A Few Words About A few words about...™ Laurel & Hardy: The Definitive Restorations - in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[Joseph Bolus]

Whew!
Just read through this thread, and I have to say that it's been awhile since I've seen this much passion on this forum! (Some of it, unfortunately, personal.)

So, I wasn't going to purchase this set, but after reading through all this I just placed my order.

And I'm sure that RAH is 100% correct in what he's saying, but I'm also sure that this will be the best version of these films in my collection. And the extras alone are worth the price to me.

As usual, I'm at awe at all the expertise displayed on this forum.

Thanks guys!!

 

[Daniel Melius]

Alright, the sun has risen. Let’s go back to Wonderful Life.

If you’ve not noted, those words were appended, after quite a bit of research - none from Sony, thank you - whilst attempting to view El Aurens on a Sony OLED panel, and having a similar result to Wonderful.

This is after Paramount’s Wonderful Andrea Kalas ran a few minutes of the Wonderful 4k master for me at Technicolor, and I found it to also be wonderful.

Which begged the question: Is the problem in final mastering to 4k Blu, or in my playback system?

Specifically because of the Wonderful problem, I had swapped out my Oppo 4k player for a new Panasonic. The Panny allows HDR and DV to be turned off for playback, while the Oppo does not.

Problem not solved.

Then Lawrence arrives. Problematic black levels and shadow detail. I know I’m going to see that on a Sony projector, but should not on an OLED.

Going into the innards of both the panel and player, I was able to confirm that when the player sent out a DV signal, the panel responded by kicking brightness and contrast to hyper-levels.

But the problem still persisted.

And the panel was properly reading HDR.

Deep in the panels sub-menus, one can go to places illegal for the public to visit in certain states - additional controls for black level, gamma, and others, which should not be discussed on a site where people might be squeamish about adjusting different variants.

Adjustments, experimentation, and finally both Wonderful and Aurens look proper.

Here’s what I learned.

HDR and DV are very different settings.

A Sony panel will recognize DV, and automatically provide the basics but no more.

Take a signal from the Panny to the Sony, and that’s what you get.

Replace the Sony with a newer LG OLED, and guess what? The two have a proprietary deal, which allows for more accurate communication and tone mapping.

Which means that Wonderful, either going into the deep recesses of controls, can be properly Wonderful, as has been corrected in my review, which no longer notes the problem.

So, now it’s simple.

Replace my Sony 4k projector with a JVC. Replace my Sony panel with an LG, and life will be Wonderful. At least for six months. For here, in the Wild, Wild West of HDR and other things that go “bump” in the night...

Which may be why your LG isn’t too dark.

Yup lg was better when i compared and bought the lg c8 65 last year and again four weeks ago when i got the lg 77" c9 over sony. Also 500 cheaper! I use to be a huge sony man for about 35 years but dont see it besting the lg with their c8 and c9 models.

 

[PMF]

[...]
So, I wasn't going to purchase this set, but after reading through all this I just placed my order.
[...]

Well now, you see, I’m exactly in the opposite camp. I was planning on a purchase from early on, but have since then been put so egregiously off. And, I assure you, my change of heart was not due to the consistent standards of one reviewers eye or words; but, rather, for a rogue publicist who aggressively went against the grains of all good decorum.

 

[Will Krupp]

I use to be a huge sony man for about 35 years but dont see it besting the lg with their c8 and c9 models.

Off topic to the thread, but let me chime in (I never miss the chance) to say that the c9 (my first oled) is hands down the best television I've ever owned in my life. I'm amazed on an almost daily basis.

 

[OLDTIMER]

Deep in the panels sub-menus, one can go to places illegal for the public to visit in certain states - additional controls for black level, gamma, and others, which should not be discussed on a site where people might be squeamish about adjusting different variants.

