DVD Review HTF REVIEW: Aladdin - 2 Disc SE - UTTERLY RECOMMENDED!!! (1 Viewer)

[Michael St. Clair]

Color banding is a compression/encoding artifact, but one that is not noticed as much as mosquito noise and DCT blocking.
Perhaps someday Disney won't find it necessary to include supplements on disc 1 of their animated features.
Glad to hear that overall the disc is good, and I look forward to buying it.
I also look forward to rebuying all of the Disney SEs on high-def disc to get away from these artifacts. Somehow I suspect that is exactly what they want.

 

[Mike_G]

I picked this up yesterday and toggled between the Enhanced and theatrical 5.1 mixes. I found the Enchanced mix to be more "full", meaning that I felt more of a natural and realistic sound stage. There were some similarities between them, but I prefer the new mix.



Mike

 

[Ernest Rister]

"Somehow I suspect that is exactly what they want."



Yes, and every other studio as well.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

quote:Yes, and every other studio as well.

Well, somehow other studios/labels like Dreamworks, Fox, and Pioneer manage to release animation with a high bitrate and fewer artifacts.

 

[Ernest Rister]

The market for these movies isn't necessarily techophiles with 100' screens who even know what color banding is in the first place. Just something to think about.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

quote:The market for these movies isn't necessarily techophiles with 100' screens who even know what color banding is in the first place. Just something to think about.

Been there, done that, had the discussion.



FYI, the mosquito noise on 'Beauty and the Beast' is visible to a discerning viewer with a 27" screen. The noise on BatB and TLK, and even the banding on 'Brother Bear' and 'Finding Nemo' are easily visible on my ISF calibrated 53" RPTV (Panasonic RP82 and Yamaha S2300 players).



I'm not one of these extremists who screams that Disney sucks and that we should boycott the discs. I can buy the discs and enjoy them.



But there is no compelling rationale for Disney's choice to release their animated classics with more artifacts than other studios (and even their own bare bone discs of their 'lesser' animated films).

 

[DaViD Boulet]

quote:But there is no compelling rationale for Disney's choice to release

their animated classics with more artifacts than other studios (and even

their own bare bone discs of their 'lesser' animated films).

Agreed. Your comments reflect my own sentiments. While the banding in some backgrounds on this disc slightly bothersome, I'm hoping that the relative lack of EE on this title (and perfection in every other regard) is a sign that the studio is starting to take better care during mastering; hopefully better things to come.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

quote:Agreed. Your comments reflect my own sentiments. While the banding in some backgrounds on this disc slightly bothersome, I'm hoping that the relative lack of EE on this title (and perfection in every other regard) is a sign that the studio is starting to take better care during mastering; hopefully better things to come.

Things are improving, we hit a low point with 'Beauty and the Beast' and since then there is a general trend of continual improvement.



I can overlook some color banding, especially when I think things are headed in the right direction.

It would be great to see a 'Superbit' kind of dual release program from Disney (they used to release three or four versions of their LDs, including dedicated bare-bones DTS releases), but hopefully we aren't too far off from high-def disc.

 

[Ernest Rister]

"But there is no compelling rationale for Disney's choice to release their animated classics with more artifacts than other studios (and even their own bare bone discs of their 'lesser' animated films)."



The compelling rationale is the fact that almost every single one of these films has been released before. Aladdin and The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast are one of the best-selling home video titles of all time. Therefore, in order to convince people to re-purchase them, Disney loads them up with bonus content. Also, Disney misjudged the DVD market in the early goings by releasing bare-bone DVDs of some of their classic titles using existing masters instead of creating new tranfers and new bonus content for their consumers.



The reason the picture quality of B&TB suffers is because Disney placed three different versions of the film on one DVD. Why did they do this? Because certain elements would have screamed bloody murder if the Work-In-Progress version wasn't also included.



