What's your worst A-List Movie Anamorphic transfer? (1 Viewer)

[Neil Joseph]

Backdraft. Great movie, crappy non 16x9 grainy transfer. This needs a redux.

 

[Lew Crippen]

I not sure about the worst anamorphic transfer, but my biggest disappoint in a transfer is The Scarlet Empress. This is a 1.33:1 film, so anamorphic transfer does not apply. Criterion normally does such a fine job, but they dropped the ball here.

 

[PerryD]

I'll vote for Unbreakable as a recent 'A' list title that I was disappointed with the anamorphic picture quality: soft, grainy picture. I believe the problem was the fact that it had something like 5 separate soundtrack options, limiting the peak video bandwidth significantly.

 

[Larry Sutliff]

I would have to go with BATMAN (1989). It looked pretty good to me in 1997(the first DVD I purchased), but it looks washed out and flat on my widescreen television. I really wish Warners would remaster this title.

 

[Terrell]

Was Tombstone a big release? I had never even heard of it until I saw it on VHS, but maybe I just overlooked it.

To me and a lot of people it was. I wouldn't put it up there with the biggest release, but I bought it on the day it was released. So I thought it was A-list.

 

[Josh Lowe]

I understand the DVD release was anticipated as it seems Tombstone gathered much of its fanbase after it was long gone from theaters. I got the impression the original poster was asking about DVD releases of major theatrical releases like TPM, Unbreakable, James Bond Flicks, etc..

i have tombstone vista and it's OK, nothing special. image quality is definitely so-so.

 

[Joseph Bolus]

I have to second The Sound of Music. This thing is "shot through" with ringing and excess grain in about 80% of the scenes. Plus there's "blooming" in places, and inconsistent black level and contrast.

It's a clinic in how not to transfer an "A" movie to DVD.

 

[Daniel I]

I HAVE to agree with the BATMAN transfer! I love this movie but it just looks horrid on my 57" Sony. Watch that after TPM and then lets talk about crappy transfers.

 

[Randy A Salas]

Backdraft. Great movie, crappy non 16x9 grainy transfer.

But the question was about anamorphic titles.

I must agree with The Sound of Music. Of all the titles discussed here, this is the worst offender and the most qualified under the thread subject.

 

[Richard Kim]

Billy Wilder's The Apartment has a terrible trasfer, despite being anamorphic. And it's barebones to boot. Hopefully, MGM will give this one the special edition to boot.

 

[Rob Tomlin]

I will third The Sound of Music. This DVD is craptacular!

 

[Dave Mack]

Escape From New York is the softest transfer I have ever seen. The color and Black levels are fine, but I have to put on the dreaded SVM and put the sharpness WAY up on my 55" Mits. Diamond. Here's hoping for a better transfer on the SE.

 

[nousername]

Breakfast at Tiffany's and Forrest Gump are also riddled with edge "enhancement"...

 

[Patrick Mirza]

I wasn't too thrilled with the transfer for What Lies Beneath.

 

[Andy_MT]

(all dreamworks)
last castle
small time crooks
legend of bagger vance
and they showed a lot promise during their earlier days :frowning:

 

[John_W_Jr]

American President--just watched it again this afternoon. Love the movie, but the shimmering is awful!

 

[Jeff Adkins]

I can see your points on a lot of the films mentioned here, but just try being one of us who buy mostly foreign and arthouse films. We'd kill to get something that looks as good as Phantom Menace does. Yeah, Criterion, Image and a few scattered Wellspring releases are excellent, but overall most things are a crapshoot. Non-anamorphic transfers are still abundant in the titles I buy. Even the new release from Universal Home Video of Monsoon Wedding is non-anamorphic! Do you think Universal would dare release an A-list title without an anamorphic transfer?? Asian films in general are a mess on DVD. I won't even go into the problems that exist with about 90% or more of the Bollywood films (there's only a handful out of thousands that would be conisdered even "acceptable" by most of the people in this forum). Very few releases from Hong Kong are anamorphic and many are plagued with phoney 5.1 surround. Even though the quality in Korea is usually excellent, several high-profile titles such as Attack The Gas Station are horizontally stretched and will only play properly if you are using a 4:3 set with your player set to 16:9! Numerous 2.35 films released in Asia are cropped to 1.85.
New titles that played theatrically in the US such as Girl Under The Bridge or Croupier don't even get released at all!
Jeff

 

[Lewis Besze]

Die Hard 3

 

[Mark Cappelletty]

Jeff, in Croupier's defense, it was supposed to come out but b/c of Shooting Gallery's financial collapse, it got tied up in all sorts of legal brouhaha. Paramount's refusal to release The Girl on The Bridge still rankles me, though.

Donnie Darko isn't the worst, but it's way too muddy-looking and didn't look that way theatrically.

 

[Frank@N]

Since there has been such a good response on this issue, I'll make a second nomination....'CopyCat'.

Poor black levels and lots of snow (from the source media, I assume) almost ruin a great movie.

Shimmering is so bad on the credits that I thought for a moment they were animated...

This has been a great thread if only to vent and let the buyer beware.

PS. I was sad to see that someone nominated 'Born on the Forth of July', this was the worst laserdiscs that I ever owned. Some things apparently never change and some great movies never get a break.

Frank