DOWN WITH LOVE: Disappointment Transfer of the Year! (1 Viewer)

[GerardoHP]

I doubt very much that this is a question of a bad batch. To me, the picture looks murky even on the TV ads for the DVD.

Chris, I still think this is apples and oranges. The Douglas Sirk movies, which FFH emulates, had a darker and distinctly color-saturated look that the Doris Day-Rock Hudson comedies did not have. The latter were very bright and, IMO, boasted a softer Eastmancolor palette that was very different from Sirk's.

In theaters, DWL was not as dark and low contrast as the DVD. It was very bright and, while the colors certainly popped, they were consistent with the relatively lighter spectrum of the Day-Hudson pictures.

 

[Brian W]

I saw FFH at the theater and thought it was soft then and that the DVD reproduced what I saw at the theater. By comparison, take a look at, say, Sirk's Written on the Wind (Criterion). Depth of field and crisp detailed focus were part of Sirk's style. The director of FFH seemed to go for a more soft filtered look, maybe to imitate the trademark Technicolor look and heavy saturation of colors (the colors, lighting in FFH are very Sirk-esque). In turn this process made some of the photography appear soft. Again, the print in the theater was not any more sharp or detailed than what I see when viewing the DVD. Actually the DVD may actually be less soft than what I saw at the theater.

 

[Yumbo]

What player are you using Gerardo?

I had to adjust my 'Pioneer', as it was too dark.
My Panasonic was spot on.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

I was amused to see that the full screen edition goes to widescreen not only for the split-screen scenes, but also for shots where the cast is riding in the backseat of cars and they are on opposite sides of the frame. I didn't bother scanning through it for long, but the movie certainly flips over to widescreen enough times to annoy the folks who can't stand those damn black bars! I assume the vhs transfer is the same though.

I happened to see the P&S transfer too. I thought it was pretty hysterical that maybe a third of the movie was in widescreen! Why did they even bother?

I noticed a lot of softness/ bad focus that people have mentioned here, but only during P&S parts -- I just figured that it was a result of the P&S zoom-in.

 

[Ryan Wong]

I have found a way to make the video of Down With Love looked sharper!!!

I loved this movie. I can't help but to watch it again and again while some other new DVDs like The Two Towers EE and X2 are begging me to play them. But I am still facing the same problem as many do - the image is soft, lack of detail, and too dark, compared to X2 and TTT, its heaven and earth.

I am using Sony's DVP - NS915V, a mid price player that with quite a few video adjustment features, with a Philips 32" widescreen TV. So I tried to do some adjustment instead of leaving the video quality like that. I have tried to adjust the brightness, but too bad, solid black become solid grey, still, no dark detail has been brighten up. I think all Sony's players are like that. Maybe Panasonic 82 can do a better job on the black level?

Last night, I was watching it again as usual. I realised the bitrate for the video is always above 5mbps, which is quite high compared to some other DVDs. I was wondering, since the image is so lack of detail, why the bitrate is still so high?

I decided to call out the video enhancer in my Sony player, and set to level 3 (maximum). The result is WAAAWW!! WOW!!

Usually, when I turn on the video enhancement feature, it always hurt the quality with more noticable compression artifacts, cause video noise, and enhance the edge enhancement. But now, without noticable compression artifact, noise and EE, Down With Love is so detailed!

You can immediately notice the follwing details:
- When Ewan was climbing down from helicoper, the background is painted. So many fake paintings are being noticed throughout the film.
- More obvious blue screen.
- Until now I can see what is focused and what is not. When Ewan face is being focused, you can see every details on his face.
- Renee's pink dress, you can now see the cotton's details. The white hat (you know which one I am talking about) is so 3D than ever that is touchable. Not to mention, her red agogo dress...
- While Renee was dancing (Fly me to the moon), they have used the soft lense. So instead of everything soft, I can see the sharp objects with soft glowing around them.

I am thinking two explainations for this:
1) Fox didn't apply any EE at all. So it is more suitable to be viewed on bigger screen. With the smaller screen like us, the image will become soft and need to apply some EE to it.

2) Encoding problem. The video bitrate is unusually high that some players might not be able to extract all the information and then it become soft. So while I used video enhancement, it process more info and bring out the details.

If you were facing the same problem, and also own a similar player, can you try it out too?

You can say I am adding edge enhancement to the video, but it certainly enhance my viewing experience.

 

[Allan Cast]

WOW! Interesting thread!

I just thought it could be a batch of bad pressings but now I dont know!

I'll just have to get the disc and see myself.