Alliance.....is the quality of their DVD releases inferior?

And anamorphic too!

They don't ALWAYS suck, but lately often enough they have some gross faux pas that Canadian aficionados are wary.

It's by Lions Gate/TVA Films...not Alliance. Plus, just because Alliance has those 3 titles that are inferior to US release, doesn't mean they're the worst. They've since released a widescreen anamorphic version of The Straight Story...what's done is done. They can't really do anything about it.

At least they're improving. Other than those few titles, most of their other ones are identical to the US release...even with a few that are superior eg. eXistenZ, Good Will Hunting, Trainspotting, Far From Heaven (original cover).

I find it unfair to hold it against a company for what they did in the past. Most of those inferior titles were released a while ago. As for The Fast Runner, it was released half a year before the US release. AA is mainly a distributor and they don't have much resource as other studios...so to expect the best transfer from them is not fair. The fact that they actually spent the time and gave us some impressive extras is commendable. If Columbia had their transfer available at the time of the Alliance release, I'm quite sure AA would have tried to obtain the better transfer...but it wasn't, so I won't blame them.

Can you provide me with examples proving this statement?





I think this is a vast understatement... plus pan and scanning The Straight Story etc. etc.... There really is no excuse for what they do to modern films... they have no integrity- no respect for the film-makers creation... I would like one example where their image quality is superior... adding one extra deleted scene doesn't mean much to me, and I have numerous examples where anamorphic titles have inferior image quality to non-anamorphic... there is no excuse for a Canadian company mangling these Canadian titles the way that they do... and the trouble is I don't have any examples where they are better. I've compared 180 DVDs graphically and AA fails everytime they are up against another...

Neither does Madacy, but that is no reason I would buy their product. Perhaps if they can't put it out properly then they shouldn't do it at all...

The Fast Runner came out in January of this year... without the Colmbia, they would have destroyed the vast presentation of, arguably, Canada's greatest artistsic film...

Hey, I have easy access to their releases, so I would love for them to be a worthy distributor... but they are not... and I have been in their building in Toronto, it is magnificent... perhaps they should spend less money on their foyer and more money getting the proper prints of films they transfer to DVD...

eXistenZ: DVDFile's comparison.

Good Will Hunting: DVDFile's comparison.

Trainspotting: DVDFile's comparison.

DJ

Thanks...Damin for those links...

the first says...

I'll read through the other two later... but regardless I won't be taking any chances on Alliance anytime soon... I agree that there Extras are sometimes very good, but the examples I have cited speak volumes for the lack of care they can occasionally put into their image quality.... perhaps I am less forgiving than some of you, mainly because it is my pocketbook that gets stung... especially on Atanarjuat - I was sure they would be superior, being a 2 disc version to the Columbia's single... and they proved me wrong again.

From Forum Member James Roberts:

and Tom
I don't know what we are supposed to hold them to then... things they haven't done yet? Cause one day after there releases is the past... It is the only barometer we have of there work is what they have done and how they have treated some films... shamefully I think.

Regards,

Regards,

Gary, there's no excuses for Alliance's performance in the past. There's no argument about that and I value your comparisons a lot. What I am saying is that at least they're improving. That's what I believe is the most important thing. If a company continues to release subpar products, then they are to blame. However, Alliance has been consistently improving themselves.

Personally, I have no fears of buying new Alliance products because the majority of the time, it's identical to the US ones. As I stated earlier, the case with The Fast Runner is one of the rare situations where Alliance has to make their own transfer. Had Columbia Tristar not released their version later, we probably wouldn't be complaining right now...and I expected Columbia to come up with a better transfer. I would have been surprised if they didn't.

Anyways, I love your comparisons...I'm just saying that every company has a dud once in a while and Alliance is no different. The important thing is that they're improving...that's more than we can ask for in a company. I guess what they should have done is re-release those 3 movies in a superior form. They probably thought it's easy for us to buy the US version so there's no real point in doing so. I mean seriously though, out of their entire catalogue, these are the only 3 that I can find fault with. That's pretty good in my opinion.

Here are more comparisons that you requested:
Good Will Hunting - DVD Launch eXistenZ - DVD Angle
Far From Heaven:
Alliance
http://www.dvdsoon.com/servlet/image...80&quality=0.8

Universal

The contents are identical, but I applaud them for sticking with the theatrical poster.



PS. I would love to see you do a comparison of The Straight Story (widescreen version). I only trust your picture quality comparisons

I would also like to add that the Alliance Atlantis version of The English Patient has an anamorphic transfer. The only complaint that people have is that it's a flipper and no extras (although some other reviews says there's a commentary so I don't know what to believe). But transfer wise, I heard the AA version is better....maybe you can do a comparison on this one too?

