Excalibur Blu-ray Review - Page 2

Screened this last night, and thought it was okay looking, but still soft and dark and framed way too tight if you have any amount of overscan.

Edited by poster to prevent misrepresentation of Blu-ray's quality.

 

 

Edited by Mark Walker - 4/26/11 at 3:26pm

There's even a sliver of more picture on the right side on the DVD.  I'll pass on this and wait for a better release.  (The laserdiscs seem to have the only watchable framing for this movie.)

Thank you, Mark. I didn't realize it was worse with BD; on mine it's about the same so maybe you have a lot of over scan? Again my Panasonic has two settings, Size 1 (inexplicably 95% of the image) and Size 2 (100% of the image, as if we'd want anything else...). This clearly shows that home video manufacturing priority is NOT getting as much of the original image on the screen. I've set mine to, you guessed it, Size 2 and it is somewhere between what you show on DVD and BD.

 

A coworker just suggested that I return the Excalibur blu ray. I emphatically said no, I want to keep it as evidence!

Come to think of it, the over scan would be the same for both. Terrible Blu ray.

Thanks for double checking.  I can understand why anyone would.  

 

Sadly, the Blu-Ray is a step up in PQ even if it it is a step down in framing, so we cannot win on this one until the film gets revisited,

hopefully with some renewed interest if the re-make is a success.

 

I did pick the most egregious head chopping for the example shots,

because I found it so horribly distracting when I watched it

and I could pinpoint exact places like when Lancelot blinks, when he says, "You." to Guenevere

 

Both scenes were snapped with my camera using the same Blu-ray player, using the exact same settings for both.

 

How I wish that was an over scan error on the top, but it is not to the best of my deductions.

 

 

  I don't like the way the Blu is trying to make Excalibur look bleak, following the trend of so many modern films emphasizing black & gray.  They even did it to that fugly cover.  The opening credits are screwed up.  Boorman specifically used a gold font to make the link with the gold in Excalibur's hilt.  The Blu has changed the gold font to white!  The end credits were white to link to the white gowns worn by the three Fate's (or whoever those women are supposed to be).  The Blu-ray has significantly darkened that scene and their white gowns don't look so white now.   

I spot checked my HD-DVD the other night, and Lanceleot's head never gets cut off like in the Blu screenshots. I have to wonder how this got screwed up, when Warner has simply ported over the HD-DVD masters for their other movies?

 

I need to sit down and watch the whole film, but the parts I peeked at looked pretty darn good picture wise.

After looking at the pics up above, i looked at my copy of Excalibur on Blu.

The heads are never cut off, not like on those pics!

 

I cannot say why his pics look that way, but it sure is not that way on my set-up.

So. . .do I want to pick this up on HD-DVD, or does that disc have other problems?

 

The HD DVD looks great to me and always has. After seeing how zoomed in the Bd is, I'm very happy I never liquidated my HD DVD collection when the war was over. It's amazing that after all the criticism that was slung when the HD DVD was released over it's framing, that Warner chose to exacerbate the problem by zooming in the image and cutting info off on all four sides.

I really think it's not a case of the movie being mis-framed, but just a couple of incidents where an actor's head moves above the top frame-line momentarily, exacerbated by the fact that the framing is tighter due to the original AR being 1.66:1. However this screencapture on bluray.com appears to be from the same scene so you can see the whole scene was not shot with his head chopped off. The difference in framing of the DVD may have been that the person working on that transfer tilted up to give a bit more head-room. It doesn't mean that the Blu-ray is wrong just because they didn't make this compensation, which also wouldn't have been done for American theaters that screened the movie at 1.85:1.

 

 

The screencaps used in post #32 are NOT comparisons of the same frames.  Look at Guinevere's right hand change positions in the first example.  In the second example, look at Lancelot's left shoulder.  The distance between the "collar" of his armor and the tree trunk has changed along with the foliage that's visible behind that tree trunk.

If my Panasonic Blu-Ray player is cropping the top of image when a Blu-Ray is played vs. a DVD, it is news to me.

