that list. I suspect that we're not the only ones who will only purchase a Blu-ray edition of Spartacus if Universal does the right thing and hires RAH to supervise a new HD transfer.

OliverK · 07-30-2008, 04:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jon Lidolt

Add me to that list. I suspect that we're not the only ones who will only purchase a Blu-ray edition of Spartacus if Universal does the right thing and hires RAH to supervise a new HD transfer.

I take it as a good sign that so far we got no answer from the man himself. If absolutely nothing was happening I would think that we would have gotten a short answer, but it might just be that either Mr. Harris is working on Spartacus again in one form or another or that he at least knows of developments he cannot talk about. Or maybe it is just that I want something good to happen to Spartacus so that we can finally enjoy it on Blu-Ray

Xylon · 08-26-2008, 06:39 AM

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Cassy_w · 08-26-2008, 05:19 PM

Ouch. That is shocking. How could that be allowed to happen? It looks worse than many standard DVD's I have.

Patrick McCart · 08-26-2008, 07:57 PM

Wow, it doesn't look nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Grainy, but not exactly "worse than Madacy" level as touted.

Douglas Monce · 08-26-2008, 08:50 PM

If you look at the details in the fine text in the title sequence, you'll find that the HD DVD is actually much more detailed than the DVD. That isn't to say that this release couldn't be much better.

Doug

OliverK · 08-26-2008, 09:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patrick McCart

Wow, it doesn't look nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Grainy, but not exactly "worse than Madacy" level as touted.

The color timing is way off and makes the movie look completely different from the theatrical prints I have seen, that alone is completely unnecessary even with the bad master they had.

As Doug said it is better than all previous versions with regard to detail but this does not mean that much, knowing that Spartacus has the potential to look as detailed as for example Grand Prix.

Douglas Monce · 08-27-2008, 01:28 AM

I believe that the Spartacus transfer comes from 65mm elements on less than state of the art telecine equipment. Hence the softness of something that should be practically razor sharp.

And as noted the Criterion version is much more accurate with regard to color. I believe Mr. Harris had a hand in the color corrections on that version.

I will say this, at least the HD DVD version of this film still looks like film.

Doug

Lord Dalek · 09-22-2008, 04:40 PM

Maybe Criterion would be nice enough to do the blu-ray using a new 8k RAH-approved transfer.