New Mary Poppins Aspect Ratio (1 Viewer)

[Keith Paynter]

Borrowed from a current eBay auction...


THX certified, too, and like many Disney discs at the time, were distributed by Image Entertainment. The first DVD used the same cover art, but had no extras worth mentioning...

The Gold Collection DVD included the LD's premiere newsreel and the 'making of' documentary.

 

[Rob Gardiner]

Next thing I know, someone is going to tell me that Dick Van Dyke's cockney accent was faked!

 

[Keith Paynter]

"Gordon Bennett!!"

 

[DaViD Boulet]

That most recent LD was cut from the same master as the DVD...they probably both have identical DD 5.1 mixes too (but I'd be willing to discover eq differences there...often DVDs have clearly different soudning 5.1 presentations than their 5.1 AC-3 LD counterparts).

But the current non-16x9 DVD is merely a digital copy of the master used for that most recent laserdisc.

I have the archive edition LD...which has much more vibrant colors and a generally much more pleasing sounding audio presentation (2.0 PCM). I'm hopeful that the new 16x9 DVD will impress me on all counts. I CAN NOT WAIT for this review...it will be the review to end all reviews. Anybody with the most recent LD in the area want to swing it by to join in the party? Archive edition LD, most recent LD, previous DVD and new DVD...let's compare them all....buuahhahhhaaahahah...

-dave

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

For image, its a toss-up for me between the DVD (either of the first two releases) and the Archive Edition laserdisc. The many optical effects shots look very grungy on the laserdisc, and I didn't think the colors were all that much more vibrant than the DVD. That being said, the DVD suffers somewhat from video processing artifacts, and the color timing, while "vibrant", is pretty unnatural looking.

For audio, I prefer the Archive Edition laserdisc hands down.

I'm hoping that all wrongs are righted with the new DVD, but I'm not holding my breath.

Regards,

 

[Brian Kidd]

POPPINS is another Lowry Digital job so I'd expect that the picture will look pretty stunning. Disney is one of the few studios who have taken excellent care of their films over the years. If Lowry had a great element to start with then I expect the finished product should be sweeter than candy.

 

[ScottR]

Yeah, if they don't screw up the AR, which it looks like is going to happen. I'm sorry, but the film was most likely 1.75:1 and anyone who says that picture information will not be lost on the sides if it is 1.66:1 is either lying or they don't know what they are talking about.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

But that assumes it was shot with a 1.75 hard-matte. It's likely it was shot either full-frame or 1.66 and matted to 1.75/1.85 in theatres.

 

[Joe Caps]

Oh dear, oh dear oh dear.

I now see that the poppins is a lowry digital job so the picture should look good.
Well, the last poppins dvd and laser was also lowry digital, but the picture just looks clean, but not good.
Maybe I'm wrong, but there seems to be continous confusion on this forum between a film restoration and film to video transfer.
Step one - lowrty digital or Bob Harris restores a film.
Good plan
Step Two - film to tape transfer is done.
Well, we could sent these restorations to five different post production houses and would have five very different looking videos.
So be carefull and don't assume we'll get a good transfer just because the original element has been spiffed up.

 

[ArthurMy]

"So be carefull and don't assume we'll get a good transfer just because the original element has been spiffed up."

On the other hand, don't assume you won't get a good transfer. Why be negative in advance, before you've even seen the disc in question? Lowry has grown leaps and bounds and does pretty terrific work these days. In any event, why worry now? When the disc comes out, we'll all know. That's my two, anyway.

 

[Mark_Wilson]

What others were like that?

 

[Rob Gardiner]

Wasn't there an intentional, anamorphic LD of T2 at some point? Maybe I'm thinking of MUSE Hi-Vision?