But even in the case of B&TB, if you polled the masses who purchased it and asked them what mosquito noise was, their answer probably would have been some variation of the sound "Zzzzzzzzz!" When I write a critique of a film, I always ask myself what the creative team was trying to accomplish and then evaluate the success or failure of their endeavours. I apply the same thing to the DVDs. If Disney had set out to make the finest, most pristine, most technically perfect DVD set ever released with their Platinum release of Beauty and the Beast, then they would clearly have failed. But that's not what they were trying to do, they had a different set of priorities, so while the technical criticism is certainly accurate, in the broader sense it fails to take into account the goals of the set as a whole.



I can't point to a single Disney DVD that seemed overtly concerned with trying to emulate a Superbit title -- I can, however, point to many Disney DVDs that were concerned with trying to entertain a wide, diverse audience of various age groups and backgrounds. On that basis, as works of home entertainment, many of these DVDs have been flat-out spectacular. The Fantasia Anthology. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The Walt Disney Treasures series. Dumbo: 60th Anniversary edition. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Tron: 20th Anniversary edition. Alice in Wonderland: Masterpiece Edition. Sleeping Beauty: SE. The Schoolhouse Rock collection. Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Vista Series. Tarzan: CE. Dinosaur: CE. Emperor's New Groove: SE. Atlantis: CE. Treasure Planet. The Vault Disney editions of Old Yeller, Swiss Family Robinson, The Parent Trap, Pollyanna, and the list goes on.



Maybe not pristine, maybe not as perfect as technophiles and a/v disciples would like, but I say again, these are not created to serve the needs and desires of this tiny fraction of their audience. These are not Superbit releases, and they were not trying to be Superbit releases.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

All true comments,



but both the videophile and "mass" audience can be served with quality encoding and feature-rich bonus material on multi-disc editions. Had Beauty and the Beast contained a separate work-in-progress video stream on a separate disc, there would have been no bandwidth compromise with the bit-rate of the feature presentation.



In which case, both the feature-hungry masses and the discriminating videophile would have both been equally content.



-dave

 

[Michael St. Clair]

Ernest,



I've said pretty much everything you have said at some point. I've also made it very clear that I'm not bashing Disney.



You are defending against an attack that is not being made. You are obviously a very enthusiastic supporter of the Disney company.



This is the Home Theater Forum and no studio, despite the breadth and depth of their DVD catalog, is above technical criticism, especially when it is constructive, not whining (or calling for boycotts), and placed in the proper context.



Disney usually likes to shovel too much content on disc 1 of their two-disc sets of their animated features. As a result we have some issues like color banding, and that's better than some of the issues we used to have. Disney is not a bad 'home theater' studio, and these are still good releases. This has all been said before.



I don't see anyone being negative here and I don't see the reason for impassioned defenses.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Well, if we lovers of DVD and Disney can't get along among ourselves...what hope have we?

Group hug!

 

[Ron Reda]

quote:The lyric change in "Arabian Nights" has always kind of bothered me.

This has slightly bothered me as well, so I suppose when flipping through the movie last night, I was a bit more aware in my listening. Well, I found a several pieces of dialogue where a character said something that (to me) was at least on par with the infamous "ear" line yet remained in the movie. One of the lines came from Jafar when he says to Jasmine that Aladdin's sentence was death. There were several others, but of course I can't remember them now. Just my $0.02.



That being said, I'm not going to let that one small part ruin an excellent film and a stunning transfer. The colors really leap off the screen. Certain scenes even looked 3-D.

 

[Ernest Rister]

"You are defending against an attack that is not being made."



I'm just responding to the idea that Disney intentionally puts out inferior product because they want to sell the titles again on HD-DVD & Blu Ray.



"You are obviously a very enthusiastic supporter of the Disney company."



And a very enthusiastic critic when the situation warrants.



"Things are improving, we hit a low point with 'Beauty and the Beast' and since then there is a general trend of continual improvement."



See, that's where we have a disagreement. I think the lackluster treatment of the recent content dump by Disney of many of their "below the radar" titles like Third Man on the Mountain and The Happiest Millionaire is a low point, I think the pan-and-scan only release of The Journey of Natty Gan to be a low point. I think the lack of anamorphic enhancements on titles like The Black Cauldron, The Little Mermaid, and Hercules to be a low point. I think the DTV cheapquels to the classic Walt films to be a low point. I think the galling edits made to the anmated features Make Mine Music, Melody Time, and Saludos Amigos to be a far more egregious issue than mosquito noise on B&TB.



