I listen to mono tracks with my receiver in Pro-Logic mode, this sends the 2.0 mono track right to my center channel. I like it. My receiver is a Denon 5700.
Picked this up tonight at Wal-Mart supercenter after work along with Casino: AE. I was suprised Universla devided to do a good job with the packaging, similar to the Criterions of Battle of Algiers an Short Cuts with the DVD case and book inside. Looks pretty attractive.
I was especially impressed with the book itself. Many high quality photos and quotes from Spielberg, plus they have quotes from the three cast members and pics to accompany them. And one thing that made more of an impression on me was the inclusion of the speech Robert Shaw made about the Indianapolis sinking and the survivors being attacked by the sharks. That scene still gets to me everytime I see it, and I had hoped as I was borwsing through the book that they would include something like that. Truly Shaw's best performance, and I can still can't believe he wasn't nominated for an Oscar for his work in this film.
I caught the FULL documentary tonight, and I am SOOO happy to finally see the whole thing!!!
While I didn't have time to watch the whole film, I did listen to the slap to Brody's face in the original mono, and I am very happy that it sounds exactly as I remembered it. The nice thing is, because they included the DTS and DD 5.1 audio tracks right along side the original mono, I can do an instant a/b comparrison and remember why I was so upset at how unnatural that slap sounded when it was replaced for the DD and DTS versions.
Thanks Universal! Aside from the MIA trailers, I couldn't be happier with this DVD!
Considering that Universal hasn't been putting any trailers on their DVDs for a while now (except trailers for other releases of course) I don't think it's an oversight but rather standard Universal policy.
By the way, according to Power DVD the mono track is compressed at 192 kbps, in case anyone was wondering.
I myself was disappointed with the "X" shaped glue mark I found on the back of the foil sleeve when I removed the card detailing the disc features. (I was going to put it in the movie keepcase.) It's impossible to remove the adhesive residue without marring the black printed surface.
So can someone please verify for us...the only thing not included on the 30th anniversary 2 disc set that was included in the 25th anniversary disc are the trailers, right? Everything else is included, correct?
There was some other stuff like a trivia game, a featurette about sharks, and a screen saver via DVD-ROM, but all of the substantial extras aside from the trailers have been equalled or bettered with the 30th Anniversary release.
"I'm curious as to how a purist listen's to the mono track. Do you watch the film through just one speaker? Or is it two channel Mono? Or even 3 channel Mono?" __________________________________________________ _________
Depending on your receiver's settings, I'd imagine you'd listen to the mono soundtrack through one speaker (the center channel) Would anyone agree?
I totally disagree with that. It's the same mono track, but it has none of the dimension of the LD track...it's heavily compressed and the LD sounds stereophonic by comparison.
I got the new disc yesterday at Costco, ran about 5 minutes or so after selecting the mono track-it's 2 channel mono so that's how I set up the receiver--and immediately noticed that it sounded better than the DTS track on the old edition. Then I suddenly realized I'd stupidly picked up the 4/3 version, spat it out of the player and put the old edition on in DTS, pic was correct but sound was thin compared to the mono track.
Found a widescreen copy of the new edition at Walmart tonight and will try again with correct pic and sound.
Since this is a two-channel mono-track, my receiver tries to automatically go into Pro-Logic mode, which makes everything come through the center channel. Usually with two-channel tracks like these, I switch into stereo mode so the mono-track is reproduced through the left and right speakers. This makes sense to me, but I'm not really sure. In fact, I'm not really sure why there are two-channel mono tracks; it seems that these are actually more abundant than single-channel mono tracks.
I watched the movie with the original mono track on last night. I used Dolby Pro-Logic II so the sound only came out of the center channel. I have to say that I had forgotten how much better the original soundtrack is than the two surround re-mixes. The effects sounds seem much more natural and integrated with the rest of the audio.
I was hoping that the review would have been updated by now with a more in-depth look at the original mono track, but oh well. Based on comments from here and other forums, it looks like it will do just nicely.
I don't think they really care, it just depends on how it's encoded on the disc (i.e. only through the center or through the L/R mains).
I don't know of a commercial sized theater that has only one speaker, so I'm pretty sure even mono sized soundtracks "back in the day" were played only through a single speaker. Just because it's played over 2 speakers (I have a few L/R speaker mono soundtrack DVDs) doesn't somehow make it not-mono.
Theatres playing back mono soundtracks, then and now, do it through the center speaker stack. The sound has a single origin point. Playback at home through 2 speakers can be fine if the viewer will be sitting in the HT's sweet spot; otherwise, it can make the sound unbalanced.
Same here. I never got the LD boxed set due to its $150 price tag, so this was my first time seeing the whole thing. Much better than the one-hour cutting on the 25th anniversary DVD.
I particularly enjoyed hearing Spielberg describe all the different ways in which he filmed Ben Gardner's cycloptic head, trying to figure out the best timing for its appearance.
And thumbs way up to the mono track, which sounded just like I remember it from my old bare-bones letterboxed LD. My receiver piped the mono sound out of my two front speakers, which was fine with me - I used to listen to my old LD on a stereo system with no center speaker, so this was how I was used to it.
Even if you have the LD docu, the inclusion of the original Oscar-winning soundtrack with an anamorphic transfer should make this a no-brainer.