Indy Blu-rays announced — Page 4

Chewtobacca said:

That must be the source of the Canal+ HD version then.

Correct. As well as the old BBC version, I believe.

This must be the Japanese HDTV version, which is probably what I'll stick with, as it's very good (16.2 GiB) and it looks as if I'll be unhappy with the new color timing...

The Japanese HDTV version is somewhere in between.

Yes again, that's the one I mean. It's so brilliant that it's captured in high quality/high bitrate/big size. The Japanese HDTV seems like a good compromise. I might venture a guess that it is, in fact, the most accurate of the three HD transfers. After all, shadow detail is far more visible than in the BD, and not crushed/low resolution like in the Lowry. Color timing's neither too yellow or blue.

The Aluminum Falcon said:  I might venture a guess that it is, in fact, the most accurate of the three HD transfers.

I might too.  TOD and TLC apparently look virtually identical to the previous Japanese HDTV versions in terms of color.

@patman

I am not sure which HDTV version is being used for the various comparisons that are being bandied around; I think it's one of the older ones.  If the Japanese HDTV version were used, it might help the case against the new color timing that is being made over on Blu-ray.com and the Home Theater Forum.

A poster on hometheaterforum.com has just explained very well (post #373) the problem I have with the way films are given new color timing these days. 

Look at the two frame grabs of the marketplace and boat scenes and analyze them by those three attributes. The shade is varied. Some colors are mixed with white, some with black. Lots of contrast. Now look at the saturation. Some colors, like the red robe in the markeplace scene are saturated, and some are muted. In other scenes, that red dress is extremely brilliant in fact.

Now look at the hue. Even though those are two completely different locations and times of day, the hues are identical. There is a reddish hue that is in the dress and fleshtones, a sandy tan hue in the uniforms and buildings, and a teal blue that is in the knife blade, ocean and the shutters in the background. Three hues. No more. Just varying shades and brilliance using the same three hues. If you watch the whole movie looking for this, you'll eventually realize that there are very few deviations from these three hues.

That's how I feel about the colors in the majority of remastered films.  I'd go further though and say that I often see the same hues crop up in different films.  I remember watching the remastered BD of Lethal Weapon BD a while back and thinking, "I've seen that digital-looking yellow before -- not a similar one: the exact same one."

^ Yep.  Someone almost always says that, which is why many on Blu-ray.com take the you-can't-judge-the-film-by-previous-home-video-releases line, which is rarely what people who bring up previous releases are trying to suggest.  What they are usually trying to say (less eloquently than the poster I quoted above) is not that the previous releases were 100% accurate, but that the film is in question never looked so blatantly manipulated and unnatural in terms of color before, and they have a hard time believing it looked so theatrically.

I can't speak definitively on every aspect of Raiders' appearance, but I can state with absolute certainty that the DVD version is not always completely faithful to the original look of the movie.  Watch the scene in Marion's bar on the DVD, and get a look at how much red there is in the whole scene.  When I saw an old 35mm print a few years ago, I specifically noted how very different from that it appeared: the red just wasn't there at all.  The print probably wasn't a perfect reference, being somewhat worn and slightly faded, but that's nowhere near enough to account for the scene looking so vastly different.

So imagine my complete lack of surprise when I saw an IMAX showing last week and that scene scarcely had any red in it whatsoever.

I'm not saying the new transfer doesn't have flaws or hasn't been manipulated digitally, but unquestionably it is closer to the original colour timing than previous editions.

The sound mix is not the same as what's on the DVD, as some have said.  They're close in a lot of ways, including the use of the original stereo surround effects, but the bass has been toned down compared to the previous 5.1 version.  Again using the bar scene as a reference, all the gunfire during the shootout has a lot of low end reinforcement on the DVD, but in the new mix this was just absent.  Elsewhere in the film the bass is generally present, but seems reduced somewhat in level.  Which is closer to what was included in the 70mm version I don't know.

It would be kind of hilarious if it turns out that this really is as close to the original timing as it gets, and that raiders of the lost ark invented the whole "yellow" thing.

That of course is most likely not the case, but it is interesting that some people are saying that this IS closer to the original timing. (even if I dont think human memory can properly remember such things over long stretches of time)

Considering my parents hadn't even met yet at the time Raiders came out, I don't think I can really comment on how it looked in 81. But, just thinking out loud here, if there was a orange tint to the original negative, I have a hard time believing it would be so easily absent from the other home video releases (and the sequels for that matter).

Well the dvds are particuarly blue tinted. Blue is the opposite of orange...maybe they were compensating the orange tint...

The Aluminum Falcon said:

If anyone really has a problem with the color timing of the new BD box set, it's a simple matter of getting the 2008 HDTV Broadcasts. The timing is relatively similar to the Lowry, and it's available in really high HD quality (on the scale of 20 GB something captures).

Anybody know where to find this version besides newsgroups? I'd love a PM. Teh only seems to have a 9GB version with missing links. Hmm... might be time to finally fire up one of those free trials.

hairy_hen said: I can't speak definitively on every aspect of Raiders' appearance, but I can state with absolute certainty that the DVD version is not always completely faithful to the original look of the movie. 

I fully agree.

I'm not saying the new transfer doesn't have flaws or hasn't been manipulated digitally, but unquestionably it is closer to the original colour timing than previous editions.

That's far from unquestionable.  The Japanese HDTV is based on a very recent scan and has a warm look in a number of scenes without going to the extremes of the BD, which seems to look most unnatural.  I don't doubt what you are saying about the red, and I'm no fan of the DVD transfers, but I refuse to accept that ROTLA could have looked the way the BD does in 1981.

doubleKO said:

The Aluminum Falcon said:

If anyone really has a problem with the color timing of the new BD box set, it's a simple matter of getting the 2008 HDTV Broadcasts. The timing is relatively similar to the Lowry, and it's available in really high HD quality (on the scale of 20 GB something captures).

Anybody know where to find this version besides newsgroups? I'd love a PM. Teh only seems to have a 9GB version with missing links. Hmm... might be time to finally fire up one of those free trials.

[ Deleted - PM sent ]

Thanks!

see you auntie said:The frame cropping doesn't help either.

Forget the cropping.  I read on reviews comparing releases all the time that one of them is "cropped".  No; they're both cropped.  They're just cropped differently.  Almost all releases are cropped, in the sense that you rarely see all the information on the negative.  (And I'm not talking about Super 35 and open matte here.)  The fact that one transfer has a little more picture information than another is inconsequential.  Without comparison screenshots, no one would ever know.

 

In all likelihood I'll get Raiders too, to complete the trilogy, and make the HDTV rips less immoral.

That's my plan too.  :-)  I recently bought the SW BDs to watch Harmy's v2.