Most Disappointing Transfer ? (1 Viewer)

[Scott Calvert]

Reading this thread makes it painfully clear why blu-ray will continue to have an uphill climb to gain widespread public acceptance. Most of the examples cited here (The Godfathers, Die Hards, Gremlins, most of MGM's output) are perfectly fine transfers - it's the original photography that people have an issue with.

Yep.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Originally Posted by Worth

Reading this thread makes it painfully clear why blu-ray will continue to have an uphill climb to gain widespread public acceptance. Most of the examples cited here (The Godfathers, Die Hards, Gremlins, most of MGM's output) are perfectly fine transfers - it's the original photography that people have an issue with.

True. Its like they expect all 70s and 80s movies look like 90s movies. In fact most 80s movies look pretty miserable now due to their bad opticals/overduped printing, etc. etc. That's not a fault of the blu-ray transfer, its burned into the negs or whatever interpositive they used.

Of course that guy could be complaining about Gremlins because the dvd was pretty much refference quality for that film and it really wasn't going to get much better in the HD realm, but that's just my guess.

 

[GMpasqua]

Originally Posted by AaronMK


The Godfather I & II, disappointing?! I have to wonder what your expectations were for those, not in terms of the age of the films, but in terms what they were trying to achieve with the cinematography. It had the feel of an old photo album from the period being brought to life. Is that what they were trying to achieve? Don't know for sure, but what is there fit the films and the period perfectly, and looked great on Blu-ray.

It was my understanding the "Godfather" films look very close to their theatrical presentation. In that regard they should not be considered disappointments at all.


Many films from the 70's were shot on film stock that was grainy and added grit.

While many 70's films are execellent films in themselves and among the best ever filmed, presentation wise they will never be considered among the very best looking - and only because the of the limitations placed on them during that time period.


Of course there are exceptions. There are always films where film stock, cinematography, production design and lighting get more money and attention then other films.


As a result (no matter how awful the story/script is) these have the ability to look better than films where the money was spent on the script, direction and acting



David Lean's "Ryan's Daughter" (a pretty good film) will always look better than "The Godfather" a pretty great film ( but any film shot on 70MM by David Lean is going to look better than most)


Personally, I then to look forward more to the films shot with the higher presentation values than the higher script/acting values when purhcasing/upgrading to blu-ray. Mostly because blu-ray can really make a difference on those films, where as the others (while they can and often look good) don't have the ability to impress with their production values as highly

 

[Spottedfeather]

I agree with you on Dark City. The screenshots that I saw were so bad. They took out all the grain which gave the film a great dark and gritty-ness to it. The film, except for the very end, was at night. It was rainy and wet. It's not supposed to be all clean and smooth. From the screenshots that I saw of Starfighter, it didn't look that bad. At least not as bad as Predator. I've seen some bad transfers, but the most dissapointing to me, at least in liking the movie, is NIMH. I love the movie and the quality is just so bad. With others, I don't mind so much. But when it's a childhood favourite, it just gets under my skin. I thought Santa Claus The Movie had a good transfer. Well, except for the strange banding on the top and bottom. As a widescreen movie, it had the black on the top and bottom but there was also an extra set of bars on the picture on the top and bottom. The ones right about and below the picture were dark black like they're supposed to be. But right above those, in the space that would've been taken up by a thicker picker, there are other bars that are a lot light in colour than the black bars. They're almost grey. It's not so bad on a widescreen screen, but on a 4:3 tv, it's really noticeable.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Yeah, I have to say that I really wish they left more grain in Dark City as well and dial down the EE as well -- though the EE wasn't as noticeable to me as the DNR or the especially jarringly soft/blurry new footages they added for the previously unavailable director's cut.


Not quite prepared to call Dark City a most disappointing transfer though since one can still enjoy it as a stylized, noir-ish, comic-book-like movie that could just as well have been shot on recent digital productions (and just forget the original look for this). But yeah, if you can't get over the application of DNR (plus the bit of EE), then it'll probably bother you too much...


_Man_

 

[Charles Rees]

RIO BRAVO - Wasn't this in VistaVision and should have looked amazing? Not this brown smudge of an image. Why do a Blu-ray at all if you cannot produce a worthwhile result? Charles rees

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

I'm surprised nobody's making a fuss over the FotR EE BD in here so far.


