It sounds like the only reason to upgrade is to get the full 2 hour documentary that Universal should have had on the 25th Aniversary SE. I'll keep the 25th and buy the 30th so I can have trailers AND the Full Documentary. I'm learning now to hold onto Universal titles being re-issued until I know what is included. I am so glad I kept the Collector's Edition of THE BOURNE IDENTITY, because that ended up being the best of the Two.
Andrew, where have you been? Haven't you read this and most other Jaws threads on the Film and Documentary board, as well as threads on other DVD sites? This has been the main bone of contention. If you have experienced Jaws in theatres and on Laserdisc/VHS/TV, many, many times over the last thirty years, as most people on this thread have, then you would be well aware that many key sound effects were replaced by brand new effects, recorded especially for the original DVD's 5.1 mix. The reason for this, is due to the fact that it very, very difficult to extract some sound effects from magnetic masters that are often mixed together in mono with the music score and no longer exist seperately, so they cannot be allocated to the left rear channel of the 5.1 mix. Thus, a an all-new, seperately recorded and mixed effect has to be created from scratch. This way, the 5.1 has the right ambience, seperation and 3-D 'image'.
I also find it strange that someone would buy Jaws on DVD and still not have gotten around to watching it a year after purchase! That should have been a rush-home-and-get-spinning DVD purchase, Andrew!
It is disheartening that most mono tracks are only 192 kbps. It wasn't aware that the LD's mono track was 1411 kbps PCM, as Greg states above. You don't have to be a sound engineer to see understand that the DVD's mono track is going to be significantly inferior. Universal were right to include Dolby 5.1 English, DTS 5.1 English and Dolby mono English sound options. But including Dolby 5.1 French and Spanish tracks is bizarre. Previously, those languages had mono options in the R2 Europe releases, along with the wonderful German dub! Too many audio tracks. How many people, living in the U.S and Canada, are going to watch Jaws dubbed in 5.1 French or Spanish, when the have the original English track in 5.1 DD and DTS and have French or Spanish subtitles?
What would have been the ideal audio bitrates, if the French and Spanish dub tracks had been dropped?
Giving the video bitrate a healthy 7mbps, what would be the maximum about that could be allocated to the three audio tracks?
Dolby 5.1 English @ 448kbps? DTS 5.1 English @ 754kbps? Dolby mono English @ 754kbps?
Or...
Dolby 5.1 English @ 448kbps? DTS 5.1 English @ 754kbps? Dolby mono English @ 1411kbps?
I really am clueless when it comes to digital audio encoding!
Absolutely (CLV mono version included). A full bitrate PCM soundtrack will sound richer than any mpeg compressed audio. Even a 320Kb mp3 file can't compare to an original on CD. That goes double for full bitrate DTS laserdiscs.
All of this is moot for anybody who owns a $200 all-in-one home theater/DVD system from a big box store or listens on their PC in their bedroom/rec room. Shame on you...
i have the signature series laser and the dts dvd. i'm gonna pick up the dvd just so i can watch the 2 hr doc without having to do itwith the laser disk player it isnt hooked up right now.
but really, anyone who has the first dvd, dont hesitate to think about getting the new dvd even just for the 2 hr doc. it's excellent.
It's releases like these that push the consumer's want of higher capacity media OR (*gasp*) selective purchase to download from your friendly filmmaker.
The restrictions of media, combined with forces of greed, command the studios to collapse to the consumer pressure and offer up all sorts of differing ensembles of sight and sound, each attainable through varied levels of compression and trickery, and all at the expense of our viewing experience.
I would buy this if it either DD or (better yet) DTS, or if they dropped all formats and streamed a full wave PCM at 1411 bps, but it's been a long time since I've supported any studio that compresses more into the package than it was designed for. Despite my love of this film and the glowing review of the restoration (despite it's elderly film release date), I'm not picking this one up.
I'm not surprised that there isn't a newly reworked DTS or DD track. The moneys allocated to that were spent long ago and there would be no economical justification to rework this for a re-re-release.
I think it would have just been nice to release the original mono on a PCM track 5 years ago to go along with the DTS and DD releases (of course, there would still have to be a DD soundtrack like on the DTS release to keep with standards). It probably still wouldn't have been the real original soundtrack with the original effects though.
The full documentary here is a nice addition, and makes this release a must-buy for me, as I have never seen it (I've never owned a LD player, but I've been seriously considering it, especially to get the Original Star Wars Trilogy, but I know that would cost me an arm and a leg).
I'll admit that I'm not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to bit-rates and other audio terms, but honestly, after hearing all the glowing reviews for LD PCM tracks, I don't understand why more aren't offered on DVD. Especially for films like Jaws, where mono represents the original theaterical presentation. Seems like it would beat compressing such a track, as has been reported here. There's probably some sort of technical issue that I'm not aware of, but it's probably more likely that there just isn't a big enough market for something like this. I think most people do care about filling up their speakers, (not a knock against those who do, as I do understand that) and studios are more likely to cater to this larger crowd.
Its simply a matter of space limitation. I'm not sure what the sample rate for 48K is, but based on CD audio of sample rate of 44.1K, 1411Kbps of storage is (roughly) as follows:
1.411Mbps * 60 = 84.66Mb per minute of stereo audio 84.66Mbpm * 124min = 10.498Gb (audio only)
Dual layer video limit (approx) = 8.2 Gb for DVD data without menus.
Here endeth the lesson.
Anybody who has burned homemade DVD-5's with just PCM audio has come to realize a 60 minute video w/PCM audio really chews into the video bitrate capacity for the potential of a good quality picture - the maximum I was able to get with a decent picture was about 80 minutes before picture quality went way downhill.
I'm not very technically minded, but with all of today's technology, isn't there any way to combine the video of the new Jaws DVD with the uncompressed PCM mono track from the CAV laserdisc? If so, you'd think Universal would've released the discs this way so we'd have the best picture quality available, combined with the best original mono track as well. Maybe they didn't think fans of the original soundtrack really cared what the quality of the mono track was, as long as they released it as well. It seems they're more concerned with reproducing new bad digital sound effects for 5.1 audio, than they are in preserving an original Oscar winning soundtrack.
They could absolutely release the new DVD with the great video and the PCM mono soundtrack. The issue for them is that many folks who have 5.1 systems don't want a mono track, and want to utilize their whole system. With this release, they satsify both those who want the great video with 5.1 tracks, and give you the mono to boot. Of course, the mono is heavily compressed, but at least it is there. Whereas it wasn't on the previous release.
So, for a 124 minute film, a 1411 Kbps audio track would take up 1.25 GB of disc space.
If your calculation had been correct, it would have been impossible for the new Jaws disc to even have the DTS and multiple DD tracks that it already does, as the total bitrate for those is well over 1411 Kbps.
A little surprised that the video is the same. Not complaining mind you. I'm perfectly happy with the 25th DTS version. However, it still may look better since dvd authoring or whatever it's called is better than it was back then.
For me, the audio is certainly important but when projecting an 106 inch image, the video is probably my first priority. Has anyone else done some image comparos?
Not true. PCM, unlike DTS, was part of the original DVD spec. A DVD can be PCM-only and still meet the standards. Of course, if they had just replaced the 2.0 stereo mix-down on the DTS disc with a DD mono track, it would have made a lot of people very happy back then.