Why I will NOT be going to blue ray (1 Viewer)

[Joe Caps]

Guys, it's simple.
I'm into older classics.-
Can yo buy GWTW, theRobe, Sound of Music, Cleopatra, How the West was Won, Bette Davis Films, MGM musicals, or indeed, ANY older films on any hidef format?

No.
Then why should I bother?

 

[Robert Crawford]

If enough classic film lovers don't buy into HDM then what is the financial motivation for the studios to release them onto Blu-ray perse? If there is a big enough market demand then they will release product, but if the product demand remains small then forget about it.

By the way, have you seen any of the classic HDM in action like Casablanca or The Adventures of Robin Hood?

 

[Matt Hough]

And there have been promises of some of the biggie classics to come like THE WIZARD OF OZ, SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, and THE SOUND OF MUSIC. In the meantime, a Blu-ray player will play standard DVDs beautifully. It's a win-win as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Will Krupp]

With Warner behind Blu-Ray, you can bet your ass we'll be seeing GONE WITH THE WIND and WIZARD OF OZ debuting in the format, proably sooner rather than later.

My love of classic film is what made the format war a LITTLE easier to sit-out (altho not getting my hands on ROBIN HOOD in HD was a struggle) but now that a winner emerges, I'm jumping and jumping soon (as soon as they make a stand-alone that does what I need it to do and is bug-free, that is)

Have faith, the classics will come in time

 

[Jefferson]

I hope they will come in time...I have my worries, though.
Many of us have posted within other threads, our concerns about the small market for classics these days.
I'm "only" 42, but the films of the 20's to 60's are the bulk of my library,
and it is still wanting for titles in the OLD format. I will continue to hope, however.

 

[greg_t]

Word is also we'll see Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawerence of Arabia on blu this year. After going blu, DVD just doesn't do it. There will be many classic titles releases this year I'm sure.

 

[SD_Brian]

People seem to forget that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are both relatively young formats. The HD & BD early releases are following pretty much the exact same release strategy that DVD did in its early days--even down to the choice of titles being released first. How long did it take before all the classic films we know and love turned up on DVD? 11 years and counting. It wasn't until DVD players were fairly widespread and the sales took off that those floodgates were opened. When the players are in more homes and more people are buying into the format, the studios will start digging deeper into their catalogs. Until then they have little financial incentive to do so.

 

[Chris S]

I recommend checking out The Searchers. It looks absolutely amazing in HD. There is also a lot of anticipation for Lawrence of Arabia. No date has been set yet but it has been included in many Blu-ray trailers. Speculation is it could come sometime this Fall.

 

[Terry Hickey]

Hey don't forget "Forbidden Planet" and "2001" were released besides "Casablanca" and "Adventures of Robin Hood".

 

[DanMel]

My view is that studios will release the super huge classics in High Def and then over a very long time eventually start releasing the lesser known titles. Titles that still haven't appeared in SD format like Garden of Evil and Man of the West will even take longer 15 years or so and by then a new format will come out before they get released. I am hoping that High Def sales or a clear winner being decided does not in any way effect classic releases in SD format such as all the WB box sets that have come out on classic movies over the last few years. It is only a matter of time before the junk public domain companies start releasing their blurry unwatchable titles in Blue Ray such as Alpha Video and the like. They will just give us a new dimension of high def blurriness in the coming years. I currently have 550 dvd's of classic movies from the 30's, 40's and 50's and only 80 dvd's of anything else. I have not watched a single modern day movie in the last 3 years and have no plans to watch anything released by any movie companies from this point on. So my switching to a Blue Ray player would depend entirely on a very large number of old classic movies being released in this format that are not of the Alpha video public domain type.

Persoanlly I don't see myself switching to a high def player or TV for at least 5 years. My classic dvd titles look very nice on my 36 inch 10 year old Panasonic TV. I also watch a great many movies on my dvd portable 7 inch screen or my notebook. I doubt that high def would make my portable movie watching any better of which 75 percent of all my movie watching takes place.

 

[Robin_B]

And how many of those films you listed came out in the first 18 months after SD DVD made it's debut?

 

[Thomas J.]

IIRC, The Searchers, Casablanca and 2001 all were released early on with regard to SD-DVD.