_Man_

 

[Matt Hough]

Originally Posted by Charles Rees

RIO BRAVO - Wasn't this in VistaVision and should have looked amazing? Not this brown smudge of an image. Why do a Blu-ray at all if you cannot produce a worthwhile result?
Charles rees

No, I do not believe Rio Bravo was made in VistaVision (The Searchers was). Bravo is very brown on Blu-ray, but I never saw it at the theater and thus have nothing to go by in terms of matching theatrical look to Blu-ray look.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

Rio Bravo was shot flat and matted to 1.85:1 for theatrical presentations. It will never look as good as a VistaVision film.

 

[Anthony Neilson]

You know - I'm sure it's because of reading the disgraceful and dispiriting LOTR posts on a coupleof other forums but I'm really beginning to feel bleak about the negativity around this hobby. It sometimes seems like there isn't a single BD in existence that someone doesn't think is a disaster for some reason or another. Now it may well be - as that would imply - that something's gone horribly awry in the studios handling of the medium. I'm prepared to accept that. But, on the ground, my experience ever since the dawn of retail-priced VHS has always been this: studio releases film - there is room for improvement - studio re-releases film with improvements - but there is room for improvement - studio re-releases film... and so on. It'd be wonderful, of course, if they got it completely right the first time. That'd mean we'd have had three iterations of each movie: a perfect VHS, a perfect DVD, a perfect BD. But what exactly would we all do with our time? Fact is - when the studios re-release a film, and manage to convince me with their skullduggerous tactics to buy it again - it also serves as a spur for me to watch that film again. Yes, it's expensive to pay another $15 to watch THE EXORCIST again - but what the hell else am I going to do with my money? This is my passion, this film watching, this collecting, and I'll keep on doing it - I'll keep on rebuying CITIZEN KANE and UNFORGIVEN and JAWS - until they put me in a box and incinerate me. With maybe one or two exceptions, every single BD I've bought has been an improvement, however small, on its DVD predecessor. And I'm hoping that we're not in the last days of physical media and that the next BD will be better than the one I've got now. And I'm actually tempted to start a thread where we can just celebrate everything that's great about that, and all the fantastic catalogue releases that we've seen this year and how, for the most part, we're seeing these films as good as, if not better than, the days they were first released. And if a few of them are too soft, or to dark - well that should be fixed, sure - but, as someone who had to troop back and forward all over town to various different fleapits, to get my film education (back in the day) - I'm forgiving of it; skewed ratios, dim bulbs, scratches, jumps, focus issues - it was all part of the experience; the magic was when a film just shone through all the distractions. Though admittedly, we didn't have mobile phones to contend with (and people were quieter, as I recall). Not arguing for distractions, of course, or coming on like the Old Man of the Mountain. Just trying to restore some perspective, in this thread devoted to disappointment.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Originally Posted by Anthony Neilson /forum/thread/312484/most-disappointing-transfer/60#post_3828799

This is why I don't pay too much attention to most reviews and place my trust in a select few and then make the judgment of any blu-ray release by my own eyes which never lie to me.








Crawdaddy

 

[John Hodson]

You know - I'm sure it's because of reading the disgraceful and dispiriting LOTR posts on a coupleof other forums but I'm really beginning to feel bleak about the negativity around this hobby. It sometimes seems like there isn't a single BD in existence that someone doesn't think is a disaster for some reason or another.

It is, Anthony, getting to be something of a slog; particuarly for films that you love that receive hefty kickings on the technical front, all the joy is being sucked out of it. Today, I'm quite depressed about it...

 

[Chad R]

