A few words about...™ It's a Wonderful Life -- in Blu-ray - Page 5

Edwin, that is one of the best posts I've read in a long time. You've nailed it.

Yes, and when they consistently do a poor job, they should be avoided en masse. Does anyone know if the discs I mentioned show the authoring company, maybe at the end of the film?

Edwin, have you seen the complaints in the North by Northwest, Bram Stoker's Dracula, or Wizard of Oz threads (to name a few examples)? There's a lot of white noise for studios to filter out on these message boards, and HTF is by FAR the least problematic and most respectful.

I was popping in and out of the NbyNW and WoOz threads, but I haven't been in them lately, so I'm only vaguely aware of some of the complaints. For example, in the WoOz thread it sounds like some people are complaining about a line of changed dialogue. Now, in my case, I would think it is annoying but personally I could not see myself jumping in here and yelling that I want a refund or a repressing and exchange; however, that's me: others obviously feel differently as is their right. Speaking for myself, I would consider some of those complaints as going a little overboard; however, some people have seen their favorites so many times that they are aware of every nuance of dialogue and even the most minor change, ommission, or mistake disturbs them. Now, a change in a really memorable line would piss me off. Look at my sig line for an example. I would be pissed if they changed or dropped that line of Tuco's.

Also, in the case of WoOz, Robert Harris gave it a good recommendation, so I will defer to his expertise on the subject of quality of picture since he makes his living off of looking at film elements far more critically than I do. In my case, in technical terms, picture and sound quality is the most important element of any BD release. I can live with a faux pas of dropping or mistakenly changing a line of dialogue,but I draw the line when a studio or vendor commits a mistake that affects the film from beginning to end, especially in the visual aspect.

PATTON is the only film where I ignored Mr. Harris's non-recommendation but only due to the fact that George C. Scott does such an impressive portrayal of the man that I just could not resist watching that performance in HD, even if it is severely flawed. Also the soundtrack in PATTON, IMO, is one of the great ones which was another draw for me. I'm also hoping that Fox will eventually do the job right and offer an exchange program for purchasers of the earlier BD. Sorry, for the digression but this is generally how I feel about this issue of proper presentation of films on BD. 

Just as an aside, another film classic which could be included in this category is Pinocchio.  A couple of brief lines of dialogue are missing from songs...and Disney has been silent.

With Oz it is an altered line of dialogue and two examples of frozen frames from somewhere in the mastering process.

That is one of my favorite quote's.

It's too bad about this movie that this happened to it.
I haven't watched the movie in years because it had become a cliche' to me ut I was really looking forward to seeing this on blu, oh well.

Anyway this comment reminded me of the HD DVD OF Sparticus.
That is the worst looking HD  disc i have seen, still.

I want to see "It's a Wonderful Life" just so I can see this in action for myself.
At least tell me that Life doesn't look nearly as bad as Sparticus.

Paramount employed horrible DNR on The Ten Commandments on dvd. I fear for that film's Blu release. On the tv front, they almost destroyed The Brady Bunch with the same over zealous clean-up.

I'm not letting him do my thinking for me. All I meant with that comment is that I give his opinion a lot of weight with movies where our interests have coincided. Like I said earlier, the man makes a living examining these films at a level that I doubt I even come close to. He said PATTON had a problematic presentation on BD, but I bought it anyway. I watched the film and I think he was right in his assessment as to its quality. Films on BD are expensive. Why would I spend 30 dollars on a film just to prove that I'm not being a blind follower when more often than not I would agree with his assessment?

Furthermore, there are times when I disagree with his assessment. "The French Connection" was one time. He didn't condemn the changes Friedkin made to the cinematography of that film, but when I looked at comparison shots between the original and Friedkin's new version I thought Friedkin's changes were awful, especially in regards to the color. I never picked that film up, because I concluded for myself that Friedkin ruined the look of that film.

Well, I can see people's points when it comes to errors like these but I can also see how small errors like these could make it into the final product. A lot of different people work on the clean up or restoration of a particular film so I think it would be very easy to have errors like these slip in undetected. Once the product hits the market and people notice the problems, it becomes entirely a matter of economics in the eyes of a studio. They may privately agree there is a problem, once they learn of it, but then it becomes a matter of whether it is economical to correct the mistakes after millions of discs have been printed. In most cases, they are going to play the odds that 98% of people are not going to notice the changes. In those cases, the best one can hope for is that they eventually revisit the title, correct the mistakes and then quietly offer an exchange program for those who were picky enough to complain. I'm just guessing but I doubt that more than 2% of people ever bother to take advantage of exchange programs for defective or problematic discs, so following a policy like the one described is probably a studios third choice after following their second choice which is to stick their fingers in their ears and say, "la la la......We can't hear you" which follows their first choice of just ignoring the problem and hoping it gets forgotten with the passage of time.

