captainsolo said:
I started a thread on the ajb007 forums about all the Ultimate Edition DVD problems. Most of the films just look overcleaned, but at least they seem like the films (unlike 04 SW). LALD looks like too much of the grain was removed. Goldeneye is cropped on all sides. OHMSS has had its opening completely recolored. AVTAK's opening is cropped. The big thing that bugs me is how the original soundtracks are missing on Thunderball, LALD, and TSWLM. I still feel that these new colors aren't as true as the old releases, but that may be because I grew up on the old tapes. My copies of OHMSS and LALD from the old special edition series seem to have much more life to them-although they are riddled with all the standard DVD issues.

Are the Criterion LDs really worth tracking down if you already have the commentaries?

For me they are having a laserdisc player, and i prefer the CAV format as my player does not have the ability to stop on a scene freeze frame on a clv disc.

If you have a player that can do that, or already have the commentaries the CLV re-issues without the commentaries are cheaper. Or you could get the few films released by mgm/ua in CAV, thx and those old letterbox special editions unless you have the special edition dvds.

The thing is the criterion is from an old vaulted print, or video master and does not have dvnr applied, whereas the thx laserdisc program often did.

Most Bond fans are going over to blu ray, unless some of the major issues are addressed in such releases that plagued the U.E. count me out. Its really only the first four bond films really that benefited the most from the new Lowry transfers, the roger moore years are off and on in terms of consistent quality, but some may have to do with the film stock used and the age of the materials used to print the new negatives that lowry scanned. Unless they really did transfer directly from the camera oneg as they claimed to have done.

Original negative can mean a lot of things like what is used to strike release prints. They almost never do that directly off the raw film ran through the camera that was photographed. They have a master that has all the edits that were done during the comform process, and all the opticals spliced in.