A Few Words About A few words about... Enter the Dragon -- in High Definition (1 Viewer)

[Rachael B]

Mattias, come tuesday there will be over 40 HD-DVD's out. Get a player, tune it into your system, Get your posterior ready to be rocked. There are a bunch of terrific discs out already:

Syriana
Blazing Saddles
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Pitch Black & Chronicles Of Riddick
Serinity
Apollo 13
Unforgiven
U-571
Happy Gilmore
Sahara
Rumor Has It....
Enter The Dragon
Sleepy Hollow
Goodfellas
Cinderella Man


....those are my fav's so far. It's only going to get better. I'm on the right road. You're stuck at the junction reading a map. Now, what 'cha gonna do mon ami?

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Very excited to be in this thread, and I certainly have a
few words to say about Enter The Dragon....

To begin with, a few weeks ago I posted a thread on this
forum complaining that the selection of HD-DVD titles being
released was rather poor, mainly for the fact that there wasn't
anything being released of "demo" quality.

One of our Moderators, Robert Crawford, came back with a
rather odd reply....that he had bought into this format for a better
appreciation of older films.

At first, I didn't quite understand what he had meant. I really
didn't think that older films would benefit on HD-DVD since the
production values were not up to the standards of today's film.

Last night, I had a dramatic change of opinion....

I never previously watched Enter The Dragon. I was
never a fan of martial arts nor of Bruce Lee. Funny thing is,
all these years I have enjoyed the martial arts movie parody,
A Fistful of Yen featured in Kentucky Fried Movie,
never realizing it was a direct parody of Enter The Dragon.

...but let me jump back to my reason for this post...

Thus far I have watched 8 recent feature films on HD-DVD. None
of them impressed me nearly as much as Enter The Dragon.

Here is a film that is over 30 years old. I suspect that of all
the HD-DVD releases to date, this is perhaps amongst the oldest
of the catalog releases despite the fact that 1973 is even being
considered as old.

What I watched last evening was nothing short of incredible!

Here was a 30-year-old feature film that looked and sounded
as if it could have been released over recent years.

While there was an abundant amount of film grain that showed
the film's age, I was still astounded by the overall picture detail
and saturation of colors -- particularly seen in the deep red text
of the opening credits. Black levels were extraordinarily deep, giving
this film texture that I was not used to seeing in titles of this age.

Just as impressive was the audio soundtrack. The film's score
played crisp and bold across the entire soundstage. The fidelity
was certainly up to what I would have expected from more recent
film releases.

And here's the kicker.....

This film was originally not released theatrically with any surround
information. The 5.1 presentation on this HD-DVD is incredible. It
begins with beautiful stereo separation across the front channels and
then expands to a surround experience one would never expect from
a title like this.....

As I sat and watched Enter The Dragon, I was able to hear
every little nuance in the film's surrounding tracks. At times I heard
the waves of water splashing in the front to rear channels. Other
times, during outdoor scenes of dialogue, I could hear the gentle
swaying of leaves on the trees. This is the type of detail that I
never, ever heard on a standard DVD release. It's apparent that
the extra bandwidth available on these high definition formats has
allowed a lot more sound detail to surface.

Warner didn't simply slap this title on DVD. What they have done
here is to take a film that's 30+ years old and make it look and
sound like something released in the past few years.

This gives me so much hope for all the classic titles to come. It
has also made me realize exactly what Moderator Robert Crawford
was speaking of when he emphasized how much this new format
will make all of us appreciate titles that weren't produced over the
past 16 years.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Ron,

if you want another 'shocker' for how good an older film can look in HD... get Blazing Saddles.

And just wait until your large-format films like Mad Mad World and Ben Hur finally show up in HD. They will *blow away* state-of-the-art modern movies with much more depth, 3-dimensionality, and detail!


Yep. the better audio compression on HD DVD/BD allows for this type of subtlety to come through. It's been sorely missed in "standard" DD on DVD for quite some time!

 

[Paul Arnette]

This was the second HD DVD I watched, the first being Serenity. I was nothing worth complaining about in the transfer dept., and I sit 1.5x my screen width (55") away. It looked very film-like.

Oddly enough, it was the third HD DVD I watched, Goodfellas, that I thought really looked fantastic. I had heard it wasn't known for it great picture quality, so that makes me all the more excited to pop in Blazing Saddles when it arrives along with Apollo 13, Full Metal Jacket, Pitch Black, and Sleepy Hollow.

In the meantime, I will be watching my fourth HD DVD tonight, Unforgiven. Good times...

Edited to add:

Ron,

Regarding the below...


...I assume you are listening over 5.1 analog out? I thought the soundtrack's volume was too low, I thought the same of Goodfellas too. Did you have to adjust the Speaker setting in your HD-A1 to -10db except for the sub? I need to do some testing tonight to see if my receiver has the low LFE issue without these adjustments. I just didn't get the same impression from the soundtrack as you did. It could be the -10db thing, or you could, and probably do, have better equipment. I'm using a Pioneer Elite VSX-49TXi and B&W 600 Series 2 speakers.

 

[Mattias_ka]

Well, those I would get. I think I will get a player next month, my Ruby screams for HD!

 

[Rachael B]

Mattias, get Kiss Kiss Bang Bang too. Trust me, this little noirish satire about Kalafornie and the film business is just made for film freaks like us. BTW, your girl, Ruby, she ain't got half the lungs as me. I scream for HD dreams....Recuredos, senor X0!

 

[Mattias_ka]

Seen it and it was good but not so I would buy it.