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At all Studios: Include the Original Mix of your Films in Lossless Form on Blu-ray

post #1 of 7
11/6/09 at 11:25pm
Thread Starter 
i just read mr. harris's "a few words about... north by northwest" and soon, hopefully today, i gonna receive my copy. the film was recommended by many reviewers around the world because warner did a really good job bringing this gem on blu-ray in high quality. but there is one thing bugging me and that is not only with this film. it's with a lot films that come out on blu-ray and that's the missing original audio mix on lossless form.

many films undergo a high level Restoration in all departments but when it comes to the original mix studios only include it in lossy dolby digital or a newly created upmix to 7.1 (star trek 1 - 6, stargate, etc.). why not go that extra mile and include the original mix in lossless audio? space is mostly not an issue.

disney once gave us an option on dvd with there special home theater mixes (the lion king). you could listen to them or choose the original theatrical presentation. this should be nowadays no problem, especially on blu-ray.

so please include the original mixes in lossless audio for the purist.
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post #2 of 7
11/7/09 at 5:52am
I finally watched Casablanca on Blu last night -- truly great classic and a wonderful transfer BTW -- and was slightly disappointed to realize that the (original mono) soundtrack was only encoded in lossy DD (at 192Mbps).  No idea if it would've actually made a diff to go lossless for this soundtrack though -- it might possibly sound smoother, fuller and more natural in general or maybe not.

Hopefully, the studios will really make solid efforts to produce BDs that can be considered the last word on each film's home-video media release at least in terms of PQ/AQ given existing technologies, especially for catalog titles where we're already re-dipping at least once (if not many more times now).  I'd hate to think a title like Casablanca will see yet another re-dip on BD just to finally include a better(-or-not) lossless soundtrack (w/ whatever other gimmicky extras) if that could've been included in the current version...

_Man_
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post #3 of 7
11/7/09 at 7:37am
Warners made the same mistake with the Blu-ray of An American in Paris: a lossy 192 kps Dolby DIgital mono track only. I was very disappointed with that decision.
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post #4 of 7
11/7/09 at 7:58am
This week's release of It's a Wonderful Life has only a DD mono track in English.
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post #5 of 7
11/7/09 at 9:37pm
I would've thought Warner should at least offer lossless audio for those titles that were released in those big boxes w/ gimmicky extras at the huge premium prices.  I would've been pissed, if I bought one of those only to find that the audio is only enocded at a lossy 192Kbps.

And yeah, I would also be a whole lot more disappointed if the title is a musical (or depended a lot on a good musical score).

_Man_
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post #6 of 7
11/8/09 at 4:37am
I'm also disappointed by this. Why not use PCM for the mono tracks if not TrueHD or DTS-MA HD? I started in home theater with Laserdiscs where you would get mono tracks in PCM, and films like JAWS sounded wonderful. Did they "fill your room" with sound? No. But the deep bass and clear midranges were perfect, and just sounded fuller than the eventual DVDs remixed soundtrack ever did.
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post #7 of 7
11/10/09 at 12:16am
Heh, we're lucky to get the original mixes at all. I've been ranting about this for a few years now, and some studios *cough*Universal*cough* don't bother to put any original mixes on their Blu-rays.

I don't get why studios have to subscribe to the idea that everything has to be in 5.1 and only 5.1, even if the new mix is completely inferior to its original counterpart. Trying to recreate the film experience at home is ruined when the original mix is not included.
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