Home Theater Forum › Home Theater Forum › Blu-ray, DVD, Streaming Video and Digital Downloads › DVD › Lawrence of Arabia (Superbit) / Waiting for reviews.
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Lawrence of Arabia (Superbit) / Waiting for reviews. - Page 4

post #91 of 98
9/9/03 at 7:34pm
Blurb enthusiasts (you know who you are) might find this amusing, here with the help of back cover scans at DVD Empire:

Lawrence of Arabia: Superbit (Back Cover Scan)

Leon: The Professional (Back Cover Scan)

Aside from the Robert A. Harns credit on LOA already noted elsewhere, does anything, um, strike ya' funny about those two scans? Might we need to buy The Wall Street Journal a few thesauruses to pass around to review staff? Or is Columbia fudging actual reviews? Hmmm ....*

* I've posted this in three related threads with minor alterations -- that puts me one up on C/T! Who's the man? All in good fun, all in good fun ....
Reply
post #92 of 98
9/9/03 at 8:49pm
Boy I hate to post this, but the EE is a bit distracting at times. It does prevent the DVD from being Demonstration quality. (Yet FOX's release of "Hello Dolly! last week from a Todd-AO print has no EE - none! and it looks great!) What gives?

Overall the LOA DVD picture is very colorful and clean, the only drawback is the EE. (The DVDFile has a pretty acruate review up with screenshots.)

By the Way, Disc Two was defective and wouldn't play on my RCA player - I kept getting a "Disc Error" message" I'll return it later in the week, hopefully this will be an isolated case.
Reply
post #93 of 98
9/10/03 at 5:34am
Quote:
Might we need to buy The Wall Street Journal a few thesauruses to pass around to review staff? Or is Columbia fudging actual reviews? Hmmm ....

Not by coincidence the superbit release of Hook also features the same blurb.

http://www.dvdempire.com/Exec/v4_ite...0&tab=5&back=1

I think the blurb refers to the Superbit line of DVDs and not the films themselves.

-D
Reply
post #94 of 98
9/10/03 at 5:41am
Someone else mentioned that it's on the Starship Troopers Superbit box as well ... I have to wonder if this is a reasonable use of the quote. It appears at the top of the packagaing without any indication of just what it refers to; you're probably right, TWSJ probably said it, once, about a Superbit title, but is it reasonable then to slap it on every Superbit title? Even if TWSJ feels it describes every Superbit title, I think it looks a touch silly without any clarification. But I may be wrong.
Reply
post #95 of 98
9/10/03 at 6:28am
I was eagerly looking forward to buying this disc to replace my LE, but after reading the reviews I will not buy it. Looks like I'll have to keep waiting for an Edge Enhancement-free transfer of this movie.

I really wish the rights to LOA could be sold to a competant studio!
Reply
post #96 of 98
9/10/03 at 8:27am
I watched a good chunk of it last night, and it is a significant upgrade transfer and sound-wise. There is still some haloing, but it is reduced from the previous version. Check out the "etched" mountain ranges in Rob G's second comparison frame for an example of the improvement.

Regards,
Reply
post #97 of 98
9/10/03 at 8:42am
oops
Reply
post #98 of 98
9/10/03 at 9:19am
Some are saying the halos have been reduced, others are saying the halos are actually more prominant than they were in the "Limited (cough) Edition." The comparisons in the following, previously-discussed DVDFile review, under heavy magnification (about half-way down the page, and now up and running again -- the screenshots were down last night) ...

http://www.dvdfile.com/software/revi...arabia_sb.html

... seem to support the "more prominant" crowd; really zooming into the specific halo trouble and A/Bing it under that magnification seems a good way of determining this.

Also interesting is an unmagnified image thumbnail I just ran across at The Cinema Laser:

http://www.thecinemalaser.com/dvd_2003/loa-sb-dvd.htm

Among the many screenshots on that page, note the first, with Lawrence holding his match. On a 17" computer monitor, and furthermore looking at that image unmagnified, a small thumbnail on a small screen, in other words, I can nevertheless immediately spot an outline along the screen right of Lawrence's thumb. I'm unfamiliar with the specific process of compressing an image for inclusion on an internet site, and what such compression might add/remove from the image, but that looks like an edge halo unrelated to the further manipulation of the image for posting. Anyone with the disc itself might confirm whether it is really as prominant as it appears here.

The corrected color timing is a big plus, as is the increase in fine detail noted with further screen captures in the DVDFile review ... but if edge halos are worse, well, it seems we again take a step back for every two steps forward. Too many studios earn my money with an outstanding dedication to quality -- I can't shake the sense that I'm again compromising if I "put up" with something that shouldn't be there, and needn't be there, something that robs the film of its full potential on the format.

I dunno. I look forward to Robert Harris' comments after he has a chance to view it (he mentioned earlier that the studio sent out no screener for him to review ... perhaps they sent it to Robert Harns and it was returned? ). As the DVDFile review points out, Robert Harris related (if I recall correctly) assurances from Columbia that no additional "artificial sharpening" would take place after he finished his work, but of course he had no idea whether or not that promise was kept (though, to perhaps correct the review, I seem to recall talk of only one layer of EE having been removed of the two that were present, the first and remaining layer invisible to Mr. Harris during normal viewing and a function of its original film-to-tape stage?). If he has a chance to view the disc and determine its fidelity to what he was led to believe would be produced for home video in the wake of his recent contributions, I believe that will settle the matter for many here. Fidelity to the intentions of the source, and fidelity to the potential of the format (i.e. fidelity to the potential of the format in matters of fidelity ... er ...), remains, I'm sure, a priority for many viewers.
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: DVD
Home Theater Forum › Home Theater Forum › Blu-ray, DVD, Streaming Video and Digital Downloads › DVD › Lawrence of Arabia (Superbit) / Waiting for reviews.