Contact coming in October! (2 Viewers)

[cafink]

Originally Posted by JediFonger

the soundtrack, while great for its time, can now be remixed to take FULL potential of lossless. even if Contact BD came out as TrueHD, if the original tracks aren't remixed to be fully optimized to today's technology, it's still a wasted potential.

Your thinking is backwards. TrueHD and other high-resolution lossless audio codecs are designed to best reproduce a movie's soundtrack. You seem to want exactly the opposite: for the soundtrack to be designed to best show off an audio codec.

Contact's sound mix was completed twelve years ago and it's perfectly fine. Including it as-is in TrueHD would reproduce it wonderfully. Remix it "to take full potential of lossless" would be as bad as pan-and-scanning a widescreen film "to take full potential of the television screen."

 

[JediFonger]

but if the source can be improved via remastering, then why not do it? what you are saying is don't remaster Wizard of the Oz@4k, or any of hte Bonds through Lowry. just stick to what the best reproduction technology of when the original work took place. i don't agree with that. 400 blows looks amazing on criterion, the mono lpcm is out of this world. i think studios need to work on all transfers, not just do a encoding dump and sell it to consumers. that's the opposite of what films deserve: preservation, not "best at the time of 1st generation products". sleeping beauty is so much better than it ever was back then. i wouldn't have it any other way, but have to live with it cause it's still a business. having said that, dude where's my car shouldn't deserve the same treatment as Contact.

 

[Brandon Conway]

Making a new HD master at 4k and doing a Lowry-style restoration at 4k are two different things. Contact should look great by doing the former, and as far as sound goes, they just need to use the original theatrical mix and encode it with a lossless codec. Done and done.

 

[Chris S]

Completely agree with Brandon. There is absolutely no reason to modify the original theatrical track on this film. Encode at lossless quality and be start pressing discs.

 

[Chad R]

Originally Posted by JediFonger

but if the source can be improved via remastering, then why not do it?

But you originally said "remix" which is an entirely different thing. Remixing is pulling out all of the original sound stems and rebalancing them and panning the stereo effects to create the final mix. "Contact" was made in the digital age and was mixed very well, and the files have not degraded since then so it doesn't really need to have anything done to it but, as others have said, be transferred to Dolby TrueHD.

With the film elements only being 12 years old, I seriously doubt they need to be tinkered with or restored either. All that really needs to be done is the master rescanned using current HD transfer equipment, which I hope happens. But it doesn't need a lot of work.

 

[JediFonger]

the soundtrack sounds hollow, less punchy than today's soundtrack. it can definitely benefit from remixing.

 

[Brandon Conway]

Originally Posted by JediFonger

the soundtrack sounds hollow, less punchy than today's soundtrack. it can definitely benefit from remixing.

Sounds hollow on what? The lossy DD track on the DVD?

Again, the DVD is not an adequate reference source.

 

[Chad R]

Not to mention, what's most important about this soundtrack is the quiet sequences. Often the film intentionally goes silent, and it needs to sound absolutely quiet. Something DTS and Dolby Digital did better than the old analog format which left an audible hum or hiss. And I'm sure Dolby TrueHD will do equally as wonderfully going absolutely silent.

 

[Paul_Warren]

Another great but subtle shot is the camera move early in the film which goes through the window into the house onto the Ellie + Dad talking in her room scene! Or how about the seamless blend of the external VFX to interior for the machine test & launch!

I still remember how this sounded in the THX Theatre I saw it in back in the day used to be a Warner Bros THX cinema in Leicester Square which sounded incredible. Randy Thom is the sound designer and he does some amazing work (think he is on the commentary track as well).

Zemeckis is IMO up there way above Cameron as a VFX genius. To me Zemeckis is probably the master filmaker as he can blend, comedy, technical wizardry & bleak drama seamlessly like no-one else (Sometimes all in the same movie!). I just wish he would go back to live action as his CGI movies have all the wizz bang but are pretty hollow story wise as they are more about the technique than any master story telling.

Spielberg still has the When Worlds Collide remake up his sleeve & Zemeckis or Bay would be perfect for that!!!

 

[Steve Tannehill]

Originally Posted by Paul_Warren

Another great but subtle shot is the camera move early in the film which goes through the window into the house onto the Ellie + Dad talking in her room scene! Or how about the seamless blend of the external VFX to interior for the machine test & launch!

I still remember how this sounded in the THX Theatre I saw it in back in the day used to be a Warner Bros THX cinema in Leicester Square which sounded incredible. Randy Thom is the sound designer and he does some amazing work (think he is on the commentary track as well).

I saw Contact twice at Northpark I in Dallas, Texas, which was the best sounding THX theater in the region. I still remember the sound of the missiles launching to rotate the outer ring on the machine. Sound you could feel...

And I also saw the movie twice on opening night. Heck, all this talk about favorite scenes makes me want to spin up the DVD tonight!

- Steve

 

[mattCR]

I remember buying it to show off my (at the time) Awesome Panasonic A310 DVD player My Toshiba Model 2006 player wouldn't play it.. but I bought Contact and Little Shop of Horrors (with the alternate ending.. a title I will NEVER surrender) at the same time.

This is a must buy for me

 

[Marius W]

I remember the original DVD being one of the first DVDs that I felt really got everything right. That I loved the movie probably didn't hurt.

Probably a day one purchase for me.

 

[JediFonger]

i,too, saw it in the cinema opening day. excellent presentation. taht's why i felt disappointed by the DVD's audio presentation, didn't really live up to my expectations.

 

[Jeff Robertson]

Same here. I remember the "rotting disc" reports with this title but my copy plays fine after all this time. I just watched it again last night. This will make for an excellent Blu-Ray. Judging by the specs, however, I doubt we'll be seeing any new extras or we'll get it on a 50GB disc. A shame.

Originally Posted by cafink

I remember all the fuss that was made about it at the time, but I never had any problems with "DVD rot." I got the Contact DVD in 1997, and watched it just last week--it played flawlessly. Did I just get lucky?

 

[John Alderson]

This was THE first DVD I bought, in may of '98, in order to try out my new Encore DXR2 decoder card that had S-video out on it. I had a 20 foot S-Video cable running from my computer room to my TV in my apartment, and was blown away by the picture. I'm a little harder to please now, but I too watched this recently (on my 50" plasma) and was surprised how well it still holds up... some compression artifacts that you usually don't see anymore, but honestly I think it compares favorably to the latter day WB DVD's, like the Dark Knight and Harry Potter 5 for example.

I'll be upgrading Contact to Blu so long as I don't hear of any unfortunate quality issues.

 

[Bill Buklis]

Amazon now has this for only 18.99 - even better.

This is a fabulous movie from a fabulous book. If you haven't read it, you definitely should. There are some interesting differences between the movie and the book. For example, there are 5 people who go through the machine instead of just one.

This was also one of my first DVDs, if not the first. Not too long ago, I dusted this off the shelf and played it again without any problems.

 

[Jeff Robertson]

DVD Beaver has a review up! Not sure I like the shift in color.

 

[Carlo_M]

Not overly worried about the color shift, more worried about the amount of DNR they mention. If it's anywhere near the level of Gladiator I'm going to wait until this hits the discount shelves before upgrading. Too bad to read about the potential PQ issues as this was a title I was really looking forward to purchasing...

 

[pitchman]

Yeah, Gary's review and those screen caps have certainly put me off this title for now. Too bad. I was really looking forward to upgrading this film to Blu.

 

[ToEhrIsHuman]

Sadly, the HDNet screen caps looked superior to the BD ones in DVDBeaver.com's review.