I'm amazed that it would appear that so many people here are watching every DVD or Blu that they play, with their TV controls on one setting only (be it calibrated or not). My Panny OLED has a "Hollywood Calibrated" setting, but almost every disc has to be individually adjusted, even if only a little, to look just right. The controls that I adjust are not "Illegal places for the public", but easily accessed via the menu. They include Brightness (which is actually Black Level), Contrast, Color Saturation, Sharpness, and sometimes Gamma, Tint, and Color Temperature. Very few discs are all the same. I can make these adjustments in a few seconds, and I rarely watch a movie without first adjusting at at least some of them.

 

[haineshisway]

I'm amazed that it would appear that so many people here are watching every DVD or Blu that they play, with their TV controls on one setting only (be it calibrated or not). My Panny OLED has a "Hollywood Calibrated" setting, but almost every disc has to be individually adjusted, even if only a little, to look just right. The controls that I adjust are not "Illegal places for the public", but easily accessed via the menu. They include Brightness (which is actually Black Level), Contrast, Color Saturation, Sharpness, and sometimes Gamma, Tint, and Color Temperature. Very few discs are all the same. I can make these adjustments in a few seconds, and I rarely watch a movie without first adjusting at at least some of them.

"to look just right." To whom? What is right?

 

[Michel_Hafner]

Do the enthusiasts ever watch it 'out of the box'? I thought the first step was always have their equipment 'calibrated' by some technician when they brought it home.

Lots of calibrating going on.. But again a decent piece of equipment should have standard settings that give you a rendition that is quite close to the standard it claims to follow. And severe drift over life expectency should not happen too. The reality is quite different though and a whole industry is built on improving the situation (with HW and SW and man power).

 

[Robert Harris]

Off topic to the thread, but let me chime in (I never miss the chance) to say that the c9 (my first oled) is hands down the best television I've ever owned in my life. I'm amazed on an almost daily basis.

Because it’s a C9 or an OLED? All of the glass comes from LG.

 

[OliverK]

Lots of calibrating going on.. But again a decent piece of equipment should have standard settings that give you a rendition that is quite close to the standard it claims to follow. And severe drift over life expectency should not happen too. The reality is quite different though and a whole industry is built on improving the situation (with HW and SW and man power).

Film projectors with properly maintained lamps and low fade stock probably could come closer to maintain a stable representation over the long run than most of the digital hardware that we have today both in theaters and at home.

To my knowledge there is not one 4k panel or native 4k home theater projector that will not require regular touchups and as the source unlike film does not have the calibration built in this creates another set of issues that is hard to solve with a double digit number of possible HDR iterations alone causing headaches for customers and calibrators.

And still we enjoy the best presentations we ever had so despite these difficulties we are doing quite well

 

[Robert Harris]

Film projectors with properly maintained lamps and low fade stock probably could come closer to maintain a stable representation over the long run than most of the digital hardware that we have today both in theaters and at home.

To my knowledge there is not one 4k panel or native 4k home theater projector that will not require regular touchups and as the source unlike film does not have the calibration built in this creates another set of issues that is hard to solve with a double digit number of possible HDR iterations alone causing headaches for customers and calibrators.

And still we enjoy the best presentations we ever had so despite these difficulties we are doing quite well

Sorry, but film is not a standardized medium. Each run of prints is slightly different. Color is all over the place. In many situations prints are combined by how close or far off they are from the norm.

 

[OliverK]

Sorry, but film is not a standardized medium. Each run of prints is slightly different. Color is all over the place. In many situations prints are combined by how close or far off they are from the norm.

I meant once a given print is in the projector not different prints but yes it comes with the territory that one would get a certain print that would look a certain way without knowing how it compared to others or to how it was intended to look.

It is what it is in any case and I would not trade what I have now for what was available in the past when it comes to home theater. Except maybe that back then we did not have a new format with so many ways to mess things up that it is hard to keep track of all the different nits, bits and (HDR) subformats....

 

[Robert Crawford]

Because it’s a C9 or an OLED? All of the glass comes from LG.

