msycamore said:
ImperialFighter, I own the 20th anniversary NTSC DVD, tell me exactly which scenes you want me to take captures of besides that shot with "Brett-doorway-opening" and I'll post them for you.
Thanks msycamore, but I've now decided not to judge things by those DVDBeaver comparisons whatsoever, as I don't know if their old NTSC and PAL shots (and newer ones) were grabbed using the same identical equipment and settings or not. Perhaps, but perhaps not.
I'd be interested if anyone happens to have both the old NTSC and PAL releases at hand that they can grab using the same equipment, though. However, even if you just have the NTSC release msycamore, I'd also be interested to get an idea of how the same shots I posted here look in that format, especially the one of the Nostromo, and the close-up of Dallas's face, if you can. Thanks. - http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Alien-Appendix-7-The-ALIEN-SAGA-Archive/post/425702/#TopicPost425702
If I do end up sourcing an NTSC copy, I'll be interested to see how it compares against my PAL copy on my tv/dvd player...as Chewtobacca has been in touch to say that he reckons there are indeed slight colour differences between regions for the same releases. Not something I'd known about before. (I'm guessing that the NTSC version would certainly suffer from a lot of 'pull-down' stuttering on my region-free player though, given the amount of 'slow panning' moves in the movie!)
Then there's the fact that everyone's pc monitors have very different colour settings anyway, which can vary greatly as I've found in the past.
Screengrabs are fine for a rough idea of differences, but can be very unrepresentative of how the colours of the dvd footage actually looks on your tv/dvd player. All I know is that on my own home theatre set-up, the old 'Theatrical' ALIEN PAL release is very easy on the eyes, and the colours 'pop-out' in a vibrant, 'naturalistic' way, and reminds me of how I remember it looking on the big screen...whereas the new 'Theatrical' PAL colour-timing doesn't.
But what's done is done, and luckily for me, the original transfer quality itself still looks great on my big screen, enough for me not to miss the improved transfer that the 'Quadrilogy' and 'Anthology' undoubtedly have. And so I won't be watching the new colour-timing again until the day the inevitable 3D blu-ray 'conversion' comes around...which I'll check out with interest!
Anyway, that DVNR issue, eh?