The Searchers definately had a snapper-case release, so it must have been early.

Question: Would 4x3 b&w classical Hollywood cinema look all that different in HD than in its SD counterpart?

 

[Robert Crawford]

The answer is "yes". When the HD DVD of "Casablanca" came out I did an extensive "A" versus "B" test against the latest SD DVD release of that title and it wasn't even close as far as the amount of detail and picture quality between the two. That test sold me completely about how classic film can look on HDM.

 

[Douglas Monce]

The answer to that question is a resounding YES! Casablanca looks just amazing in HD. There are details that I have never seen before!

Other classics that have been released, Rio Bravo, Grand Prix, Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), The Dirty Dozen, Battle of the Bulge, 20 Million Miles To Earth, The Cowboys, The Sting, Spartacus, Superman: The Movie, Bullitt,

While these are more recent classics, I think the release of Casablanca, The Adventures of Robin Hood and Forbidden Planet show that at least Warner has a commitment to releasing classics on HDM.

Doug

 

[Terry Hickey]

Yes, "Casablanca" on HD DVD is stunning compared to the 2 disc SD DVD. They did a fantastic job when porting it over to HD. Whether other titles
would receive the care that was done on "Casablanca", it's hard to tell.
And I doubt there will be many more released in the near future since they haven't sold very good so far.

 

[DanMel]

Yes but how about the majority of unrestored classic movies. Many classic films unlike Casablanca have an excessive amount of film grain. I don't know how knowledgeable you are on classic movies but Fox films like Cary Grant in Born to be Bad and many Universial titles I don't think would look better in the High Def format and may in fact look worse with magnified film grain. I have 250 classic movies on dvd (most from the 30's and 40's in black and white) and I would say only 10 percent of them look on par with the SD release of Casablanca. Many WB titles in box sets are not on par with Casablanca by any means. All one has to do is watch some of the movies in the Clark Gable box set and other more recent releases to see that many are not restored to the condition that Casablanca was. Actually I think WB has been slipping as of late in their restoration process. Films in the Bogart and Bette Davis box sets look incredable and more recent classic movie releases like Katharine Hepburn and the like are coming to us in cheaper looking box sets and quite possably in cheaper restoration attempts, but that is a topic for another thread.

So to sum things up, perhaps you may want to re-invest in some the high def super huge classic releases like Citizen Kane and the like but for 95 percent of the other titles the SD release will be all we can ever hope to expect for picture quality. I've bought over a hundred SD classic movie titles in the last two months and will not be slowing down at all for a long while in the SD buying of classic movies.

 

[MielR]

But isn't it the general consensus that they removed too much film grain from Citizen Kane?

I have no knowledge about the existing elements for Casablanca, but I think where decent elements do exist, there is still quite a bit of resolution to be squeezed out of older films- film grain or not.

Personally, I'd rather see film grain, than to see even more classic films get the Citizen Kane treatment.

EDIT: There's actually a whole thread about the issue of film grain in hi-def formats, in the HD Software forum:
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/...reduction.html

 

[Douglas Monce]

Any film, even one that you might think has "excessive grain", though I'm not really sure what that means, will benefit from being on HDM. Virtually any film shot in 35mm, even one that is 5 or 6 generations away from the source, has resolution that vastly exceeds that of 480p video. HDM will show detail that is lost in standard def.

I have tons of classic films on DVD, and honestly ANY of the Warner classics would benefit from being on HDM even with out a restoration. I haven't seen a single Warner title that is THAT far gone. They don't need to even be "restored". Just pull the original elements (or as close as they can find) out of the vaults and transfer them. Yes they might have some specks of dirt, but thats pretty much what audiences saw on the theater anyway.

Of course there are many classics that HAVE been restored. The Maltese Falcon, Singing in the Rain, Gone with the Wind, just to name a few. And most B&W films really don't need a restoration so much as just a little dirt and dust clean up.

Doug

 

[TravisR]

I wish this quote was put up at the top of every page at every movie or home theater site on the internet and in every B&M store that sells movies. One of the most common misconceptions that I see is that a movie needs to be recent or shot on HD cameras to benefit from a high def transfer.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Amen to that brother!