However, cases like PATTON or IaWL fall into a different category. The error is so big that it affects the entire film, not just a second here or there. In those cases, the studios should take immediate steps to correct the problems but even then they will attempt to follow policy number one: ignore the problems and hope they get forgotten. 

Martin's comments on people letting Mr Harris people do their thinking for them need a little clarification.  I agree, but only partly.

Mr Harris is an expert, and we come here for expert opinion.  It's quite right for people to listen to his opinion as an expert in the field.

Where I disagree is when people listen to his buying advice.

I don't like using numbers, and I'm only doing this for illustrative purposes.

Let's say, for the sake of argument that the DVD of IaWL scores 50/100, and the best potential Blu-ray Disc could score 100/100.  Now Mr Harris' comments might imply a score for this Blu-ray Disc of 60/100.

At this point, his expert opinion is more than valid, and it's quite right that people listen to it.

However, if Mr Harris then says that this extra 10 marks is not worth £13 of my money, then that's a different matter.  I might be very poor.  I might be a millionaire.  IaWL might be my favourite film.  It might be one I just like a little.  The same for all of us.

There is no way that Mr Harris can possibly know all of this information about all of us, and subsequently cannot offer any expert opinion on how much any improvement is worth to any of us.

To illustrate further, my favourite film is A Matter of Life and Death, which I've owned on DVD UK since the early days of the format.  The restored print received a recent US DVD release in a twofer, and I imported this at a cost of around £20.  As it's my favourite film, this small upgrade is worth the money.  However, the step up in quality on of the Blu-ray Disc of IaWL over the DVD is clearly far greater than the difference between the  two DVDs of AMOLAD, and the BD is only cost me £13, and not 20.

You could equate this to a millionaire wine-lover telling us that, unless we are prepared to spend $200 on a bottle, the cheaper wines are not worth drinking.  He may be an expert in the quality of wines, but cannot know how much a particular step up in quality is to us, or what it is worth to us.

To be fair to Mr Harris he has stressed that this presentation is a pretty large step up from the  DVD, and nothing like as bad as Patton, and other problematic discs.  Subsequently, the decision to buy this disc is, for me, a no-brainer.

To sum up, it is quite right to seek Mr Harris' opinion, but unless a Blu-ray Disc is virtually no improvement at all over the DVD, the decision to buy or not to buy becomes a personal one.

Steve W
Edited by Yorkshire - 11/14/09 at 4:22am

There are two botched Wizard of Oz frames now?! I'd better get over to that forum asap...

Well, to be fair, he is not saying don't buy this disc. He is saying don't buy this disc if you want an exact reproduction of IaWL that looks like film. People keep using DVD as the datum for comparison; however, R. Harris has stated more than once that the datum for comparison should not be the DVD. His contention is that datum for a proper comparison is the actual film element. In that event, it doesn't matter how much better the BD image is than the DVD image. If it doesn't match a film element that has been properly cleaned up and/or restored then it is a job badly done. Still, you are right that it is a personal choice whether to buy or not. If a person is satisfied that the image is better than the DVD then by all means they should buy it; however, if a person cares that what they are watching actually looks like the film it was shot on then the decision should be easy: don't buy it. 

It's important to us that love film. I will probably never get to see most of these classic films in a theater setting again (Phoenix dosn't have a Music Box theater like Chicago does when I lived there), so I want them to look close as possible to what they would look like in a theater setting so I can try and get somewhat of a feel on my home theater system. The Hi def geeks complain about grain all the time, they know about all the fancy equipment but they don't know film. I get excited when I see the grain and I also get excited when I see little things like the occasional scratch or slight damage to the film that was done while shooting (the Woodstock blu ray has quite alot as it was shot on location as the event was happening). Overusing DNR to create a grain free image to appease the hi def fans (there are alot of people who posted on bluray.com that Gladiator is the best transfer they have seen) does not create a film like image therefore does not try and recreate the theatrical experiance. But if a "better than dvd image" is what you want by all means purchase the disc. I will wait for it to recreate the theatrical experiance. ( Someone posted something on the IMDB messege board asking if the directors cut of Natural Born Killers on blu ray looks good because classic films on blu ray look horrible. I just had to laugh at that one.)

Actually, the decision to buy or not is always a personal one and it's a decision that can't be made by some other person despite what they have to say about a BRD or DVD presentation.  Just about all of us have invested in this hobby for our own personal enjoyment and that's ultimately what most of us are concerned about in the first place.

I'll watch my BRD later today and will pay specific attention to some of the scenes mentioned in this thread.




Crawdaddy

Well, I have the DVD, and that is the only comparison for Blu-ray Disc in current home cinema.  Obviously, if you have the DVD and are considering buying the Blu-ray Disc, one important question is whether it will give better results than the version you already own.