I actually *hope* that is what it is, because that would be a much simpler fix than having them re-do the Blu-ray.

 

As for it not being the same frames, I cannot find the discrepancies that you are claiming to see (KeithJP),

but I certainly made a point in catching them at the same point.

 

In the second shot, it is right when Lancelot reponds, "You."  It should be easy enough to spot check.

 

I will happily delete my screen caps if they are in error.  Anyone got the blu-ray that can do this?

 

I took pictures with my admittedly old digital camera shooting at the TV using "TV" mode on the camera.

 

I better shot might be playing on a PC and doing a screen cap, but my PC does not have a Blu-ray.

Surely someone here has an iPad.  ;)

 

  If you can't tell Guinevere's hand has changed positions in the EXAMPLE ONE SHOT comparison you provided, that explains a lot.  Maybe you should try looking at the horses hoof that's visible between Lancelot & Guinevere.  Notice how it's changed positions.  Look at the head of that same horse (in the background with a white streak on his/her face).  Now look at Lancelot's left elbow.  Do you see how those two points are touching in one of your screencaps and not the other?  If you can't see any of that in the EXAMPLE ONE SHOT comparison, my condolences.  It was a snake, you've been bitten, declared dead & buried about 4 weeks ago.  (Unless it was a garter snake that bit you, those don't usually kill people.)

The two shots in example 1 of post #32 are off by about 5 frames, the Blu-ray coming after the HD-DVD. In comparing the two shots with my Blu-ray on a Panasonic plasma I see more information on the Blu-ray than in either of those shots (on all four sides). So it looks like they're being cropped somehow.

Good to know.  

 

Thank you 24fpsSean, GomezFan69, Mark-P, RickER, and SilverWook, for your polite and gentlemanly responses.

 

I will delete my images to prevent further consternation; I never intended to mis-represent the quality of the Blu-ray.

 

(I have not noted any "head cropping" with other Blu-rays, other than on A&E's Pride and Prejudice, which another forum member also

corroborated, but is it a still great excuse to buy a new television!)  

 

Edited by Mark Walker - 4/30/11 at 1:09pm

You're welcome.  I'm glad it was just a garter snake and I hope you enjoy the Blu-ray a little bit more.  Now go forth and do great deeds and tell of them at a table, preferrably a table that is round.

 

Quote:

 

Picked t up at BB earlier this year for $5, never watched all the way through before so a first time for me.

Image was a tad soft or dullish but I read that it was constantly raining during filming so that may have played a part in the look.

Heads being lopped off at the top was a little distracting,
Especially the wedding procession.


One line stuck out to me as being odd or maybe it means something diffent now.
After Gueniviere was accused at the round table
she stands up and says "I protest my innocence. " What? You, protest it?

Anyway Liam Neeson sure came a long way since his first film appearance here.
He was pretty bad as was that terrible fake beard he wore.
It really looked like it was held on by string attached to his ears.

Also equally bad was the fellow who played Arthur. What a stiff.
Apparently Boorman wanted new faces in the movie, too bad because a few of them stunk.

One other thing, was the entire movie dubbed?

One of the worst dubbed movies I've seen. Bordering on japanese animation and Godzilla type dubbing, awful.

Yes, Boorman post dubbed the entire film. It was his style at the time. Think of it as a Samurai flick and it's actually pretty neat. The cropping is awful, there is something seriously wrong with how this BD was cropped. The UK letter boxed VHS was in perfect 1.85 and very comfortable. Wish I still had that old tape to prove my point...

Watched the HD DVD all the way through several months ago, and didn't see any framing problems. (Thankfully it's not among the rotted discs I've found.) Did they remaster this for Blu Ray and cock it up?

And Tony, no post dubbed film is worse than Manos: The Hands of Fate.

I've only seen the MST3K version of that.

I think it really cheapens the quality of a movie when a dir does that.

Pretty much takes me right out of the illusion. I think it may be why I hated westerns so much when I was a kid.
At least for those Spanish westerns filmed by Leone because he would do the same thing.