Disney: Platinum Edition Vs. Blu Ray (1 Viewer)

[battlebeast]

Besides the picture quality, which Mr. Harris has stated is terribly scrubbed clean on many of them, are Disney's Animated Features better on Blu or DVD? do they port over the Bonus features? I'm asking because I have several Platinum Editions and I don't know if I should get rid of them or not: Aladdin, Lion King, Sword in the Stone, 101 Dalmatians, Jungle Book and Sleeping Beauty.

Any knowledge or help would be great!

 

[darkrock17]

Keep the DVD's, Disney doesn't always bring everything over to Blu.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

In general, the HTF official reviews tend to list which bonus features did and did not carry over from the platinum DVD versions to the BD. Disney frequently drops special features so if you’re a fan of those, in many cases you do need to keep the DVD. The Lion King, for instance, has both the original and special edition versions on the DVD, but only the original version on the BD.

In terms of picture quality, the scrubbing started back in the DVD era so both the DVD and BD are often “too clean”.

 

[darkrock17]

"In terms of picture quality, the scrubbing started back in the DVD era so both the DVD and BD are often “too clean”.

I disagree on that, a lot of Golden Collections had good image quality for that era back in the mid 90's to early 2000's, same goes for the Platinum's as well. The DVD's were a big step up from the VHS days of the 80's.

 

[Kyrsten Brad]

Keep the DVDs for the special features not included on the Blus.
Next head over to Casetopia or Twilight Time And order up some 2 disc & 3 disc cases & put together your own package.

Which is what I’m doing with my Parent Trap DVDs & new Blu-rays.

 

[MatthewA]

Heck, I've been restocking on Disney laserdiscs just because I'm curiouser and curiouser about how much has changed over the years. If you have the means and an external upconverter, then I recommend it as it is the best way to see the pre-DVD transfers. They don't look all that bad. Compared to the those avaricious boneheads who think a VHS of Beauty and the Beast is worth $3,500 on eBay than a used car, they're a steal.

Also, some of the early DVDs appear to be ports of laserdisc transfers. There was a lot of complaint about that as those somehow managed to be less noisy on LD (no MPEG-2 compression) where the sound was also uncompressed. The late 1980s/early-to-mid 1990s transfers, done when the Restoration Department as we know it today was just being set up, were probably the best in terms of trying to get the color and contrast right and the least amount of dirt and scratches while still looking film-like. Since I never owned it on laserdisc and only on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray, I picked up the 1990s CAV Cinderella box set (without the box, sadly) and rewatched it there. The magic was back. It looked like a movie again. The 1990s CAV "Masterpiece Edition" of Dumbo also looked pretty good.

But as for DVD, anyone who has any or all of the Walt Disney Treasures sets, hang onto those for dear life despite the transfers being all over the place. It'll be years before most of that comes to Blu-ray, and I'm afraid that it will look like smeary garbage when it does. Ironically, they seem to be less heavy-handed in restoring live-action films.

 

[darkrock17]

The reason why the Laserdisc's did so well was because during that time frame of the late 80's to early 2000's Disney actually cared about their films and preserving them for future generations.