Fair enough... can anyone comment on "The Songs from the 2nd Floor" by Alliance... we don't have anything to compare it to yet... but reports are bad...:
Can anyone verify this... or review the Alliance disc if they have it ?

Regards,

^ I am not sure about the commentary. One site says NO EXTRAS, the other says YES...so I'm thinking no....

Maybe I'll pick up the disc soon and I can tell you guys....or maybe someone here has it?

here

I believe the site is WRONG. They even listed it as a snapper...which it is not. So I wouldn't get my hopes up about a commentary either.

I wouldn't say flat out intolerable, but the disc does have its major flaws:

-Transfer is taken from a PAL source, so the running time (94 min.) does not match the 35mm release here (100 min.)
-The film has this eerie, digital-video look at times because of it. There's also some bad shimmering and artifacts at times that is really noticeable.
-The subtitles are in fact english captions, and weird ones at that. Occasionaly you'll see subtitles such as [He is crying.] or [Music.]

I tried my best to ignore this, and I'm happy that it is finally available in R1, I wouldn't complain if a full restoration job was done by some Canadian or American company.

Jason

The Alliance release of the Canadian-produced family film Virginia's Run is quite good--anamorphic widescreen and solid two-channel audio. There are no extras.

There's nothing to compare it to, because a U.S. release is probably at least a year away, although it will have extras.

Alliance has screwed up a bunch of other releases too.Shallow Grave is in pan and scan only.The Mgm release is in Widescreen.How about the packaging they used for Pulp Fiction,Jackie Brown and Beatles Hard Day's Night.The worst thing I ever seen.They used a cheap plastic to hold the disks!!

This actually seems to be Alliance-Atlantis' business plan; get smaller titles on dvd, and because people will be happy just to be able to see them, they don't have to worry too much about quality.

I got bit by their release of The Price of Milk, a whimsical little fable from New Zealand; the video isn't anamorphic and the DD 2.0 audio is all over the place, sometimes with the dialogue coming out in stereo from the L and R speakers, and sometimes ALL the sound, including dialogue, music and ambient, collapsed into the center speaker. I emailed AA to express my disappointment, and while they were good enough to reply, they as much as admitted that since there's no real money to be made from releasing such small films, they do what they can just to get them out there.

Oh well, I guess when it comes to AA and smaller films, it's buyer beware. So I'll just rent.

And while we're crapping on AA, why do they continue to insist on running that lame Macrovision title on their releases? That's so...1998.

I would like to respond fully to a posting from a person named Josh Dial located

HERE



This person says:

A common misconception so lets clear it up.
Although the higher bitrate the lower distortion will be, the comparison is based on the same original digital data. I think almost all current popular video compression codecs are based on the transform-prediction coding category, which normally have good performances which are designed under assumption that the target videos are somehow vision-friendly, i.e., with homogeneous light tone and color, smooth motion...

The current mpeg2 format seems have two normal coding scheme, Constant bitrates (CBR) Vs Constant quality (variable bit rates, VBR). I think CBR needs a small buffer, small computation, so it normally more easy to achieve. VBR need more computation to allocation the bitrate around the whole available data space and can exploit all possible potential of hardware and software codec. We can easily tell two different coding scheme used by the DVD producer from the bit rate chart.

Still, normally we can see no difference on the TV screen between CBR and VBR encoded video according to mpeg2’s highly enough quality to most people’s eyes. But I think when the video sequences is not so eye-friendly, which means it contains too much quick cutting, texture under noise (like what in some good low-key lighting scenes, where good cinematography still can show much details, which computer see no difference to noise), it’s better to allocate more bitrate to such sequences.
So, well, what I want to say is the bit chart can be a good reference, but the information it provides is limited.
It depend on the film itself, the original digital data to be compressed, and much more. As already stated "the Alliance-Atlantis disc was sourced from film and the Columbia/Tri-Star disc was mastered directly from the original digital beta video source." BOTTOM LINE: the Alliance bitrate was based on their poorer quality source print and a bitrate comparison between the two is not valid.
NOTE: the bitrates are posted for many reasons... one is to allow easy determination of bootlegged editions from alternative sources. Using this method we have caught numerous illegal copies of Criterion DVDs and informed them.

Seeing full native resolution of the screen captures below ( HERE AND HERE )will indicate that this statement is incorrect. The Alliance image quality is horrendous in comparison. Washed out and cropped… the colors are not even close. It is barely the same film.

