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Where is the DARK CITY director's cut? - Page 2

post #31 of 46
6/22/07 at 1:20am

Re: Where is the DARK CITY director's cut?

I certainly never said it was perfectly good, and I agree with you, but that being said, I think your characterization of the "worst-looking DVD" is really quite inaccurate. Aside from the EE and some compression noise during some of the more frantic higher entropy sequences at the end of the film, it's a par transfer or better for a DVD of this vintage. To be fair, I haven't watched this DVD in a while, but I certainly don't recollent it looking poor, and numerous times I've used portions of it to show of low APL performance of displays, and for these purposes it certainly looks more than decent. I would not even characterize the transfer as "poor." Mediocre given current benchmarks, sure, but it certainly was one of the better transfers of its time, perhaps even despite the EE, and it is also accurate to the film print at least as far as I can recall (though again it has been quite a long time for that).
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post #32 of 46
6/22/07 at 1:44am

Re: Where is the DARK CITY director's cut?

I think it still looks pretty good.
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post #33 of 46
6/22/07 at 5:33am

Re: Where is the DARK CITY director's cut?

Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisWiggles
I certainly never said it was perfectly good, and I agree with you, but that being said, I think your characterization of the "worst-looking DVD" is really quite inaccurate. Aside from the EE and some compression noise during some of the more frantic higher entropy sequences at the end of the film, it's a par transfer or better for a DVD of this vintage. To be fair, I haven't watched this DVD in a while, but I certainly don't recollent it looking poor, and numerous times I've used portions of it to show of low APL performance of displays, and for these purposes it certainly looks more than decent. I would not even characterize the transfer as "poor." Mediocre given current benchmarks, sure, but it certainly was one of the better transfers of its time, perhaps even despite the EE, and it is also accurate to the film print at least as far as I can recall (though again it has been quite a long time for that).

Chris, what exactly are you arguing? A number of posters commented on how good the DVD looked, downplaying the need for a new transfer. I disagreed.

It is absolutely, without question the worst-looking DVD that I have run on my projector, which is what I said -- not that it was the worst DVD in history or that it doesn't look good on smaller displays -- I'm sure it looks fine on a smaller display. It probably would have looked great on my old 52" set. But it features excessive aperture correction -- and sure, lots of other DVDs have this too, and they may even have it worse. Regardless, it makes this disc completely inappropriate for projection. For those of us with large displays, the transfer is very clearly flawed. A new transfer would likely take care of this.

Are you arguing that the film is not in need of a new transfer? Or are you just being contrary for the purpose of being contrary?
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post #34 of 46
6/22/07 at 11:16am

Re: Where is the DARK CITY director's cut?

I think I've been quite clear in my characterization. 1) the EE is undesireable 2) a new and better transfer is desireable 3) the quality of the transfer as it stands, especially given its age, is still good. I don't know how that's being contrarian. This disc has long been held in relatively high esteem for its picture quality, despite the one weakness which is EE. I feel your characterization of the transfer is quite exaggerated. It's certainly not perfect, but it is good. If this is the worst DVD you've seen, then I'm not sure what you're watching, you must not be watching very many DVDs.
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post #35 of 46
6/22/07 at 11:54am

Re: Where is the DARK CITY director's cut?

"I beg to differ. I had never seen the film before two weeks ago, and bought the New Line Platinum Edition or whatever it's called for five bucks at HMV, and it nearly killed my eyes to watch it on our projector -- giant halos around everything."

How times have changed At one time this was a reference disc.


Worst DVD? There are discs out there with VHS transfers on them.
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post #36 of 46
6/22/07 at 5:49pm
Thread Starter 

Re: Where is the DARK CITY director's cut?

It's a lousy DVD. MPEG artifacts everywhere. I prefer the 1.78:1 transfer shown on Starz some time back. It looked ten times as good. Have it on DVHS.
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post #37 of 46
6/22/07 at 8:39pm

Re: Where is the DARK CITY director's cut?

Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisWiggles
If this is the worst DVD you've seen, then I'm not sure what you're watching, you must not be watching very many DVDs.

I don't watch many old DVDs and I generally don't purchase them. I've owned the projector for two months. I had a 52" standard definition set before that, and 400 LaserDiscs -- they looked great on the 52" but are unwatchable on the projector. I'm sure that Dark City would have looked great on that 52" set.

It is absolutely the worst DVD I've projected so far. I have steadfastly avoided old transfers (and this one fooled me to a certain extent -- it said 2001 on the back cover, and a brief internet search yielded many rave reviews). I'm also apparently not horribly picky, as I was pretty satisfied with the DVD of The Fountain, which seems to be inspiring a lot of complaints about image quality.