The top and bottom of it is that people are refusing to buy thus disc and saying "I'll stick with my upscaled DVD" because the Blu-ray Disc "isn't film-like" when the  DVD is clearly less film-like.

That's completely illogical.

Steve W

You bring up an interesting point--one that has been made numerous times on this fourm, and other sites (such as The Digital Bits), and it still baffles me.  Why do people--especially those using numerical review systems--keep comparing a blu-ray release to a DVD release, and say things like "well, it's not a very good blu-ray image at all, but it's better than the DVD!"  Is that really where we want to place the bar?

Do studios (I'm using the word as a catchall term for whomever might be responsible for crap releases) truly deserve *any* kind words such as "well, it will look fine on 32" or smaller," or "it's still better than your DVD copy."  I strongly dislike this trend in reviews where scores are given theoretical mimums, simply because of the format.  For example, let's say on a review site, you see a BD get a 15/20 for video, with an explanation in the review itself saying that the image is marred with DNR, halos abound, inaccurate blacks, et cetera.  However, comparing it to the DVD, the *best* a DVD could hope for is a 10 out of 20, so hey, this is better, right?

I'm pretty sure Blu-ray's slogan isn't "well, it's slightly better than DVD!"

I understand a lot of people are upgrading movies from DVD to BD, and are interested to see if specific releases are worth it.  However, what does it take for a BD to get *lower* than a DVD score?

To cite the example of Steve "Yorkshire" above, why does the DVD score 50/100 while the BD scores 60/100?  To me, a release that completely undermines a lot of the advantages of a format doesn't deserve a passing score.

When you write a research paper in university, but fail to do a proper job (weak thesis, zero actual research, no citations, writing on the wrong subject, et cetera), you don't get a C- from the professor because "well, it's better than a middle school student would do, and hey, the spelling and grammer are actually quite good!"

The prof fails your paper.

Poor releases should get a failing grade, not a mediocre score and paragraphs upon paragraphs of "it's a crap release, buuuuuuuut..."

I'm not sure that I'd agree with that assessment. I bought the original "Star Trek" films on blu before bothering to read all the negative reviews. In some ways they look arguably "better" than the DVDs - that is, they are cleaner and clearly more detailed - but I find the DVDs actually look more film-like despite the lower resolution.

The same is true of Paramount's face off HD-DVD. It's sharper than the DVD, but the gross misuse of digital processing makes it appear far less film-like.

Robert,

It is still amazing how people who apparently have no, or hardly any, arguments on the level of the real substance of a discussion flee to trying to bad-mouth the motivations of the author. Or first distort the points he's making and then proudly fight the reasoning he never had in the first place.

It's amazing, yes, but also sad. Thank you for a very clear "abstract" of what you have been saying on this subject all the time, and which must have been very clear to almost all of our members and interested posters here.

But if it helps, as you say, filling the vacuum elsewhere? I wonder if they even really want that to happen.



Josh,

Great post! Written as a worthy scholar, and 100% on the heads of all the applicable nails.


With posts like these two - RAH's and Josh's latest - I'm proud, but most of all happy to be a member of this forum.


Cees

It seems like people are afraid of you Robert because you know what your talking about and they discredit you. You have a deep knowledge of what should be, and that drives them nuts when all they want to do is move product. You know all of us value what you say and trust it.

Apparently, some people have to justify their stated opinion or purchase of this BRD release by wanting to shoot the messenger for giving his personal and professional opinion regarding this release.  Also, you have the studio plants that have their own agenda.

After viewing this BRD from beginning to end on my 64" screen, I can see why others will have a different opinion about the quality of the video presentation than RAH.  I had to get up from my sitting position and played back certain scenes to actually see some of what RAH was talking about, but the video presentation does have a lot more detail than the previously released DVD.

This is where I somewhat disagree with RAH, as somebody that has used VP-50 video scaler and then my Denon top of the line receiver for upscaling the standard definition dvd of this title, I think this BRD looks much better in my "less than expert" opinion.  For the most part, I think people in general will be very happy with this BRD release while the level of enjoyment will depend on the size of their screen and expertise of their viewing eyes.  However, with that said, I can see why purists will have difficulty with this release because it goes against the basic principle of home theater viewing which is to capture as closely as possible, the movie theater experience in their own home.  In short, viewing a BRD like you're actually watching a film in a movie theater.  Without question, this BRD could be better by giving you the sense you're watching a film and not a disc.

Again, the choice of buying or not buying this release is a very personal decision and people need to make up their own mind in that regard.





Crawdaddy

I didn't watch the colorized version, but I might do so closer to the holiday season just for kicks because this is a very personal favorite film of mine and I try to watch this film every chance I get.  It's a film that tears my eyes up every viewing, particulary, the last scene in the Bailey home.  Yes, I'm a sentimental fool.





Crawdaddy