International The Big Country in UK and German releases (1 Viewer)

I notice that Amazon.co.uk says The Big Country will be released in January, while Amazon.de has it slated for release in just three days (October 21)
Could any of our European members keep an eye open on these releases and see if the transfer fault so evident on the US Blu ray has been corrected? Use on the Region A disc of the wrong transfer ratio has horizontally elongated all the figures so it looks as if everyone has stacked on extra weight to conform to the new more obese norm.
If this has been corrected, I'll order a Region B disc asap .. I find the present version verging on unwatchable, though the transfer is fine in every other respect.

I'll do the same if the European discs are the correct AR.

I hope they finally get the main title sequence correct. It's supposed to be a rich copper wash when it's close on the wagon and horses. The VHS had it right, the DVD had no copper at all; it was black and white for those. The Blu-ray had a slight copper. I saw the picture in theaters when it came out, and the first shot of the horses running at full tilt in the rich copper color with those swirling strings and brass fanfare was sheer film poetry.

Please get it right this time!

Rick Thompson said:

I hope they finally get the main title sequence correct. It's supposed to be a rich copper wash when it's close on the wagon and horses. The VHS had it right, the DVD had no copper at all; it was black and white for those. The Blu-ray had a slight copper. I saw the picture in theaters when it came out, and the first shot of the horses running at full tilt in the rich copper color with those swirling strings and brass fanfare was sheer film poetry.

Please get it right this time!

Click to expand...

From what I've gathered the restoration budget was funded by the Academy Archive and was enough to do a strictly Photochemical restoration rather than digital, so they weren't able to do all they would have liked. Seems the opening titles may have been one of those elements that was going to have to be 'good enough'. That said, the titles in the dvd predated the Academy restored print seen in the Blu Ray and seemed to have a bit more color, but contained other issues like scratches on the source material. Man I'd love to see those copper washed titles I'm hearing about....

The German blu-ray was released in 2011 and it seems identical to the US disc.

cannon1 said:

From what I've gathered the restoration budget was funded by the Academy Archive and was enough to do a strictly Photochemical restoration rather than digital, so they weren't able to do all they would have liked. Seems the opening titles may have been one of those elements that was going to have to be 'good enough'. That said, the titles in the dvd predated the Academy restored print seen in the Blu Ray and seemed to have a bit more color, but contained other issues like scratches on the source material. Man I'd love to see those copper washed titles I'm hearing about....

Click to expand...

What was the source for the VHS (both p&s and WS), which had the colors right? Why not use that, at least for the opening?

If the German Blu ray is identical, then most probably the UK release (and eventually here in Australia I guess) will be the same severely flawed transfer. I'd love to see the copper tone again too, but it's the aspect ratio which is most at fault....

I bought the UK release and whilst not perfect the image quality was better than I had expected. I am surprised that this exceptional western hasn't more extras, at least a commentary.

The image quality seems fine to me. But the horizontal distortion caused by transfer at the wrong aspect ratio still makes it a really unpleasant viewing experience for me. All the releases to date share this same error.