TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE Re-release specs!!! (1 Viewer)

[Myo K]

sean writes

anyone find that the bad video quality adds to the film to make it more of a "being there" feel.

am i the only one that thought this was funny?

 

[Sergio Martorel]

anyone find that the bad video quality adds to the film to make it more of a "being there" feel.

Nah. It just add to the feeling of "being ripped in 25 bucks - twice!".

 

[Joshua_W]

Actually, the LD image doesn't look too bad for a 16mm film.

So, who actually owns the rights to this, and what are the chances that they'll pass to someone other than Pioneer?

(Also have to add that Pioneer's transfer for the first "La Femme Nikita" DVD looked like shit, too.)

 

[Sean Patrick]

vincent -

you're wasting your time writing these long posts since you obviously don't understand the underlying FACTS - THE PIONEER DVD WAS NOT TAKEN FROM THE LASRDISC MASTER!! the LD master was MUCH nicer looking!!

So let me clarify for you AGAIN - the "transer was subpar 5 years ago, as it is today!"

why would ANYONE want to defend this dvd????? i just don't get it...isn't this forum dedicated to QUALITY?

-sean

 

[Sean Patrick]

PS -

Joshua - the "new" special edition La Femme Nikita in some ways looks worse than the FIRST mgm release. the edge enhancement is some of the worst some of us have seen.

PS to Vincent -

sorry if i sound angry but your rebuttals have come across as rather rude. and since your argument was based on a false premise (pioneer dvd being taken from the restored LD print) I just had to take that to task.

trust me, if a dvd came out with that LD print i'd camp out overnight in the cold in line for it at this point.

 

[Sergio Martorel]

Here´s ANOTHER comparison screenshot of the same scene, to illustrate the differences.

 

[Sean Patrick]

sergio



what's sad is that it's not far from the truth

 

[Sergio Martorel]

What do you mean, "not far from the truth"? Those are ACTUAL screen captures compared.

LASERDISC:


DVD:

 

[Sean Patrick]

oh i thought you had intentionally added pixels to that one screenshot as a joke - i see what you were doing now. my bad.

 

[Mark Palermo]

Holy crap! Maybe I'll just keep my VHS tape instead.

 

[Ruz-El]

admit that the LD looks better, but what are the odds this is going to get a better transfer/correct transfer/whatever transfer any time soon?

If I see this for $20, I'll pick it up. The DVD quality IS better than my VHS. (Granted, my VHS got eaten by a friends VCR)

 

[Vincent_P]

Sean-

I'm not being rude, if you read my posts I *AGREE* with you that Pioneer f**ked up!

What I'm saying is, their DVD is still based on the same telecine transfer that Elite did. Is it the "right" tape? No, it is not- I know the story behind this, I'm friends with Don May and he told me all about it back when the first Pioneer DVD version was released- that Pioneer used a "back-up" copy of their telecine transfer (sans final digital restorations work) and not the true master tape that was used to master the laserdisc. I've made that point clear in every one of my posts, and never once did I "defend" Pioneer for their DVD, nor did I defend the quality of the dvd itself. My defense is of the film-to-tape transfer Elite did.

It's obvious from those screen grabs that not only did they use the wrong tape, they compressed it wrong, too. But, it's still based on the Elite telecine sessions, just not the FINAL session when they did the digital restoration, and to add insult to injury Pioneer did a lousy job in their compression.

My point is not that the Pioneer DVD is good- it's obviously not, nor did I ever say that it was. My point is that the Elite film-to-tape transfer is not "subpar". Pioneer may have made it LOOK subpar by using an early copy of the transfer session without the digital restoration work and also doing a bad job on their compression, but that has nothing to do with the underlying film-to-tape transfer that was done by Elite.

Vincent

 

[Sean Patrick]

so your gripe with my original comments about it being a bad transfer were based on what?

i don't get it. you're parsing words and picking apart little parts of what i said.

this is a bad transfer, a bad print, a bad dvd. it's all very cut and dry.

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

My understanding, which may be wrong, but is from my fuzzy memory of a Don May post in some forum or other when the original DVD was fairly new, was that the tape that Pioneer used also did not reflect the final color timing. To be fair, since the final corrections were done subsequent to the telecine transfer, it would still be "semantically incorrect", as Vincent pointed out, to call this a problem with the transfer.

I don't own the laserdisc, so I don't have a way of verifying this.

If I understand the "Superscan" process correctly, the downconversion to standard definition happens in real time during the transfer (it was sort of a "video oversampling" process), so any post processing (glitch fixes, digital re-timing, etc.) would have been done in standard def. (That's just an observation, not a positive or negative comment, by the way)

If someone knows more about this than me and I am way off base, please correct me.

Regards,

 

[Sean Patrick]

ok i'll take the blame for being "semantically incorrect" about this "ok transfer" (which i still think is BS) if Pioneer would take the blame for releasing a completely substandard dvd TWICE!!!!

 

[JeffMc]

The DVD also suffers from shifting artifacts that were NOT present on the LD. Just another example of the subpar compression that Pioneer used on their DVD. Even if Pioneer had used the "corrected and timed" master, it would still look like crap due to their poor mastering.

Just check out one of the shots where they enter the house and see Leatherface's doorway down the hall. The door frame to the house is shifting back-and-forth as the guy enters the house and in the shots towards Leatherface's door, you can see the deer-head on the wall shifting all around. Stuff like this was NOT present on the Elite LD. This DVD looks terrible and has basically ruined all the work Elite had done to restore the film in the first place. We're not really talking here about "16mm films shouldn't look that good anyway" - we're talking about poor compression, the wrong master, etc. Hopefully, the rights to the film will revert to someone else in the near future and it will finally be given a decent DVD release.

 

[MichaelO]

I threw this in last night just to refresh myself with the video quality especially since I haven't viewed it since I got my front projector.

It is like they processed a lot of the grain out of it but in doing so made the image extremely soft. I watched the trailers on the disc and though very grainy, they were a lot sharper than the actual movie. I would have preferred the grain stay, grain isn't a bad thing if it's part of the element.

Somebody, anybody, please obtain the rights to this movie and give us a version it deserves.

 

[Scott Weinberg]

Wow you guys are making me feel bad for buying this re-issue!

I'd actually read about the subpar DVD, but I don't own the flick in any form and it was only 15 smackers. So I just had to.

But based on Sergio's comparison pics, I'll be first in line if and when another company retains the rights to TCM.

And the commentary was pretty solid.

 

[MichaelO]

Oh yeah, I agree completely. The commentary alone is worth the $$$, one of the best I have ever listened to.

 

[Jeff Adams]

Simply put, if I do not own this movie in any format, is it worth the purchase for 14.99? Or is it just that bad of a transfer that it is unwatchable? I mean I have owned some pretty crappy tranfers, Scarface, A Christmas Vacation and A Christmas Story but still enjoyed watching the movie itself. How does this transfer compare to those old transfers? And all I see from Sergio is the screenshot of the LD version, where is the screenshot form the dvd version?