I love my C9 OLED!

 

[sbeamish]

Without grain, Laurel and Hardy do not exist. Their sight gags are no longer funny, as the glow and essence that illuminates them is gone...

You may not be aware of this consciously, but there is a magic and a miraculous quality in film grain that is essential to the magic that Laurel and Hardy perform. It's all about light, the way it's captured and reflected onto us in the audience, in a way that turns into pure emotion. And that's film grain. An apparent distraction to some, that's actually pure emotion and living tissue. I'm sure as you continue to collect and look upon these wondrous objects and make them your own--what William K. Everson called "the religion of cinema" of which we are all worshipers--you'll come to appreciate film grain and realize why so many of us here feel it's so important...


The grain contains the truth of their performances, because it's about capturing light, and I'm sure Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy re-imagined their performances for film with light in mind; what you could see and what you couldn't and how it appeared with all that added illumination.

Forgive the hack editing job on your quotes.

I won't say that I respectfully disagree, because I don't completely disagree. I say, rather, that I respect and appreciate your perspective, but, thanks, I have one of my own.

You know, there were many factors that Stan Laurel (and Hal Roach) took into account when they were producing these films. And I agree, it would be wonderful to create an atmosphere in which we could all view them the way audiences of the period saw them... or to get as close to possible.

I grew up watching Laurel and Hardy on TV in the 1960s, a medium which Stan famously disliked as a showcase for his films. Commercials... poor editing... . With the exception of BABES IN TOYLAND, the features weren't features at all. They were jumbled, 20 minute abridgments that my young mind had to fit together like a video puzzle. This was not the way Stan wanted us to see these films.

And yet... we loved them. And they were still funny. There were scratches and edits and cut offs and audio pops and images that were sometimes washed out and sometimes murky. And they were still funny.

And, to me, they lived.

Then I started to collect their films... standard 8mm. They were silents and silent versions of films that were meant to have audible dialog, because I didn't yet have a sound projector. And they were funny. And they lived. And as I moved into sound films, super 8 and 16mm, the scratches and pops and grain and washouts persisted. And they were funny.

With the advent of home video and (horror of horrors) colorization, well, they still remained funny. Sometimes the colorized results were palatable (THE MUSIC BOX, the Legend Films MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS) and sometimes they were pastel messes. But they were funny. Sometimes the producers added extra music to the soundtracks. I'll be honest. That one hurt me. But, I imagine, somebody still found them funny.

So, I appreciate your position that film grain plays an important part in the persistence of the Laurel and Hardy mythos. More than that, I hope that we see a miracle and get a new, more complete set of restorations that live up to the standards you and Mr. Harris advocate. It might become my new "go to." But even if we don't, Laurel and Hardy remain funny on this new set and will continue to be funny in all of the films and formats I've collected.

And I wouldn't be too sure where William K. Everson would stand in this polemic. His book on Laurel and Hardy was the first book I ever read which wasn't an assigned, school reading. It's special to me. When he appeared on a panel about film preservation at a Sons of the Desert convention (I don't remember which one. I attended every one from 1986 to 1994.), I made sure to attend.

Someone asked him how the allocation of film preservation resources would directly affect the L&H films. Everson expressed no sense of urgency. The extant Laurel and Hardy films, he felt, were sufficiently preserved at that time. And, after all, "it's more important to have a pristine print of SUNRISE* than COME CLEAN*"

*- I used the asterisk as I honestly don't remember which titles he invoked. It was some classic silent and an L&H short, likely COME CLEAN. I was so shocked that he said it, and said it at a Sons convention, I just can't recall the particulars.

At any rate. He didn't seem to feel that poor print quality was a factor that would completely erase the humor of Stan and Ollie.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

I love my C9 OLED!

I love my C6!

I don't know what the heck I'll do when it dies, as I want the 3D capability.

