skyjedi2005 said:
Maybe the grain is there on the restored film prints?

Video and film are 2 seperate things. Maybe they are trying to please home video hdtv owners and not the elite film people who want video to look like film.

Can a Blu Ray look like a 35mm film at home?

Just wondering because it don't have an hdtv or a blu ray player myself. If they scan in all of the image grain and all at 4k does the image look stunning at 1080P. Some examples would be helpful to those who don't know the difference.

The 4k and 2k scans of the direct negative should be very accurate representations of the original film. The problem is Disney giving those scanned images treatment that tries to erase all of the grain and supposedly improve the image. It's insulting to me. They should have just cleaned up the image to remove dirt, keep the grain, and then simply directed their manpower to checking each frame of the movie in detail. As it is now, I have a feeling I'd rather watch the dirty, uncleaned negative scan directly translated to Blu-ray resolution.

Otherwise, any digital video medium (such as DVD or Blu-ray) will have the look of a digital video. The nice thing about Blu-ray, however, is that it is of such a high resolution that it can capture film details within its digital video limits. It's nowhere near 35mm film, but for home video it's great. These screen captures from Godfather 3 show how gorgeous of a job Blu-ray can do at representing film:

http://whiggles.landofwhimsy.com/hdcaptures/gfiii3.jpg

http://whiggles.landofwhimsy.com/hdcaptures/gfiii5.jpg

http://whiggles.landofwhimsy.com/hdcaptures/gfiii11.jpg

Gaffer Tape said:
Wait. You bring up something I meant to ask before, Tiptup. I remember the new ads talking about the aspect ratio, and that confused me, because I thought that the 2003 DVD preserved that. I mean, the special features on that DVD made a big deal about the "new-fangled" process they used to make the ratio for that movie, so I assumed it was accurately done for the DVD. Is that incorrect?

Yeah, from what I can gather, the 2003 release was the first home video release where we got the full widescreen image that was shown in theaters. The guy who did that restoration did a beautiful job of representing what the film looked like (for DVD resolution of course). The new DVD and Blu-ray, on the other hand, went back to the original negative that had even more space that was unseen on the edges. If you look at this page (which I also linked above), you'll see the difference between the 2003 DVD and the 2008 DVD:

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/3445320-post23.html

Gaffer Tape said:
Oh, and what's the problem with the new Nightmare set? I got it for my girlfriend for her birthday. I'd never seen the movie before then, so I had nothing to compare it to. Is it the standard Disney problem of cutting down the ratio so that it perfectly fits a widescreen TV in 16:9? Or is it another DNR problem?

Eh, everyone says it's great and I'm sure it's fantastic, but, on the basis of the principles involved, I just don't want to own a version of the film that has the grain removed. There are also terrible DNR mistakes they made at small portions and that's just insulting (they couldn't get a guy to okay every frame?). I can't find everything I saw before, but here's a good example:

http://www.lyris-lite.net/2008/09/01/the-nightmare-before-dirt-and-scratch-removal-artefacts.html

Here's another even-handed review:

http://whiggles.landofwhimsy.com/archives/2008/09/christmas_comes_early.html