A Few Words About A few words about... Passion of the Christ (1 Viewer)

[Michael Reuben]

Was that the Roman who invented an influential form of exercise?

As per Robert Crawford's suggestion, please continue any discussion of the substance of the film in the Movies forum. The Official Discussion thread is here. Please note the guidelines in the first post of the thread.

Discussion in this thread should be limited to the quality of the DVD presentation.

M.

 

[Robert Harris]

I initially thought that some brief remarks in regard to more than the physical attributes of the disc might be in order, but they seem to be sidetracking the discussion.

Those who have already read my remarks will find them edited somewhat.

RAH

 

[David_SG]

Exactly! You caught me - tried to change that before anyone noticed.

Anyway, sorry to derail - just seemed the first post was more about film content than DVD presentation, but I'll move any discussion over to the Movies forum.

 

[richardWI]

I thought this film was supposed to be painful to watch anyway?



A more cynical person might suggest that there is a not so subtle conspiracy among DVD makers to pawn off inferior discs to build in a greater hunger for HD-DVD. Planned obsolecence, the oldest trick in the book. In 2004, we should be at the end of the DVD learning curve, not at the begining. Never underestimate the power of greed.

 

[Keith M.]

Doesnt anyone on HTF ever just enjoy a "movie" and celebrate its release?




Jason^G: LOL! You have pretty much summed up the typical banter that goes into all the dvd reviews and related threads I have read.

 

[Jimmy Nugent]

Jason^G:



Brilliant!



I am vacilating between succumbing to riotous spasms of violent laughter or relenting to the overwhelming waves of sadness waiting to unleash a veritable torrent of tears.



On the other hand, perhaps just the faintest hint of a giggle would suffice...



Hopefully all of our concerns regarding the quality of this dvd will be remedied with the release of the impending Special Edition; hopefully replete with gag reel out-takes and other various guffaw inducing minutia.



Jimmy

 

[DeeF]

I won't be renting this, or watching it, ever. I don't need to see Jesus flayed, or Jim Caviezel flayed, either.



Thank you, Mr. Harris, for your insightful comments about this disk, and all the others which I bought on your recommendation. I consider your opinions about disks and movies in general to be the absolute standard, and I hold you in the highest regard.

 

[Shane Martin]

quote:EE is a bad enough thing on so many major studio DVD transfers these days (actually it seems to be getting improperly/ poorly used much more with newer transfers for some stupid reason) but cutting these movies off at the knees by stuffing all the extra audio overhead on the disk practically makes me long for my old LD collection again. Yeesh.

Your point would be valid if it wasn't for POTC having reference video quality then again you've tried to make this point on 3 seperate threads... As much as I respect Mr Harris, I disagree with his assessment on the video. I think other studios do release quality releases with DTS and DD on them along with a gorgeous transfer(obviously moving the extras to disc 2 or 3). This is no exception IMHO.

 

[Brian-W]

I'm waiting for my D-Theater copy, curious how it looks in HD

 

[Ernest Rister]

It is not my job - nor hobby - to notice flaws in video transfers. Mr. Harris is a famous expert in film restoration and I hold his opinion on such matters with regard. However, I doubt 99% of the people who wind up purchasing this disc (or receiving it for free at their Church services in the coming weeks) would have the slightest clue what people here were on about. Like the LOTR films, this film is set for a double-dip in the coming months in a release clearly aimed at movie and home theater fanatics. Perhaps that double-disc version will be as pristine as most here want it to be. For my part, the single-disc version looked very good -- I'm one who prefers a more film-like appearance on my discs, rather than the razor-edged processed video look of some DVDs that seem to be all the rage. I'll take Mr. Harris' word that the film could look better -- its his job to know such things, after all -- but its not like this version is complete garbage, either.

 

[Dennis Pagoulatos]

Shane: I think that people throw the terms "reference video" and "reference audio" around way too loosely these days. I noticed the softness in medium and long shots that Mr. Harris is speaking of on my brother in law's 32" Mits. tube TV last night! The transfer is not the best representation (not by a long shot) of the film print that I saw in the theater, period. The video can and should look a lot better than it does, and without speaking for him, I think that's what Mr. Harris was basically saying, in a nutshell, and I agree with him after vewing the disk myself. Blowing up the same DVD to near 100" on my projector just enhances the overall look of softness in long and medium shots, and confirms in my mind that it should look much better than it does in this DVD incarnation.



And I'm completely sticking to my guns on the multiple audio tracks issue, because I feel it's a valid issue. We don't really need multiple surround tracks on a DVD, it's just redundant information that takes away bandwidth. Every ounce of bandwidth helps, especially in more challenging scenes for compression. If your maximum bitrate is limited by all that overhead, then your video quality will suffer, and while it won't be obvious in every single frame of the movie, it will be obvious in challenging sequences, ie long shots with lots of detail and texture, smoky or foggy scenes (hello Master and Commander!), shadow detail (or lack of it), etc.