Like I said, I'm sure that there are worse DVDs out there -- but I have not watched them on my projector. I certainly would not want to watch anything worse than this one.
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post #38 of 46
6/23/07 at 12:47pm

Re: Where is the DARK CITY director's cut?

this isnt close to a "worst" dvd pq.

try putting cold mountain or even the first 40 year old virgin on.

dark city is not bad at all.
you said yourself that you have nt watched alot of old dvds.
what does that mean anyway.

there are a good number of new dvds that look very bad.
especially compared dark city
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post #39 of 46
6/23/07 at 6:58pm

Re: Where is the DARK CITY director's cut?

Yeah, I can only imagine how bad some dvds that look bad (and I mean BAAAAD) on my display appear on yours, Aaron. Dark City has some very light strobing (an issue that happens on a lot of older New Line discs including LOTR) but is otherwise pretty good. This is compared to some other discs in my collection like Star Wars Episode I and the first two releases of Terminator 2 which still look pretty ghastly on a standard PC monitor like mine.
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post #40 of 46
6/23/07 at 8:15pm

Re: Where is the DARK CITY director's cut?

Quote:
Originally Posted by TonyD
dark city is not bad at all.
you said yourself that you have nt watched alot of old dvds.
what does that mean anyway.

there are a good number of new dvds that look very bad.
especially compared dark city

I didn't say otherwise. I didn't say it was the worst DVD ever made. I said that it looks really bad on a projector and it was the worst that I'd watched on it in the two months that I've owned the projector. It looks significantly worse than this non-anamorphic Rounders disc a friend loaned me that I just watched.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord Dalek
Dark City has some very light strobing (an issue that happens on a lot of older New Line discs including LOTR) but is otherwise pretty good.

I have no complaints about strobing, just about the ridiculous aperture correction (which surely makes it look sharper on a standard definition set). It looks really bad blown up -- guys, when you're disputing this, how big are you watching it and what's the resolution of your display?
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post #41 of 46
6/23/07 at 11:59pm

Re: Where is the DARK CITY director's cut?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord Dalek
Yeah, I can only imagine how bad some dvds that look bad (and I mean BAAAAD) on my display appear on yours, Aaron. Dark City has some very light strobing (an issue that happens on a lot of older New Line discs including LOTR) but is otherwise pretty good. This is compared to some other discs in my collection like Star Wars Episode I and the first two releases of Terminator 2 which still look pretty ghastly on a standard PC monitor like mine.

The light strobing is intentional to the film. It is not a transfer artifact.
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post #42 of 46
6/24/07 at 12:05am

Re: Where is the DARK CITY director's cut?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Aaron Reynolds
I didn't say otherwise. I didn't say it was the worst DVD ever made. I said that it looks really bad on a projector and it was the worst that I'd watched on it in the two months that I've owned the projector. It looks significantly worse than this non-anamorphic Rounders disc a friend loaned me that I just watched.



I have no complaints about strobing, just about the ridiculous aperture correction (which surely makes it look sharper on a standard definition set). It looks really bad blown up -- guys, when you're disputing this, how big are you watching it and what's the resolution of your display?

I went back and took a quick peek at some scenes in this DVD, and certainly I agree with you that a new transfer would be beneficial. It looked a bit worse than I recall. Mediocre, but not poor. The EE was a bit much, the bitrates were relatively low, but it still held up well IMO. I've seen EE that was far worse, unfortunately, but this was still quite objectionable.

I am watching on a 7foot wide screen, using a Runco 992 CRT projector, fed 1440x720p72 for DVD. I view at about 1.4 SW.
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post #43 of 46
6/24/07 at 7:55am

Re: Where is the DARK CITY director's cut?

Watching this movie on my 36" Sony XBR it looks great, but on my 50" Toshiba Plasma it looks like crap. EE and macro blocking all over. The DVD players are both Sony. Its still a great movie, just not the best (or worst) DVD i own. My worst as far as PQ has to be Lifeforce. But thats another thread to be started.
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post #44 of 46
6/24/07 at 5:45pm

Re: Where is the DARK CITY director's cut?

See, I didn't notice the blocking because the aperture correction was driving me batshit.

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post #45 of 46
11/14/07 at 3:37am

Re: Where is the DARK CITY director's cut?

Is there any new news on this? Even imdb has the runtime and i would think we would hear some news soon.
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post #46 of 46
12/21/07 at 1:36pm

Re: Where is the DARK CITY director's cut?

Slight thread resurrection...

So anyone have any news at all?

We've been hearing about it for quite a while, and maybe with BR:The Final Cut now out and about... maybe... just maybe...?
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