I get that 3D didn't do as well as hoped, but I still can't figure out why TV manufacturers won't make it available on high-end models.

I might be wrong, but my understanding is that the 3D chip doesn't add that much to the cost to make the TV. I can see wanting to save that expense on cheaper TVs, but if someone's paying $2000+ for a TV, they can toss in the damned 3D chip!

 

[JoshZ]

I'm amazed that it would appear that so many people here are watching every DVD or Blu that they play, with their TV controls on one setting only (be it calibrated or not). My Panny OLED has a "Hollywood Calibrated" setting, but almost every disc has to be individually adjusted, even if only a little, to look just right. The controls that I adjust are not "Illegal places for the public", but easily accessed via the menu. They include Brightness (which is actually Black Level), Contrast, Color Saturation, Sharpness, and sometimes Gamma, Tint, and Color Temperature. Very few discs are all the same. I can make these adjustments in a few seconds, and I rarely watch a movie without first adjusting at at least some of them.

You should not need to do this. Home video releases are mastered to a set standard. The point of calibration is to bring your display as close to that standard as it is capable of achieving so that bright films actually look the correct amount of brightness, dark films actually look the correct amount of darkness, etc.

Of course, not every movie has a good transfer. And you may simply not like the mastering decisions made during some transfers, as is your prerogative. But if you're really feeling the need to change your settings for every movie you watch, that tells me either:

1) There's a hardware problem with your equipment and your "calibration" is not really calibrated,
-or-
2) You have very persnickety tastes for what you feel looks "good" or "right" to your liking, which may have nothing to do with what the filmmakers intended.
-or-
3) Some combination of both 1 and 2.

I can make these adjustments in a few seconds, and I rarely watch a movie without first adjusting at at least some of them.

How do you know what to adjust if you haven't watched the movie before? What if it's just one scene that looks "wrong" to you? Do you adjust your settings scene by scene?

 

[JoshZ]

I get that 3D didn't do as well as hoped, but I still can't figure out why TV manufacturers won't make it available on high-end models.

I might be wrong, but my understanding is that the 3D chip doesn't add that much to the cost to make the TV. I can see wanting to save that expense on cheaper TVs, but if someone's paying $2000+ for a TV, they can toss in the damned 3D chip!

It's not just a chip. The TV's panel has to support 3D. Regardless of brand, most television panels are manufactured by LG, and LG does not make 3D panels anymore. Even if, say, Samsung or Sony wanted to make a new 3D model television, they couldn't get a panel for it.

 

[Michel_Hafner]

The 2 features are reviewed over at blu-ray.com.
The stills confirm that "Way Out West" is overfiltered.
"Sons of the Desert" has grain though. Not OCN but some master that still looks
like film.

 

[Robert Crawford]

I love my C6!

I don't know what the heck I'll do when it dies, as I want the 3D capability.

I get that 3D didn't do as well as hoped, but I still can't figure out why TV manufacturers won't make it available on high-end models.

I might be wrong, but my understanding is that the 3D chip doesn't add that much to the cost to make the TV. I can see wanting to save that expense on cheaper TVs, but if someone's paying $2000+ for a TV, they can toss in the damned 3D chip!

I love my E6, the last 3-D OLED produced by LG!

 

[OliverK]

The 2 features are reviewed over at blu-ray.com.
The stills confirm that "Way Out West" is overfiltered.
"Sons of the Desert" has grain though. Not OCN but some master that still looks
like film.

To start on a positive note some of the shorts seem to look at least decent but film grain looks a bit funny in some of these caps even when it is there.

Sons of the Desert seems to be largely devoid of higher frequency detail, not sure how many generations from the OCN we are with this one.
It will be interesting to compare that to my 720p recording from German TV as I do not remember it as being that soft but I might be mistaken.

And unfortunately it looks as if Way out West should be renamed to Way out Wax.

 

[lark144]

Forgive the hack editing job on your quotes.

