New release of The Return Of The Pink Panther (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

Oh me gosh!

Looking at those comparison photos -- it is
like night and day. The Artisan release looks
colorless and often unfocused.

Artisan was a horrible, horrible studio.
They released so many popular films to DVD
and had absolutely no right to do so in the
condition that they did.

 

[GlennH]

Wow. Those comparisons are really striking. Thanks for the link.

I haven't picked it up yet, but intend to. I'm trying to cut back as HD looms, but for under $10 this is a worthwhile upgrade for sure.

 

[Albert_M]

Is the Arken one worth getting? I never heard of it before last month. Also, how about Curse? That ones seems pretty bad too. I may remember that one, but not sure.

 

[Guido Bibra]

I've added some more captures to the "Return..." comparison, same link as above. Not for the faint of heart, I might add! In some scenes on the new Universal disc the framing seems to be zoomed up a bit, but then again the Artisan looks strangely horizontally squished in these scenes.

If anyone's interested, I could do comparisons in the same way of the old and new MGM Panther discs - I've still got both here, the differences are not as huge as on "Return...", but still noticeable.

 

[Jonathan Kaye]

I'd be interested. I bought the original discs, and decided to hold off on the boxed set what with HD looming, but it'd be useful to know if and when the newer versions are cheap enough to reconsider.

 

[Guido Bibra]

Okay, so here's the first one:
http://www.bibra-online.de/movie-compare-pp1.htm

And just for fun and demonstration purposes, a comparison between the widescreen and pan&scan-version:
http://www.bibra-online.de/movie-compare-pp1ps.htm

The difference between the two widescreen versions are not that much visible in the captures, but the new transfer definitely looks better. Keep in mind that this is the R2 version, but I think the R1 discs are based on the same master. I think it's worth an upgrade, because the remixed soundtracks also sound much better!

 

[Patrick McCart]

You ought to compare the old and new Pink Panther '63 at relative resolutions. You can hardly tell when they're the same size.


Ugh, I can't believe how horrible the Artisan "Return" is. Universal's disc looks as glowing as the other films.

 

[Guido Bibra]

Yes, I know - it's either more captures in smaller sizes or only a few large ones. When I'm doing the other movies, I'll make 10 or 15 at 600 pixel width and one special example in the native resolution.

Universal really did a great Job with "Return", can't praise that disc enough .

 

[Guido Bibra]

The comparison for "A Shot in the Dark":

http://www.bibra-online.de/movie-compare-pp2.htm

I've also added one full-size example at the bottom of the first comparison and did the same with the "Shot" comparison.

The difference between the two transfers on "Shot in the Dark" is really amazing, considering that both are anamorphic. The colors on the old version look totally brownish and muddled, the newer looks much fresher. The framing is also different, on the new version the frame has been shifted to the right - I don't know if that's a problem, but to me it looks like the older transfer was misframed and the new one centers the frame properly.

 

[GlennH]

So that phone on the desk in the "A Shot in the Dark" scene was actually white! The old DVD would lead you to believe it was beige.

As to the framing, I also think that in most of the captures the new one is better framed. The one with the balloons actually seemed better framed in the original, as you get the entire roof of the prison gate structure and the symmetry of both side sidewalks with adjoining wall. But the difference is really pretty minor.

 

[Guido Bibra]

I included the shot with the prison gate because it's about the only one where the different framing doesn't look so good, but it's really not that dramatic.

What happened on the old version is probably that MGM transfered the entire left side of the negative including the area where the soundtrack should be and cropped too much on the right side. There are several Bond dvds (like "You only live twice", "Octopussy" and a few more) which were transferred with the whole negative frame and have an aspect ratio which is much wider than usual Panavision, instead of ca. 2.35:1 2.45:1 or even 2.50:1. More picture visible, but not necessarily correct. Same thing seems to have happened with "Shot", but they cropped to 2.35:1 on the right side.

 

[Guido Bibra]

Here are the last two Pink Panther Comparisons... apologies for the delay, had too much other things to do. But now:

The Pink Panther Strikes Again
Revenge of the Pink Panther

A huge difference on "strikes again", the contrast on the old disc was abnormally low. And there was something strange on the old disc - look at the fourth frame from the top: there's a strange blob on the bottom of the picture, which is visible on nearly every last frame before a cut. What is that? Glue, tape? Fortunately it's nowhere on the new disc.

"Revenge" also looks much better, in spite of being anamorphic on the old disc. But the credit sequences on both moves have been a bit horizontally compressed... or the old ones were stretched too much. In case of "Strike" the new one also is more cropped in the credits, but the old disc looks much too wide.

And a quick word about the audio remixes: all movies except "Strikes Again" have been upmixed from mono stems, which were very nicely stereoized, almost as good as if true stereo sources were used. "Strikes again" has the only real discrete music mix, and it really rocks! Those Mancini tunes really fill the room, but on the other movies the new mixes are also very effective.

Well, I hope I've convinced everybody to buy the new discs. They're really worth it if you like the movies.

 

[Jonathan Kaye]

Thanks, Guido; good grief, that is night and day on 'Strikes Again', isn't it? As it's my favourite of all the Pink Panthers, I don't think I can hold out for hi-def on that one, though for the others I can make do with the '99 versions.

 

[Patrick McCart]

The blobs are splices coming apart. The old Ben-Hur DVD and the Jaws DVD's have this problem.

 

[Guido Bibra]

I haven't seen anything suspicious on the old Jaws and Ben-Hur transfers, but it's really annoying on the old "Strikes Again" disc - those blobs are visible on nearly every cut. I'm so glad MGM managed to get a better print.

 

[Patrick McCart]

They could have cleaned up the negative or just digitally removed them. The globs on splices on the old Ben-Hur DVD are not too obvious, but they're very visible if there's sky. On the new DVD, they're gone.



By the way, I picked up the DVD yesterday. I'm VERY happy with the remaster. Not only that, it's a DVD-9, the avg. bitrate is almost 9 mbps, and the film takes up more than 7.5 GB on the disc. The audio isn't really that flat... it seems quite faithful to how a 1975 mono sound film would be. Besides the lack of extras, Universal used Criterion standards for the encoding. Even if they decide to go minimalist, they nearly always make sure a film gets a healthy bitrate and plenty of space.