Sean Patrick

Starship Troopers superbit -a bit washed out?

i recently traded in my Starship Troopers SE for the superbit version...and my impressions fly in the face of all the glowing reviews of the superbit. on my projector, this disc looked a little bit washed out. none of my other superbits look like this, and i don't think my previous Starship Troopers dvd did either.

were my eyes just having "a bad day"?

Matt Stone

It looks terrific on my 53" Panny. Maybe someone else with a projector has an opinion...

Sean Patrick

while i was checking out DVDFile's review to see if anything stuck out in the picture quality section, i noticed that they mentioned the DTS track sounded a bit muffled from too much mid-end bass. i agree with that assessment, as it didn't have the best dts track i've heard and i felt the sound coming from the front mains seemed a bit drowned out.


however, since the consensus is that this is a reference transfer, i'm going to check my brightness settings on the projector and give it another shot. i think i might have both the black and white levels a bit too high.

thanks

Paul Anthony

It pretty much looked the same as the "Special Edition" on my Sony Wega. However, the soundtrack should have been encoded in Surround EX or DTS (Discrete). That would have made ST worth the extra purchase, same goes for the "Spider-Man" Superbit.

Rich Malloy

Sean, there is no single degree of color saturation (or lack thereof) that is correct for every film. The bright carnival colors of "Austin Powers" are not the same as the nearly sepia-gray colors of Tarkovsky's "The Sacrifice" or the steely-blue of "Minority Report", and they are not intended to be. Color correction is one of the key ways to define a film's distinctive look, and it's tough to know whether the telecine colorist has gotten it right for DVD (which is why director-approved/cinematographer-approved transfers are so great when you can get them).

I think the Starship Troopers superbit looks amazing, with excellent black levels (not washed out). The color is muted compared to something like "Austin Powers", of course, but I suspect this is Verhoevan's intention. Likewise, I suspect the candy-colored shots in the new RoboCop transfers are not at all what Verhoevan intended. I think the steely-gray, muted tones of Criterion's disc are closer to his vision.

But it's damn hard to know for sure.

andrew markworthy

FWIW, I had Starship Troopers in the R2 version and then swapped it for the R1 (the conventional, not Superbit), simply because there were more extras on the R1 version. However, the colours went from fairly conventional 'colour movie' on my R2 copy to rather washed out on the R1. I enquired about this on HTF at the time (about 5 years ago - ulp, time flies and all that) and was told that the washed out version was the intended colour scheme, and that the R2 must be abberant. I guess therefore that what you're seeing with the Superbit version may be an extension of the phenomenon I experienced, and that the apparently 'poor' colour, is, as Rich as sensibly pointed out in his post, the intention for this movie.

Sean Patrick

rich -

i understand the nuances of color and stylized uses it (Sleepy Hollow is one of my favorite dvd's and it looks nearly black and white in some scenes!)....it was just that i had seen Starship Troopers so many times on my smaller displays that I coulnd't help but think it looked a little more washed out than i was used to for that title when i switched to superbit.

i guess i was more disappointed in the DTS track than the visuals, actually. i'll probably watch this in DD from now on.

Matt Czyz

As echoed above, the PQ for Starship Troopers SB it near perfect. Compared to the earlier editions, the overall color tone is equally reproduced, and AFAIK, there is no unintentional wash-out.