DVD Review HTF REVIEW: Disney Rarities - RECOMMENDED with Mixed Feelings... (1 Viewer)

[TedD]

HIGHER quality than the rarities would be the correct description here.

While the wartime cartoons from the vault are in fact new transfers from film originally done for the "War Years" tin, most of the DD cartoons that make up the bulk of the set are from composite video masters. Although better than the "Rarities" transfers they are still sourced from composite video as made painfully evident by the hanging dots on the titles. They are also soft, lacking detail.

Two of the cartoons, "Flying Jalopy" and "Donald's Crime" are actually encoded on the DVD as 29.970 FPS video, while the rest are at least deinterlaced and are encoded at the proper 23.976 FPS rate.

The only really good looking transfers in this set are ones that were originally done for the original "War Years" tin.

Ted

 

[MarcoBiscotti]

Not according to these screen captures Robert:


http://www.roderidder.be/Scara/Donald/DD1.htm

http://www.roderidder.be/Scara/Donald/DD2.htm


Now, here's the first Volume for referance:

http://www.roderidder.be/Scara/Donald/DD3.htm


Just compare the title cards alone. The cartoons in the new set do not appear to be remastered at all.

Look how awful the transfer on "No Sail" looks, or Donald's color in "The Village Smithy"!

 

[Kajs]

I just flipped through Disc 2 of Rarities and they all look like video, not film, very disappointing. I also listened to Cowboy Needs a Horse and Paul Bunyan, and I thought they lacked a "normal" amount of bass for music.

Great idea, horrible execution.

 

[Mike Frezon]

I thought I'd post the number for Buena Vista Customer Service:

1-800-723-4763

Everyone should call and let the customer service reps know what you think of the product. If we don't let them know, why should they bother to revert to higher quality in subsequent releases? They will think noone cares. If Disney does ONE thing well...its listen-to and monitor their market. They may not always respond as quickly as we'd like...but they process everything they're told.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Marco,

that's astonishing. Aside from the dot-crawl and NTSC decoding artifacts in some of the captures in the first 2 links, the image softness is dramatic once you pop open the 3rd link and see how clear and sharp the cartoons really can look.

 

[MatthewA]

Man, so many of the Q4 discs I wanted I can cross off my list...

But I can't not buy these. I already invested in the others. But I will definitely be calling the hotline to report my findings.

 

[Adam_S]

That's complete crap, I'm no video phile but the first two links look okay, a bit annoying and low resy, but okay. Until you see the final link and get an idea of what the cartoons should look like if Disney hadn't decided to cheap out on the cartoons. It's a shame because three of my favorite donald cartoons are on the second volume.

really infuriating, I'll be giving that hotline a call.

 

[Robert Harris]

Ted D is quite correct. My sampling of DD2 should have more properly read...

"Higher."

The problem with DD2 is that (if memory serves) 8 or 33 cartoons are recycled from WWII.

Almost like returning to Disney laser days, with redundant titles showing up on most every laserdisc.

The affect of all this is to double the useable size of the library.

RAH

 

[Lars Vermundsberget]

They have quite a logical reason to recycle that handful of titles because they belong both in the DD chronology and the WWII material.

But I quite disliked what they did with the Pluto set, making it a "vol 1" when it could have been complete. I hope we aren't going back to the laserdisc days in that particular sense. I hope it'll take no more than 5-6 further Treasures to complete the classic theatrical cartoons.

 

[MarcoBiscotti]

Less than that Lars.

We should be seeing no more than one more future Pluto release to complete that series.

Silly Symphonies should also only require a single follow-up release to complete those films, assuming the layout of the set returns to that of earlier volumes in which we saw approx. 38 films released alongside extra content. Unlike the most recent entries which have fewer films and the content is padded out.

With approx. 60 theatrical shorts left to cover excluding the few commercial/educational shorts and specials of which will hopefully be included in the final sets, Donald Duck should only require another two releases to cover his filmography.

So in order to efficiently catalogue the remaining character-driven shorts and running series, only 4 more installments would be required to properly anthologize Disney's output.

That only leaves the educational and commercial productions alongside the few remaining one-shots which are likely to be themed with upcoming sets such as the Jiminy Cricket series and Figaro cartoons, etc.

There's an enormous ammount of potential for future waves given what we are left with (regarding classic cartoon shorts) in Disney's vaults, I really hope that adequate changes are put in place to raise the bar again for these releases.

 

[Lars Vermundsberget]

I agree about those four (P2, SS2, DD3, DD4). Six would be stretching it a bit, but I guess one more volume of "Rarities" or "Specials" could be in order.

 

[Lyle_JP]

The Humphrey shorts are clearly old transfers, done perhaps for laser or maybe even VHS. No effort has been made to clean them up or even get the color timing right. There are bad contrast issues as well. When you take all that and add to it the fact that they are, in addition to being letterboxed in a 4:3 frame, heavily cropped on the sides, then you have something that doesn't belong anywhere near a "Treasures" set.

I can also see the dot crawl everywhere in these shorts. At this point, if someone told me that anything here had been sourced from a new telecine done specifically for this set, I'd be very surprised.

What makes me upset is that there is so much good content here. Lambert the Sheepish Lion is one of the all time great shorts, and was my favorite... until I saw Pigs is Pigs on this DVD, which may very well become my new favorite Disney short of all time. There is some great stuff in this set. It's a shame that none of it was given the treatment it deserves.

As for RAH's complaint about duplicates in the WWII and DD2 sets, this doesn't really bother me at all. While it may bother someone who is out to collect it all, I can also see how some may only be interested in sets that feature the cartoons of Mickey, Donald, Pluto, and Goofy. In that case, they will eventually have all the Donald without having to buy the WWII set which may otherwise have limited appeal to them.

-Lyle J.P.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

That's my perspective on it too.

Thanks for all the input guys!

 

[RomanSohor]

I wrote Leonard Maltin through his website about the set, and here is his response to me...

 

[ZackR]

I am disappointed with the quality of this set. Disney really dropped the ball on this one.

On a side note, Leonard Maltin is really a class act. It is really great that he takes the time to reply to comments and emails.

I really hope that Wave 6 includes Song of the South!! It is the 60th Anniversary, after all.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

He certainly is a class act. And his response is both honest and diplomatic.

 

[RomanSohor]

You may want to check out Al Lutz's article on the Treasures dibacle. He's starting a webcampaign to get a remastered disc.

http://www.miceage.com/allutz/al121905a.htm

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Al was kind enough to let me link directly to his images. I've updated my review to reflect two examples that I had actually mentioned in my review prior to seeing his screen-captures.

Al, thanks for doing a great job of "putting it out there" regarding these issues.