Yes, the Alliance has better menus etc. but the most important determination of a DVD presentation is the image quality, hence it is the top category listed in the "Report Card" at the end of comparisons. If it had the best menu's I had ever seen and 7 discs of Extras that would not make up for distorting the film the way Alliance has with "Atanarjuat".

We may as well address this issue.

When you change the film by cropping it, manipulating the colors etc. etc. etc. you are adjusting the content often in very subtle ways, but you are still changing it. This is especially damaging to "Art" film as the intonations of personal expression are usually more exacting. Even slight changes are damaging to its overall intent. It has an encompassing whole meaning as well as the obvious narrative of individual scenes. I'm sure I won't be explaining this as accurately as others could, but Josh, I suggest that you read something like Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" as a precursor and then perhaps Andrei Tarkovsky's "Sculpting in Time" to fully appreciate the overall value of this valued principle. To manipulate it is to desecrate it and this is an extremely important issue, one worth making a strong point over and fighting for if necessary. It goes much deeper than the obvious faux-pas of pan and scanning a widescreen image. Although, in this modern world, it is an 'ideal' , it is still important to expose the perpetrators who continuously subjugate this principle. Today they determine what you can see from a film, not what the auteur has created, but what their budget, labor and energies determine as important. If we do not make issue now, it will be the studio or DVD distributor who is making film's content, based on marketing projections, balance sheets and profitability... not adhering to the artistic integrity that was instrumental in its formation.

This means less than nothing. Attending a signing of the Studio/Distributor for a director is a common occurrence. If he signed my shoe I doubt that would be a personal endorsement of Adidas. That would be silly to think that.

I for one, would NOT in this case. I don't think many who understand the integrity of an artistic presentation would either. I don't feel the adjustment to the image quality is slight at all... many would feel it is almost criminal what they have done.

Josh, my suggestion is that you follow Administrator Robert Crawford’s advice:

and finally:
Although I do not suggest that the Columbia Tri-star version is perfect, it obviously adheres closer to the film than the cropped and washed out Alliance version. Even with time differences still unresolved. I am willing to bet that the Montparnasse version found HERE is the most accurate version released on DVD. It unfortunately does not have English subtitles (does have French) and is in Region 2 PAL for those who do not have a Region-free machine.


*************************************

Trond Trondsen has suggested that we contact Alliance with our grievances. It is quite possible that the "higher-ups" are unaware of the general sentiment and can enact changes to ensure quality controls are tightened. It may simply be that the right hand is unaware of what the left is doing. I will contact them and point them to this thread.

I suggest that you do the same.

Regards,

True, but how do you know what the filmmakers intended? Unless a DVD has an official stamp of approval from the creators I would not know which color/framing/etc. was the intended one when comparing two different DVD's.

How else... by how close it is to the theatrical presentation... you do research... find out the source print... compare to other versions... that is what we are doing right now... listen to people who saw in the theatre... judge by the clarity and colors in the skin tones ... look for edge enhanecment... shadow delineation... moireing, aliasing... other adjustments that may have occured in the transfer to DVD from film that we are becoming aware of... Find out what the original audio was and if they adhered to it... ditto for the time of the film to see if it has been censored... etc. etc.

I guess you also have to apply some common sense... The director would not wanted his characters skin tones too look overly red, but like the way they did when he filmed them... or in the case of Atanarjuat, the snow to have a blue tinge... snow is white... the comparison shows the Alliance DVD image to be cropped - so "no" to cropping ... the DVD would not look as good as the film on the big screen, so the image that looks best (sharpest) is going to be the most accurate in the vast majority of cases...

Regards,

Looks like the end to our search for the ultimate version of The Red Violin is not near. Here's a review of the new Lions Gate release.

Gary,

Can you explain what is wrong with the Alliance Widescreen version?

I have the US release (which looks great) but a buddy of mine purchased the Alliance widescreen release - and I've never compared the two.

It's a favorite film of his and he may want to get the best release available.

From Forum Member James Roberts:


Regards,

^ it's not that I don't trust his opinions, but is it possible for you to post comparisons? That would be great!

(by the way, it's priced like any other disc...it's not overpriced)

Gary, I just bought Alliance's version of The English Patient and apparently, they've replaced all their flippers with the US Miramax version (single sided, non-anamoprhic version).

Tom,


May I ask you a point blank question. Do you work for Alliance ? (or does a relative?)

I am curious as to why you are persistently (but pleasantly) defending them...

Thanks,

I'll borrow my friends Alliance version of The Straight Story and I'll do a screeshot comparison between it and my copy of the Disney release.

I'll post the screenshots sometime this week.

Quick question about Red Violin,

What's the deal...was it ever released in 16x9 WS by Universal or only 4x3?

I want 16x9 WS *and* DTS without any EE

-dave