You know - I'm sure it's because of reading the disgraceful and dispiriting LOTR posts on a coupleof other forums but I'm really beginning to feel bleak about the negativity around this hobby. It sometimes seems like there isn't a single BD in existence that someone doesn't think is a disaster for some reason or another. Now it may well be - as that would imply - that something's gone horribly awry in the studios handling of the medium. I'm prepared to accept that. But, on the ground, my experience ever since the dawn of retail-priced VHS has always been this: studio releases film - there is room for improvement - studio re-releases film with improvements - but there is room for improvement - studio re-releases film... and so on. It'd be wonderful, of course, if they got it completely right the first time. That'd mean we'd have had three iterations of each movie: a perfect VHS, a perfect DVD, a perfect BD. But what exactly would we all do with our time? Fact is - when the studios re-release a film, and manage to convince me with their skullduggerous tactics to buy it again - it also serves as a spur for me to watch that film again. Yes, it's expensive to pay another $15 to watch THE EXORCIST again - but what the hell else am I going to do with my money? This is my passion, this film watching, this collecting, and I'll keep on doing it - I'll keep on rebuying CITIZEN KANE and UNFORGIVEN and JAWS - until they put me in a box and incinerate me. With maybe one or two exceptions, every single BD I've bought has been an improvement, however small, on its DVD predecessor. And I'm hoping that we're not in the last days of physical media and that the next BD will be better than the one I've got now. And I'm actually tempted to start a thread where we can just celebrate everything that's great about that, and all the fantastic catalogue releases that we've seen this year and how, for the most part, we're seeing these films as good as, if not better than, the days they were first released. And if a few of them are too soft, or to dark - well that should be fixed, sure - but, as someone who had to troop back and forward all over town to various different fleapits, to get my film education (back in the day) - I'm forgiving of it; skewed ratios, dim bulbs, scratches, jumps, focus issues - it was all part of the experience; the magic was when a film just shone through all the distractions. Though admittedly, we didn't have mobile phones to contend with (and people were quieter, as I recall). Not arguing for distractions, of course, or coming on like the Old Man of the Mountain. Just trying to restore some perspective, in this thread devoted to disappointment.

You're not alone. This is pretty much how I feel. It seems as if there has developed a prevailing theory that film transfers are a math problem with a definitive solution, rather than an art form with hundreds of aesthetic variables. I think if you've followed this hobby long enough you realize that the ideal presentation of a film very rarely exists unless you're viewing a film print one generation away from the negative on a projector run on a specific screen type at a certain color temperature. In fact, the ideal screening room at one studio can vary from the ideal screening room at another and a film timed on one of them will be "off" on the other. There simply is no perfection. At a certain point you do have to accept that this is an excellent version of the film, even if not ideal, and that you will be able to enjoy the film as close to the intention of the filmmaker as reasonably possible. But for some, reasonable expectations just don't seem good enough. That might not be true, but it certainly seems that way more and more lately. Too many get so lost in the argument that they lose sight of what they are actually arguing for. So, you're right. It's certainly disheartening to read some of the discussion regarding home theater lately because it skews a little too far to the negative, and not enough towards it being an enjoyable way to relax.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Originally Posted by John Hodson



It is, Anthony, getting to be something of a slog; particuarly for films that you love that receive hefty kickings on the technical front, all the joy is being sucked out of it. Today, I'm quite depressed about it...

John,


But, why John? If you're happy with the video and audio presentations, what does it matter if people, you really don't know, think differently? IMO, this hobby is a very personal one and the enjoyment of it comes from what you experience in your own HT setup, not from what others might be experiencing with not only different equipment, but eyes, ears, expectations and any other personal baggage you want to add to it.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Originally Posted by Chad R



You're not alone. This is pretty much how I feel. It seems as if there has developed a prevailing theory that film transfers are a math problem with a definitive solution, rather than an art form with hundreds of aesthetic variables. I think if you've followed this hobby long enough you realize that the ideal presentation of a film very rarely exists unless you're viewing a film print one generation away from the negative on a projector run on a specific screen type at a certain color temperature. In fact, the ideal screening room at one studio can vary from the ideal screening room at another and a film timed on one of them will be "off" on the other. There simply is no perfection. At a certain point you do have to accept that this is an excellent version of the film, even if not ideal, and that you will be able to enjoy the film as close to the intention of the filmmaker as reasonably possible. But for some, reasonable expectations just don't seem good enough. That might not be true, but it certainly seems that way more and more lately. Too many get so lost in the argument that they lose sight of what they are actually arguing for.

So, you're right. It's certainly disheartening to read some of the discussion regarding home theater lately because it skews a little too far to the negative, and not enough towards it being an enjoyable way to relax.

Then it's up to others with more positive thoughts to skew the discussion more towards the positive aspect of this hobby.








Crawdaddy

 

[Anthony Neilson]

John,

 

But, why John?  If you're happy with the video and audio presentations, what does it matter if people, you really don't know, think differently?  IMO, this hobby is a very personal one and the enjoyment of it comes from what you experience in your own HT setup, not from what others might be experiencing with not only different equipment, but eyes, ears, expectations and any other personal baggage you want to add to it.
 