-Dennis

 

[Jesse Skeen]

Reason I'm not buying this: Electronic player-generated subtitles. I want the burned-in subtitles from the theatrical prints; it looks like a movie that way, player-generated subs look like, well, video.

I wonder how they will handle the subs on the D-VHS version- are they really phasing out that format already?

 

[Robert Harris]

I don't believe that anyone is saying that this release is complete garbage.



I'm certainly not.



I'm actually surprised that the defects are seen on a 32" Mitsu.



RAH

 

[Gabriela Mendez]

I saw the movie on theaters and didn't want to buy the DVD. After reading all posts regarding the transfer, I'll stick to not buying this movie. Guess the feedback on the survey from the official website was not used for this DVD. Thank you for the info, I'll watch Mad Max instead...

 

[Jason^G]

quote:I noticed the softness in medium and long shots that Mr. Harris is speaking of

Uhm, someone here is complaining in 90% of his reviews that DVD transfers suffer from edge enhancement and sharpness boosting, and in the other 10% of reviews he complains that medium and long shots include backgrounds and objects that are "soft" ie out of focus. Gibson shot this film with a camera, and to expect that the DVD release should magically refocus objects and people in the background and make them appear as if they are 50 feet closer to the camera is kinda silly. This is an epic film with hundreds of actors and extras moving this way and that, the camera is panning, the film is dark and contrasty, and this reviewer is complaining that the DVD transfer person did a bad job. The truth is this is a perfect transfer, and if you want to blame Caleb Deschanel for failing to focus his camera on all 350 cast members equally while panning and tracking his camera and maintaining beautiful lighting effects, than do that.

quote:We don't really need multiple surround tracks on a DVD, it's just redundant information that takes away bandwidth.

IF your are going to complain about POTC make sure to put in in context ie every studio release major titles in the same way: Criterion does this, New line does this, Universal does this, Paramount does this, Anchor Bay does this, Universal does this, Columbia does this, Paramount does this. HBO does this.



The only way to include DTS is to have multiple surround tracks. What about the Lord of the Rings: EE platinum edition? Adaptation? Dawn of the Dead? Fear and Loathing is Las Vegas? Pulp Fiction? Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? Dule? Band of Brothers?



Also this fim has a single hour of video on each layer. I know this is different from badwith, but still.



The reason you are cross is because your $15 POTC DVD looks like a $15 DVD---and not like the 10,000 you have invested in a 105 foot piece of cloth you have hanging in a dark room.

 

[Dennis Pagoulatos]

The softness I'm referring to isn't a focus issue, or a depth of field issue with subjects in the background and the foreground. What I'm referring to is apparent in certain wide shots (most likely infinite focus) and even some medium shots that the transfer isn't resolving as much detail as it could, resulting in a soft image. I'm not saying that the DVD looks "horrible", I'm saying it can and should look much better than it does.



With regards to compression artifacting, I didn't notice any bad artifacting on the 32" display, but I did notice it in certain spots on the projector, but even the best DVD's have some compression artifacting if you know where and when to look for it, so I don't consider that as big of a deal as a lack of fine detail.



-Dennis

Edit:

Sorry, now that's funny. Pun city, baby!

 

[Michel_Hafner]

So how does the HD look?

I don't have the DVD and will not buy the HD since I

have no intention to direct more money towards such a

film, but the HD versus the DVD should be illuminating

about how good the DVD is and should/could be.

 

[Keith M.]

Michel_Hafner:

"...I have no intention to direct more money towards such a

film..."



Then why do you care about the A/V quality?



Thanks for proving my point once again, the majority of HTFers are more interested in the technological aspects of this hobby than the actual films themselves...

 

[Felix Martinez]

quote:Reason I'm not buying this: Electronic player-generated subtitles. I want the burned-in subtitles from the theatrical prints; it looks like a movie that way, player-generated subs look like, well, video.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but in this case, I prefer the player-generated subtitles. I might watch this as Gibson originally intended - almost as a silent film, without subtitles...



Cheers,

 

[DeeF]

I don't know why you have that conclusion, Keith.



Michel mentioned that he didn't want to see the film (and I don't either).



It doesn't have anything to do with the disk.



In my experience (1600 DVDs) the better the picture quality on the disk, the more illuminating of the movie. In some cases, a really good disk is better than watching the movie in the theater. Many movies I originally saw in college, in poor, scratchy prints (a lot of older foreign films, for instance) came alive for me on DVD.