And still, in the midst of all this, they've released some outstanding sets. They're inconsistent. As opposed to DreamWorks and Fox Animation, they have a seventy-plus-year library of titles, and some of these are treated well, some not-so-well. In the case of B&TB, the fault is putting too much on Disc 1 of the set trying to please the ardent fan base of that film (a fan base I am not a member of, truth be told), instead of making a Superbit-esque pressing of that title. To please everybody, Disney would have had to make a three-disc set, maybe even a four disc set, in order to accomplish that goal.



"I don't see anyone being negative here and I don't see the reason for impassioned defenses."



I don't consider this to be an impassioned defense, I certainly didn't feel passionate or emotional when writing it. I'm just speaking. There's a weird center of gravity that revolves around Beauty and the Beast. I don't feel the DVD is representative of their lowest or greatest efforts, just as I don't feel the movie represents the worst and best efforts of the studio in film making.

 

[PaulEB]

quote: I think the lack of anamorphic enhancements on titles like The Black Cauldron, The Little Mermaid, and Hercules to be a low point.

Ernest, any word if these titles will be revisited to include anamorphic enhancement?





David, Great review as usual. Can you describe what equipment you have for sound reproduction in your theater? I know you have covered your video equipment. Just curious since you described the soundtracks in great detail.

 

[Ernest Rister]

Little Mermaid should receive an anorphic enhancement for the 2006 release. Hercules deserves a new DVD, so its possible we might see a "Masterpiece Edition" repressing sometime in late 2005 or 2006. Next year is The Black Cauldron's 20th Anniversary, but I'm not holding my breath for a new pass at it on DVD.

 

[Brian Kidd]

Yeah, I can't see Disney taking much interest in rereleasing their lesser-known catalog titles. I love THE ADVENTURES OF ICHABOD AND MISTER TOAD, but it's not exactly on the top on most people's "buy lists". So even though the print that was used for the disc is in pretty bad shape, I know that it's the best I'll get, at least until the film gets released on HD-DVD. It's the same thing with the censored MMM and MELODY TIME. It pisses me off, but I know that I'm pissing in the wind if I complain too much about it. At least MELODY TIME is available in R2 in its full version. A shame that it's PAL.



As for BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, I agree that a lot of folks would have complained if the WIP version hadn't been included, but I do think that the picture quality on the disc was noticably worse than most other Disney animated films. Even before I knew anything about the technical details of digital transfers, I could spot when the picture just didn't look right. There are places in that film that just jump out at me. Not the whole film, but certain spots where the picture just looks messy. Also the extras on that release were not up to the standards set by the previous Platinum release, SNOW WHITE. I'm with Ernest, though, when I refuse to outright discount Disney releases. When they're good, they're among the best on the market. When they're bad, they're infuriatingly bad. They're all over the place. I think it has a lot to do with the folks who actually put together the releases. Some disc producers are just better than others. The suits could care less about what is on the disc as long as it sells as many copies as possible. I'm a little tired of some of the games on the discs, as the quality on most of them is pretty low. If they were fun little games with replay value and rewards other than seeing a clip from the film that you just watched, then I could tolerate them. However, most of them are just plain bad and take up space that could be used for more substantive content. I realize that Disney has to appeal the youngsters out there who are going to be the primary viewers of these discs, but honestly, much of the content that is geared toward them is insulting to their intelligence.

 

[Jay Pennington]

quote:The reason the picture quality of B&TB suffers is because Disney placed three different versions of the film on one DVD. Why did they do this? Because certain elements would have screamed bloody murder if the Work-In-Progress version wasn't also included.

Well, since the differences between two of those versions affect only part of the movie, they should've used seamless branching to save bit space.

Fortunately, they seem to have learned their lesson because they did just that for The Lion King.

 

[Dan Rudolph]

They did use seamless branching on Beauty and the beast, but the new song and a good chunk of the story afterward were on a new branch as the castle was cleaned up and stays that way. But that's still 190 or so minutes and animation is not very forgiving of compression.

 

[Jay Pennington]

Ah. I had heard differently. Thanks!