 

Of course you're right, Robert. Would that we were all so self-contained. Indeed when I lament the tone of negativity in others, what I really lament is my own absence of independent thought and how pathetically fragile is my sense of pleasure that it can be so easily shattered by the opinions of others. I remember, for example, that one of the first BDs I bought was THE LONGEST DAY. I'll admit to you now, I thought it looked great. Then, of course, I was swiftly educated as to the evils of badly-applied DNR; and I understood it, too - I saw what had been lost, never to be unseen. And because I want the most perfect product out there - unattainable or not - and because I believe in the fidelitous preservation of film as a matter of principle - I will hitch my wagon to the anti-DNR train quite happily. But THE LONGEST DAY hasn't changed since I first saw it - I have. Now, I despise DNR, and am thus accepted by the group. I have traded my enjoyment of that disc for acceptance into the tribe I wish to be associated with. The tribe that is "against DNR". Is this a bad tribe to be associated with? Is it better to be standing outside the teepee, pissing in? If I stood here and said, hell I don't mind DNR, and drew the ridicule of the group - would that indicate an independence of spirit or simple idiocy? The fact is - I hate DNR, and I will say so. And yet I can happily, in the quiet, watch my copy of THE LONGEST DAY and enjoy it, as long as I occasionally swear, at the waxiness of faces.

 

[John Hodson]

John,

 

But, why John?  If you're happy with the video and audio presentations, what does it matter if people, you really don't know, think differently?  IMO, this hobby is a very personal one and the enjoyment of it comes from what you experience in your own HT setup, not from what others might be experiencing with not only different equipment, but eyes, ears, expectations and any other personal baggage you want to add to it.
 

 

Anthony puts it very well (as per), add to that I have been known, with a pathetic puppy-like enthusiasm, to extoll the virtues of the odd film as presented on home video, and thus I become instantly responsible (at least in my own mind) for others spending their hard earned (I feel rightly responsible for everything I write for public consumption). Case in point; I was - am - absolutely delighted by Optimum's new UK BD of Don't Look Now, I extolled what I saw as it's vitrues - it's one of my favourite films, a nigh on perfect masterpiece from Nic Roeg, I can't tell you how much I love it. Within hours, there's been one of those on-line torchings following the publication of screencaps with people who have yet to see the disc happy to trash it, to declare their intention to return the damn thing the instant they receive it. Now, I can see that there has been some digital jiggery pokery going on here; when I freeze frame and get up close, it looks odd. But to me, in motion a proper distances, it's more than acceptable. I'm a grown man, a mature, sentient human being, who shouldn't give a fig. I feel like a blind leper. Not only because I feel my judgement is at issue, but because it's Don't Look Now; I'm caught in a turmoil that instantly recalls the furore over The Searchers. I ought to see it as 'bad'. But I can't; I can't deny myself the experience of this film. And I feel...low. As Cary Grant once said: 'It's certifiable...'

 

[Robert Crawford]

Hey Guys,


I wouldn't let it worry you, as many times, the minority opinion is the most vocal one while the silent majority remain quiet and happy with their plight.


Case in point, Zulu, Rio Bravo and The Searchers have several vocal critics, but those BRDs are among my favorites and I won't allow others with contrary views upset my apple cart perse.






Crawdaddy

 

[John Hodson]

Next time I post like that, remind me to start with 'Dear Abby...' You're quite right Robert; you do common sense very well.

 

[JohnMor]

Originally Posted by Robert Crawford




John,


But, why John? If you're happy with the video and audio presentations, what does it matter if people, you really don't know, think differently? IMO, this hobby is a very personal one and the enjoyment of it comes from what you experience in your own HT setup, not from what others might be experiencing with not only different equipment, but eyes, ears, expectations and any other personal baggage you want to add to it.

Absolutely spot on!


I actually find it easier these days to tune out the "static" and just enjoy everything from my own perspective. The extremes and the hyperbole actually made that easier. I got so tired and bored with everything having to be A or Z, black or white, complete success or unmitigated disaster. There's a whole universe of in-betweens, and I've learned to basically trust my eyes and opinions and leave it at that. It's MY money I'm spending, not anyone else's. It can be interesting to see what others experience, but it no longer affects my enjoyment (or lack thereof) of a disc.


Also, seeing the extreme entitlement issues that have gotten so out of hand helped me put thing in perspective as well. I'm far more grateful for what I've got and no longer worry about what's not out, or what's not out "perfectly." Life is too short. And getting shorter EVERY day.