I won't say that I respectfully disagree, because I don't completely disagree. I say, rather, that I respect and appreciate your perspective, but, thanks, I have one of my own.

You know, there were many factors that Stan Laurel (and Hal Roach) took into account when they were producing these films. And I agree, it would be wonderful to create an atmosphere in which we could all view them the way audiences of the period saw them... or to get as close to possible.

I grew up watching Laurel and Hardy on TV in the 1960s, a medium which Stan famously disliked as a showcase for his films. Commercials... poor editing... . With the exception of BABES IN TOYLAND, the features weren't features at all. They were jumbled, 20 minute abridgments that my young mind had to fit together like a video puzzle. This was not the way Stan wanted us to see these films.

And yet... we loved them. And they were still funny. There were scratches and edits and cut offs and audio pops and images that were sometimes washed out and sometimes murky. And they were still funny.

And, to me, they lived.

Then I started to collect their films... standard 8mm. They were silents and silent versions of films that were meant to have audible dialog, because I didn't yet have a sound projector. And they were funny. And they lived. And as I moved into sound films, super 8 and 16mm, the scratches and pops and grain and washouts persisted. And they were funny.

With the advent of home video and (horror of horrors) colorization, well, they still remained funny. Sometimes the colorized results were palatable (THE MUSIC BOX, the Legend Films MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS) and sometimes they were pastel messes. But they were funny. Sometimes the producers added extra music to the soundtracks. I'll be honest. That one hurt me. But, I imagine, somebody still found them funny.

So, I appreciate your position that film grain plays an important part in the persistence of the Laurel and Hardy mythos. More than that, I hope that we see a miracle and get a new, more complete set of restorations that live up to the standards you and Mr. Harris advocate. It might become my new "go to." But even if we don't, Laurel and Hardy remain funny on this new set and will continue to be funny in all of the films and formats I've collected.

And I wouldn't be too sure where William K. Everson would stand in this polemic. His book on Laurel and Hardy was the first book I ever read which wasn't an assigned, school reading. It's special to me. When he appeared on a panel about film preservation at a Sons of the Desert convention (I don't remember which one. I attended every one from 1986 to 1994.), I made sure to attend.

Someone asked him how the allocation of film preservation resources would directly affect the L&H films. Everson expressed no sense of urgency. The extant Laurel and Hardy films, he felt, were sufficiently preserved at that time. And, after all, "it's more important to have a pristine print of SUNRISE* than COME CLEAN*"

*- I used the asterisk as I honestly don't remember which titles he invoked. It was some classic silent and an L&H short, likely COME CLEAN. I was so shocked that he said it, and said it at a Sons convention, I just can't recall the particulars.

At any rate. He didn't seem to feel that poor print quality was a factor that would completely erase the humor of Stan and Ollie.

You're certainly welcome to disagree, but what I'm describing is not about the L&H "mythos". It's a matter of reality. These were shot on film, and L&H's images and the essences of their gags were captured and preserved by film grain. Take away the grain and you're taking away the essential record of their performances which is on the grain.

It's the same as transferring analogue sound, which is a sign wave, with lots of high and low range information, to the digital realm, which is a square wave, which only preserves the middle range, and then using an overly aggressive cleaning tool to get rid of the tape hiss. Yes, you can hear the voices and instruments without any impediment, and it may sound "better" to an untrained ear, but there's very little information left. What remains is a pale shadow of the original performance, so that many people hearing Maria Callas for the first time on CD might think her voice isn't all that impressive, because so much of what made that voice great is missing.

You talk as if there is only a choice between dupey, contrasy images and the overly clean ones, denuded of grain and reality, that are on this set. But it would have been easy, if perhaps a bit more time consuming, to use a cleaning program carefully, and preserve the grain while leaving the images even more crystalline and easy to see, as the grain would still be there, for taking out the grain softens the image considerably. That's the point Mr. Harris and others are trying to make.