 

[ChristopherDAC]

There were two kinds of anamorphic widescreen LDs. One is simply the scope film which is not unsqueezed and then letterboxed or cropped, but left as it is. This looks strange on almost every display device. The other is the specially prepared 16:9 anamorphic LD, made for widescreen TVs which were first introduced in Japan in the early 90s; for a while U.S. Toshiba gave a free one away to everybody who purchased such a TV over here. The Japanese titles were mostly downconversions from the HiVision studio masters.

According to the LDDB lists [which are not yet near complete] there are:

in the first category [accidental]:
3 U.S. [all DiscoVision releases except for Black Hole]

in the second category [intentional]:
9 Japanese [including two editions of T2]
2 German
4 U.S.

 

[TedD]

Could it possibly be because several recent Disney DVD releases have been unmitigated disasters?

Check out this thread for more:

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...hreadid=206793

Ted

 

[george kaplan]

That's not quite fair. Robert was talking about Miramax releases, of which Mary Poppins was not one. Disney has certainly released lots of discs with no problems (e.g., the last wave of Treasures) during the same time frame as the Miramax films discussed in Robert's column. There's every reason to hope that Disney will treat Mary Poppins the way they did the Treasures, not the way Miramax treated Gangs of New York.

 

[Ernest Rister]

"Could it possibly be because several recent Disney DVD releases have been unmitigated disasters?"

And several recent releases of classic Disney live-action titles have looked quite good. If Poppins looks as good as the sparkling, eye-popping DVD of The Three Lives of Thomasina, then I'll be quite happy.

 

[TedD]

Did you miss the part of the discussion and the screen captures of "The Happiest Millionaire", which was one of the Disney releases?

Not discussed in the thread either of us are referencing, but Disney none-the-less and the subject of numerous discussions concerning image quality here and in other forums:

The excessive EE, banding, and lack of detail on "Brother Bear"? The compression artifacts on "Beauty and the Beast"? The excessive mosquito noise on "Hunchback Of Notre Dame"? The level of EE on "Sleeping Beauty"?

Any time that Disney or any of their subsidiaries tries to load up a DVD with a bunch of features (or even a few features if the movie is long) image quality seems to suffer.

From my point of view, it seems to me that they are more interested in quantity than quality, which bodes poorly for those with large screen theaters who may frequent this forum.

"The Three Lives Of Thomasina" is a short (97 minutes) features with a single 192 Kbps Dolby Digital mono track and virtually no extras. I would sure hope they could pull that one off without too much effort.

I hope that "Mary Poppins" is a stellar quality DVD. I just don't have a lot of confidence based on the track record of some recent Disney releases.

Ted

 

[Patrick McCart]

Since LDI did the Mary Poppins remaster, I doubt you're going to have to worry about excessive filtering... I don't think Disney applies any further work on the LDI masters, from what I've seen in Snow White and Alice in Wonderland.

 

[george kaplan]

I have to admit I went to Robert's article from that link and didn't read through that entire thread again, although one film doesn't really qualify as several. In fairness, you do list some others not in that thread, although I'm not sure I'd agree that all of those are unmitigated disasters ala Cold Mountain.

In the end, it's clear that Disney (as opposed to Miramax), can, and often (though not always) does, put out excellent dvds recently. There's reason to hope that Mary Poppins will be one of those, since I think Disney respects Poppins more than they do Happiest Millionaire.

 

[Ernest Rister]

"The excessive EE, banding, and lack of detail on "Brother Bear"? The compression artifacts on "Beauty and the Beast"? The excessive mosquito noise on "Hunchback Of Notre Dame"? The level of EE on "Sleeping Beauty"?"

If we are going to go as far back in time as the Hunchback DVD, then it should only be fair to point out the acclaimed titles like Pirates of the Caribbean, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Pollyanna, Alice in Wonderland: ME, Treasure Island...sure Disney is hit and miss, that is why it is important to praise them when they do something right just as vociferously as we pan them when they do something wrong. I don't think it is accurate to claim that Disney has a poor track record of DVD quality based on some edge enhancement on the spectacular Sleeping Beauty DVD. I think it is fair to say mixed, but certainly not poor overall.