Blu-ray Review The Sword in the Stone Blu-ray Review (1 Viewer)

[Mark-P]

Makes fearful for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh...

Just received mine from The Disney Movie Club (early release for club members). I posted screencaps in the appropriate thread. You can make your own judgments.

 

[Mark-W]

Just received mine from The Disney Movie Club (early release for club members). I posted screencaps in the appropriate thread. You can make your own judgments.

Thanks Mark! Lucky you!

 

[Mark-W]

BVHE needs to hear from you if you have issues with the image quality of The Sword and The Stone.

Please contact (800) 723-4763 for assistance.

 

[haineshisway]

I must be blind or something, because I think every one of the screen caps from the Blu-ray look better than the HD thing you used for comparison, especially in the color and density department. This is the problem with still frames - who knows which are accurate or not, how they were taken, but if you think that your comparison shows some kind of TRAVESTY, which is what you're trying to say, sorry caps lose again because I just don't see it - I can't take any of this seriously until I see it for myself.

 

[FoxyMulder]

I must be blind or something, because I think every one of the screen caps from the Blu-ray look better than the HD thing you used for comparison, especially in the color and density department. This is the problem with still frames - who knows which are accurate or not, how they were taken, but if you think that your comparison shows some kind of TRAVESTY, which is what you're trying to say, sorry caps lose again because I just don't see it - I can't take any of this seriously until I see it for myself.

Go back to the other thread then and you will see another person complaining about the image quality and i also linked to a review which also spotted major issues with this release.

 

[SamT]

I just saw this bluray. I couldn't believe my eyes how bad this transfer looks, 2/5 max. Horrible DNR and cropping. This is as bad as watching Star Wars in Pan and Scan.

 

[Mark-W]

Patrick, for me it is pretty easy to figure out whether someone will like this new Blu-ray or not.

Take a look at the included sketch of Prince Adam (the prince from Beauty and the Beast):

If you think the image on the bottom looks better than the image on the top, you will probably like the new Blu-ray. The bottom image has been, what I like to call, "Sword and Stoned."

The screencaps on Blu-Ray.com (forums) and CriterionForum.org point to this releasing having extremely high levels of DVNR. Not the regular dustbusting, but looking more like Predator and Gulliver's Travels. By comparison, the latter also posted a review of Robin Hood with absolutely none of the same artifacting and looking more like Snow White. Anyone care to comment on this?

 

[haineshisway]

Go back to the other thread then and you will see another person complaining about the image quality and i also linked to a review which also spotted major issues with this release.

There may well be all the problems noted - this reviewer on this site chose to give the transfer a very high rating - other reviewers haven't. I may just buy it to see for myself, and maybe I'll even end up liking the film this time around. My comment in this thread was specific to the screen caps posted here - I saw no travesty between the two.

Oh, and to the fellow above who thinks the "cropping" is terrible - this film was shown in 1.85 everywhere in the United States. This transfer is 1.75. So, there is no cropping - you're just used to it in full frame, which is not how it was designed to be shown, unless they were animating for television - I don't think that was the intention here, do you?

 

[JoeDoakes]

Makes fearful for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. As horrible as this is, the process is going to be more problematic for these titles, since anything starting with 101 Dalmatians will not have been cleaned up by the Ink and Paint folks, so all the original animators' rougher animation marks, which I love, are there and will get obliterated by this type of DNR process.

That chalkboard just shows how the original animator's intentions to have a chalk like appearance are decimated here. Ugh.

hmmmm. Never thought I would have to start looking at Blu-ray reviews of Disney animated titles to check for PQ issues.

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is a much bigger title for Disney than SITS. I wonder to what extent budget may have affected this release.

 

[SamT]

You are missing a lot of information and environment details in the cropped areas and this is animation. They wouldn't spend so much time drawing it if it was not intended.

 

[Mark-W]

Joe,

That would be my guess, too. Mark-P's comments are making me feel like I can blind buy Winnie.

You asked earlier about my feedback on the Blu-ray of Robin Hood.
I watched enough of it last night that I can tell the 1.66:1 does a great job of removing those "clipped" tops of frams that bothered me with the 1.78:1 DVD version released a few years ago.

