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A Few Words About A few words about... Goodfellas -- In High Definition (1 Viewer)

PeterTHX

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I was speaking about Paramount's older films in general, not their HD DVDs, which are almost all new films. Indeed, the older films "Sleepy Hollow" and "U2: Rattle and Hum" are quite grainy (I know U2 was shot that way).

Watching HD broadcasts of older Paramount films also reveal a lot of print damage, grain, etc. So when you compare them to Warner films of the same era you have to wonder.
 

Robert James Clark

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Edit.... nevermind, I'd rather not get into such discussions...


Goodfellas looks very good for it's age, and it's on sale at Fry's this weekend. ;)
 

PhilDB

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Sorry to dig this up, but can someone please confirm whether the North American release is on a HD-15 or HD-30 disc?

Thanks in advance.
 

King Jeff

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I don't know, is it supposed to say on the case? because I don't see it anywhere.
 

Michel_Hafner

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Watched it today (HD-DVD). The scratch was distracting in this otherwise clean presentation (much cleaner than a normal print). And there was some edge enhancement at times and once or twice flicker. But it looked good. Far better than any DVD could.
 

PhilDB

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Thanks, that's good to hear. So they cancelled the Goodfellas HD-DVD/DVD combo disc? Good, Goodfellas would've suffered on a HD-15 disc.
 

urbo73

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Ryan Campo
Picked up the Blu-ray of this favorite film and noticed that the aspect ratio is not correct. My display is correctly set for 0 overscan, and instead of seeing small horizontal black bars (as I do on correctly transferred 1:85:1 films) I instead see VERTICAL bars (very small). What is this about? Was this zoomed in? Very weird, almost like 1.72:1 ratio. Anyone else with 0 overscan see this? Too bad.
 

Brandon Conway

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Warner opens all their 1.85:1 films to 1.78:1. They've been doing this for years. It makes almost no difference, and has been generally accepted by the HTF community as an acceptable practice, just like academy ratio films of 1.37:1 are acceptably shown as 1.33:1 on home video.
 

urbo73

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Sure, but I'm seeing small vertical bars on the left and right, suggesting something more open than 1.78:1. Just wanted to know if people with 0 overscan see this. I have to say it looks a bit silly. Not 1.66 not 1.78 and not 1.85. Something as I said is like 1.7x:1
 

Brian Borst

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I checked the DVD, and it doesn't have small bars whatsoever. Since it's the same master, I would think that it would've appeared on that too. So the frame is opened a little, or it's horizontally stretched.
 

urbo73

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I just checked the 2004 2 disc SD DVD and it looks fine with 0 overscan. I checked one scene and it looks like the Blu-ray (framed at around 1.72:1 - rough guess judging by the small vertical bars) has more vertical information (more horizontal lines) than the SD DVD. This means that the same master was used and framed differently for the SD DVD, or that the Blu-ray is more open (was Goodfellas shot with a soft matte?). Interesting..
 

Brian Borst

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Every movie shot in 1.85:1 nowadays is shot full frame. Since overscan wouldn't be an issue with Blu-Ray, I think this is a genuine mistake.
 

urbo73

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It would seem it was shot with a soft matte (I don't know if *every* film that's non-anamorphic is shot with a soft matter though), but this is the kind of silly problem that a bad projectionist would make when projecting the film in a theater. The fact that WB can't get it correct for the Blu-ray is telling of the quality control they have over there, especially on such an important film. Too bad. One of my favorite films. Why is it so hard for people to just get things right? It baffles the mind..This is not a huge deal, but it is of note. When some stupid movie comes out perfectly framed and nice, and a classic....never mind..
 

Brandon Conway

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The disc came out in January 2007 and is hardly indicative of current WB releases.

That being said, this is an outright ridiculous complaint, IMO. I popped in my copy and projected it on my 92" screen and determined that, yes, there is a slight vertical side bar on each side when projected with no overscan. How slight? At 92", each sidebar was at most 1/8th of an inch. So, a total of 1/4th of an inch is black verticle sidebars when projected with zero overscan at 92". I'd say that's more than acceptable.

Mathematically speaking, if my 92" diagonal screen, at 80x45, represents a 1.78:1 image without overscan, then GoodFellas, with these sidebars that take up .25 of the 80, is 79.75x45, or 1.7722:1, which is a far cry from 1.72:1.
 

urbo73

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I said it's not a huge deal, just an observation, and annoying at that. If you are getting 1/8" on each side, something is not right. I get about 1/4" on each side on my bedroom 32" set, and a lot more on my 72" wide screen. So it's actually somewhere in-between 1.78 and 1.66 to me as I've said. My 0 overscan is just that - 0. Perhaps you don't have quite 0 if you're measuring that small.

In any case, this is not an "outright ridiculous complaint", but as I said a silly mistake by WB on an all-time classic film. As I said, this is the stuff incompetent projectionists do - though far worse. For me it's again not a huge deal, just wanted to double check with others that it's not my disc or anything. Peace !
 

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