MGM: THE PAN & SCAM OUTRAGE CONTINUES!..I COULD GO ON SINGING Foolscreen ONLY! (1 Viewer)

[Randy A Salas]

I guess word will get out on this quickly, but I haven't seen it posted yet:

I received Man of La Mancha today and have confirmed that it is indeed 16x9-enhanced widescreen (1.85:1).

 

[Craig S]

Outstanding! Thanks for the update, Randy.

 

[Dick]

Strange how MGM was so quick to respond to complaints about the improper letterboxing of a few Igmar Bergman titles, but completely unresponsive about correcting its pan and scan releases. Where is the consistency? But, then, look at Columbia - what a bizarre mishmash of good/bad quality! I wish every studio was like Warner Bros and Fox, pouring energy and time into the restoration or classic catalog titles. It's in their best interest after all - these movies will be preserved forever for future generations, and they can make a few bucks with DVD sales to boot!

 

[Conrad_SSS]

Bad new for fans of I COULD GO ON SINGING.

I feared this, and it's confirmed by a consumer on Amazon who already got the DVD.

I COULD GO ON SINGING is NON-ANAMORPHIC widescreen.

What a disappointment. I shouldn't be surprised given MGM's overall lack of savvy when it comes to their DVD presentations, but when they delayed the release, I thought they'd gone back and done it right.

Having it OAR but in an old, fuzzy non-anamorphic transfer is a terrible letdown.

Perhaps whoever buys MGM may eventually re-do this title. If it's SONY, given their track record, I don't hold out much hope.

 

[Roger Rollins]

RATS!

I have my DVD on pre-order, and if I had known it wasn't going to be 16x9, I would have been content with my laserdisc.

I'm going to return it un-opened. One lost sale on this end. Dammit!

 

[Brian W.]

Should have listened to me. I told everybody that on the previous page of this thread three months ago:

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...17#post2032417

Nobody listens to me. :frowning:

 

[David Von Pein]

But, of course, (as is many times the norm) DVD Empire gives the wrong technical specs. They insist it IS Anamorphic.

But -- they also do not list the 1.33 ratio either, which is also on Side B of the disc (evidently).

The MGM box just says "Letterbox". Nothing about "16:9". :frowning: A shame.

BUT, I don't see why it's automatically a disaster worse than the mini-series
"10.5". Non-anamorphic doesn't HAVE to automatically = rotten transfer. I'll reserve overall PQ judgment until the disc is in the player. (And it's only $9.12 @ DDD; so it's not an enormous financial loss either way.)

 

[Mark Zimmer]

Not to pile on MGM here, but Junior Bonner is a reissue of the nonanamorphic widescreen transfer put out by Anchor Bay some years ago. It's too bad because the source print looks terrific, but with the loss of detail and the edge enhancement applied to mask that it kind of ends up in a mess.

 

[Douglas R]

It's automatically bad for owners of wide screen sets. You have to manually expand the TV picture and you end up with a degraded picture.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Or more accurately, when you expand the image to fill the screen you see the limits of the 4x3 lbxed resolution all too plainly.

I do understand that there are a *few* 4x3 lbx transfers out there that look almost as good as some "normal" 16x9 transfers (Kundun)...but that is the rare exception and even those transfers would have been 33% better had they been properly 16x9 encoded.

Now that I have a projector I've tested out some of the "reference" 4x3 lbxed transfer folks often brag about...like the Abyss and Titanic. And you know what? They look BAD next to even low-bar 16x9 transfers. This is true regardless of whether I use the steller 16x9 up-scaling in my Panny RP91 DVD player, DVI-enabled Momitsu v880, or the lbx zoom on the projector itself. I would hardly consider them worthy of a purchase (and indeed I barrowed someone elses DVDs to test them as I refuse to pay for inferior DVD formatting).

-dave

 

[David Von Pein]

Yes, I guess you're all too correct about this.

My previous "not automatically rotten" post was based on MY not having a WS set. And some non-anamorphic discs still look pretty good on my 4x3.

But for WS TV owners, I imagine hearing that a disc you've looked forward to won't be saying "Enhanced For Widescreen TVs" is probably akin to taking a hard blow to the scrotum area. It must hurt a wee bit. :frowning:

As has been uttered before, but deserves to be said yet again .... I cannot fathom (at all!) why MGM would even BEGIN to consider releasing a nice, wide 2.35 film like "ICGOS" in ONLY P&S in the first place (which was their original plan evidently)??

Mind-boggling...esp. in 2004, when next-to-nothing is coming out FF *only*. Tsk, tsk.

 

[Malcolm R]

There's been a whole slew of FF-only releases over the past several months, though mostly from MGM and Columbia (plus a few from Disney).

 

[David Von Pein]

I've yet to encounter ANY.
Guess I've just gotten lucky, in that I've needed none of them.

 

[Dave Mack]

Not to be argumentative, but I think "Titanic" scaled up looks MUCH better than the travesty that is the 16x9 "Gangs of New York" transfer and there are a few others out there that are so filtered and EE'd that they look ghastly.
Of course "Titanic" would have been the ref. transfer to beat if it HAD been 16x9. Was a shame then and there is NO excuse as to why even 1:66/1 transfers (GIANT, BRIMSTONE AND TREACLE...) aren't 16x9.

Just IMHO....

 

[Jeffrey Nelson]

I'm just glad that they put out ICGOS in widescreen. At least they didn't put it out in fullframe only. And, since I don't have a widescreen set, it'll look just fine...better at least than my widescreen dub from TCM. I'm sure this will be reissued at some point anamorphically...though god knows when.

Here's Stuart Gilbraith IV's review of the DVD, which contains some interesting comments about cutting MGM some slack about the transfer, and about many customers' preference for pan&scan:

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=10666

Thoughts anyone?