I have posted my brief comments in that thread.

best,

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is a much bigger title for Disney than SITS. I wonder to what extent budget may have affected this release.

 

[Mark-P]

Mark-P's comments are making me feel like I can blind buy Winnie.

Oh please don't make any buying decisions based on my judgments. I'm not nearly as critical as many of the official reviewers and I would hate for you to get burned on my account. If people knew that I thought both The Longest Day and The Greatest Story Ever Told looked just fine, they'd laugh me off the forum.

 

[Matt Hough]

Oh please don't make any buying decisions based on my judgments. I'm not nearly as critical as many of the official reviewers and I would hate for you to get burned on my account. If people knew that I thought both The Longest Day and The Greatest Story Ever Told looked just fine, they'd laugh me off the forum.

Shhhhh.............. We won't tell a soul!

 

[FoxyMulder]

If people knew that I thought both The Longest Day and The Greatest Story Ever Told looked just fine, they'd laugh me off the forum.

My lips are sealed too.

 

[Chuck Pennington]

I must be blind or something, because I think every one of the screen caps from the Blu-ray look better than the HD thing you used for comparison, especially in the color and density department.

#1 - I'm not suggesting that the prior HD master should've been pressed to Blu-ray "as is" or that it is perfect - the print has some damage marks and the master shows up every bit of photographed cel dust and dirt and it can be distracting.#2 - It may be difficult to spot the differences on a regular computer screen. Try saving some of the 1920x1080 captures and view them on a regular HDTV if possible.#3 - My point was to illustrate how much heavy DVNR was used on this release and how a prior HD master didn't suffer from the same issues. I think it's better to try to show what I mean than endlessly debate it based on my anecdotal observations. As I stated either on this thread or the other one for THE SWORD IN THE STONE (the one with the pre-order announcement), the new master is stable (the other one weaves quite a lot), has great color, and I'm fine with the framing.#4 - I want an excellent Blu-ray release with true picture and sound - and by true I mean one that hasn't been scrubbed to the point of losing fine detail. I'd take photographed cel dust and dirt and a few print flaws over a smeary, soft "flawless" version any day. I'm not spending the time and effort to share my observations because I enjoy trashing releases. I wanted to like it. I hope that my observations, illustrated by images and video, might cause someone to look further.

 

[Joshua Clinard]

Interesting that the Blu-ray has the incorrect aspect ratio. What's more interesting, is if you activate the digital copy with vudu you get the correct 1.33:1 aspect ratio! The site incorrectly lists it as widescreen, but it is not.

 

[Mark-P]

Interesting that the Blu-ray has the incorrect aspect ratio. What's more interesting, is if you activate the digital copy with vudu you get the correct 1.33:1 aspect ratio! The site incorrectly lists it as widescreen, but it is not.

Well now that's a matter of opinion now isn't it, as many would say that the Blu-ray now finally has the correct aspect ratio!

 

[Joshua Clinard]

It's not a matter of opinion. It is a fact, that the film was animated in the Academy ratio of 1.33:1. It may have been shown in widescreen in some theaters, but it is not the way it was drawn, and I want to watch the film the way it was drawn.

 

[haineshisway]

It's not a matter of opinion. It is a fact, that the film was animated in the Academy ratio of 1.33:1. It may have been shown in widescreen in some theaters, but it is not the way it was drawn, and I want to watch the film the way it was drawn.

No, it was protected for Academy and designed to be shown widescreen - it was not shown widescreen in "some" theaters - there were no theaters outside of a handful of art house joints that could show Academy by that time. It played nowhere EVER full frame except television, which was WHY it was drawn to protect for full frame TV presentation. A little film history goes a long way, really.

 

[theonemacduff]

The screencaps for SITS to me look like something different has happened. I have a program I use to upscale images when they need to be printed at a slightly higher resolution. However, when you upscale a lot, and you adjust the program to get rid of various sorts of artifacts, the result is exactly what you see in those screencaps, smeared fine detail, and harsh over-defined edges, as the program algorithm tries its best to convert slightly jagged lines into true curves, and an overall over-smooth look to textures and surfaces. I'm not saying that the BR has been upscaled from a non-HD master, but if it had, and it had been done with crappy software, that is exactly the look you would get.