Search results

I just found this topic by accident... I'm the one who made the original comment about the 16:9 encoding on the DVD edition that was quoted by Glenn Erickson and I just wanted to make it clear that the Blu-Ray is definitively NOT affected and the transfer looks magnificent even on the badly...

Well, the R2 releases are widescreen, but the transfers are nothing to write home about. The first movie has a pretty wobbly picture, while the second looks better but still has too much visible dirt. I've actually made a comparison between my old fullscreen vhs tapes and the R2 dvds, but never...

I had no idea that Warner held the rights only for a limited time. Strange that they didn't pursue My Fair Lady further, since this is the quintessential Warner movie of the 60s, produced by Jack L. Warner himself. And since we're in the SD-DVD forum: if Paramount releases My Fair Lady, I hope...

My Fair Lady doesn't need to be "restored" - it IS restored! All that needs to be done is a new high-definition transfer of the Harris-Katz-Restoration, since the old one is so old that it wouldn't hold up on HD media. I'm pretty sure that the rights are still in the hands of Warner and a new...

Judging from the blocking of the main titles and the overall composition on the DVD, I'd say it was matted on the sides from 2.35:1 to 1.85:1, so the home video transfer actually shows more. The sequences from the tv-show might have been filmed seperately in 1.33:1, though.

I'm not going to buy it again - they had their chance! :-). Actually the Blu would be on my list of BD's I'd buy first if I ever upgrade to HD. But the DVD still looks absolutely amazing...

Finally the UCE-Boxset arrived here today - usually it takes about ten to fourteen days for an Amazon shipment to reach Germany, so I'm always a bit behind current events. I wouldn't have bought the UCE at all if it wasn't for the amazing preorder price, and I don't regret getting the big boxset...

The Problem is that the UE-DVD is supposed to have only three discs with the movie in usual widescreen spanning the first two and the third for extras. There would be no room for the smilebox-version unless they put in a fourth disc... but I wonder why the 162-minute movie was split over two...

I managed to preorder the UE for $19.99 as well, and I hope Amazon is going to sell it at this price. But is there any news that the smilebox version might have made its way on to the DVD version?

I've suspected the same thing when I received the mail from Amazon.com just now - maybe there's going to be a smilebox version in the ultimate edition after all! I'd even take it if they would put the disc in a paper envelope and add it to the boxset like that :-). But let's not start rumours...

I beg to differ! As someone who's still happy with a 4:3 28" Sony Trinition, I can't understand that... especially because the smileboxed version would make MORE use of the available 16:9-frame than the letterboxed version. I don't know from what sources the smilebox-examples in the Merian C...

There have actually been TWO different anamorphic DVDs in Region 2: the first release had a cropped 1.85:1-version, which was also used on the special-edition in the UK. But the German SE and some other releases in Europe use a completely new 1.66:1 anamorphic transfer which looks absolutely...

Even if this is way offtopic in this thread, I think I can shed some light on this phenomenon... It's correct that most, but not all songs in A Hard Day's Night sound about a half-step lower than on the studio recordings if the film is played back at 24fps - this happens only in the scenes...

Well, I've had another look at the new ST:GEN transfer, and it doesn't look as bad as I remembered... the picture is much more detailed, but somehow it looks very digitally overprocessed. Sometimes it's very clean, but around the reel changes the dirt is very distracting. I don't think it's...

David, I've got the corresponding frame from the special-edition lying around here on my server from a comparison I've never uploaded. (I actually put it online just now...) There's a huge difference in the framing, but I think the old transfer was slightly misframed and a bit horizontally...

The 5.1-Tracks of both "Fistful" & "Few More" were pitch-corrected, like on the UK MGM versions. The english mono track of "Fistful" has been corrected too, but NOT the one on "Few More"! It also hasn't been done for the German soundtracks. There are people who don't hear the difference, but on...

I wouldn't go that far - the transfer doesn't actually crop that much from the original 70mm frame, it certainly shows much more than some other transfers. It's not a question of framing, but of geometry - the extracted frame should have an aspect ratio of ~2.25:1 and not 2.40:1. It's a small...

This would make a lot of sense, but the image I've used from the documentary was not taken from a previous transfer, but from a shot of an actual 70mm film strip, so we're really seeing the difference between the original film source and the DVD transfer. And the stretching on the DVD is very...

What I did was trying to match the DVD transfer with the 70mm image from the documentary - it didn't fit without horizontally squeezing the image from the DVD transfer a little bit. The 70mm frame screenshot has an aspect ratio of 2.17:1 which suggests that the screenshot from the documentary...

Has nobody ever noticed that the old and current dvds of My Fair Lady (which are really the same master) have the picture horizontally stretched to ~2.40:1 ? I've discovered this some years ago in this comparison between a 70mm Frame which was shown in the documentary and the actual transfer...

While researching for my review of the european R2 disc of The Incredible Shrinking Man (which uses the same master as the version in the R1 boxset), I found out that ISM is apparently the only one of the Jack Arnold movies which was hard-matted on the film negative. All of the Arnold movies...

It's available from MGM/Sony in Region 2, a nice disc without extras but with an exceptionally good anamorphic transfer. I thought it might have been released in R1 now, but it looks like Sony only has the R2/4-rights and Paramount owns the movie in Region 1.

It seems that both of these movies might be in need of some restoration work! The region 2 dvd releases are anamorphic widescreen, but they actually look like transfers made ten years ago. The film sources are unusually dirty, the first movie has the whole frame jumping around and both are...

The movie runs at 25fps, but the pitch has been lowered to the original level. This actually works because it makes the speedup barely noticeable - it's just the higher pitch level that is annoying, not the speed itsself. The R2 Wanda SE has the best sound encoding which is possible on a PAL disc.

Andrew, the region 2 special edition has been pitch-corrected on the soundtracks. The sound still runs 4% faster, but the pitch has been lowered to the original level - and the 5.1-track, despite having been upmixed from the mono sources, sounds terrific. There's no reason to avoid the R2 SE...

It does make perfect sense, because Fox had the distribution rights to MGM-DVDs in Region 2 and 4 until about 2003 when MGM themselves took over. But the difference was just in the small print, unless you read the copyright notices you wouldn't have guessed the change. I don't think this is...

"The Hallelujah Trail" is actually available in R2/4 with a nice anamorphic transfer - taken from 35mm-elements in 2.35:1 and not the full-witdh 2.76:1 Ultra Panavision version, but the quality is much better than the letterboxed R1 disc. I can't imagine Sony restoring the movie from 65mm...

The new R2 disc (same all over Europe) from MGM/Sony has a very nice anamorphic transfer. Squeezed onto a DVD-5 without extras, but picture and sound are surprisingly good. Hopefully this gets a R1 release soon!

Brainstorm has recently been released in Germany with a new anamorphic transfer after a recalled cheaply made pan&scan-version. I haven't seen the new transfer, but reports are that the whole movie is now in scope with the 1.85:1-parts windowboxed inside the 2.35:1 frame, as it was done in...

Thanks, Robert! I've checked the old pan&scan tape of History of the World, and the mix indeed sounds like an upmix - it's somewhat good, because the music and the singing voices seem to be seperated. A real stereo-surround-track would be great - Warner has done such a good job on the new...