Worst Blu-ray transfers thread — Page 2

towne32 said:

 They've got the complete set on the Superman I-IV blu-ray set. Any idea if they're the same transfers/masters?

 On the Superman 1-4 BD set, the shorts are the same 480i transfers as on the WB "Max Fleischer's Superman, 1941-1942" DVD set. Aside from minor audio issues, it's the best one out there, and looks superb even upscaled to 1080i. Going by the color bleeding and remaining video artifacts on Gaiam's "botchered" BD release, it seems to use the same masters as this release (http://www.amazon.com/Superman-Lost-Episodes-Animated/dp/1572524537/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1438733291&sr=1-1&keywords=superman+winstar) 

Danfun128 said:

I'm curious why they don't just make HD scans of the shorts.

I believe the studio digital masters are 1080p, but they decided to port them over as SD on the BD set, most likely to save on disc space for the other features on the BD bonus disc (being only 25gbs IIRC, with some HD features thrown in but not very many).

WB does this a lot for bonus features not essential to the main feature on BDs. An example of this is the 1939 Hunchback Of Notre Dame, in which the main film is 1080p but the some of the vintage shorts (despite being sourced from a recent master or HD scan) are only 480i/p. 

Danfun128 said:

they port it from SD, yet they upscale to 1080i? Why?

edit: I could be misinterpreting posts though.

 On the BDs, they are 480i/p, but the DVDs when played on a DVD/BD player with HDMI, go to 1080i if that's what you are referring to.

ATMachine said:

Namely, they replaced the ending Paramount logo of all the cartoons with the one found in the very first short--including the audio track, which in the later shorts quite often continued on from the sound and music in the cartoon proper. Result: incomplete audio.

 I noticed that too on the WB DVDs, even on some PD discs. I thought that was sloppy editing they did back then, but now your post confirms their attempt of restoring everything down to studio cards, with mixed results (this also occurs on some of the Popeye shorts on the WB Popeye volume DVD sets).

At least they didn't cut the Paramount indents off, or worse... add some watermark on the lower right screen like Gaiam because of marketing muckheads who think that everyone will copy their material to the Spleen and lose money, yet these are in PD but WB owns the character (Copyright laws are a mess IMO).

jimbotron235 said:

Top of my list is Star Trek VI:

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tuchd/tuchd0188.jpg

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tuchd/tuchd0999.jpg

Ditto.

For some reason, this is always the first thing that springs to mind whenever I think of the worst blu-ray transfers. Maybe it's because I'm just barely old enough to remember when my Mom took me to see it in the theater. She actually surprised me with a theater-used ST6 poster this past Christmas.

It's the blu-ray equivalent of the GOUT for me.

The source master is apparently a 1080i they IVTC'd to 24p, as evidenced by the stair-stepping. My guess is that while they probably had a decent-looking 1080p of the director's version (the fresh transfer done in 2004 for the collector's dvd to replace the old non-anamorphic transfer), this 1080i from whenever/wherever was the best looking transfer of the theatrical cut they had lying around. So rather than spend the money on a fresh transfer they simply gave us this.

Voyage Home arguably looks the worst, like someone applied the watercolor filter and turned it up to eleven.

It started off strong, but after that, this Blu-ray transfers thread really is the worst.

My favorite part was when someone told me to scan his shorts.  I was so offended!

There actually aren't all that many terrible transfers of movies that haven't since been rectified or aren't currently in the process of being rectified, not that I can think of anyway.

Even the Trek films will probably get a do over next year I'm guessing, between the 50th anniversary and the industry's big 4k push.

GoldenEye is another truly atrocious set of screenshots. It's baffling how it looks that bad when we've seen it look much better in hd broadcasts and RMW's show reel. The home video department at MGM/Fox/Sony must've somehow thought nuking it with the watercolor filter was a good idea.

BTTF, Jurassic Park and theatrical LOTR fall into the category of middling but acceptable for me. Could've looked better, could've looked way worse.

TV's Frink said:

My favorite part was when someone told me to scan his shorts.  

towne32 said:

TV's Frink said:

My favorite part was when someone told me to scan his shorts.  

 

Thanks, Ric.

Team Olie

Fang Zei said:

BTTF, Jurassic Park and theatrical LOTR fall into the category of middling but acceptable for me. Could've looked better, could've looked way worse.

 I agree. Those don't look very good and have their problems, but are not total disasters unlike those that use old video sources scrubbed to death and heavily cropped!

This is now "The Simpsons PNG Thread".

Mike O said:

Fang Zei said:

jimbotron235 said:

Top of my list is Star Trek VI:

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tuchd/tuchd0188.jpg

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tuchd/tuchd0999.jpg

Ditto.

For some reason, this is always the first thing that springs to mind whenever I think of the worst blu-ray transfers. Maybe it's because I'm just barely old enough to remember when my Mom took me to see it in the theater. She actually surprised me with a theater-used ST6 poster this past Christmas.

It's the blu-ray equivalent of the GOUT for me.

The source master is apparently a 1080i they IVTC'd to 24p, as evidenced by the stair-stepping. My guess is that while they probably had a decent-looking 1080p of the director's version (the fresh transfer done in 2004 for the collector's dvd to replace the old non-anamorphic transfer), this 1080i from whenever/wherever was the best looking transfer of the theatrical cut they had lying around. So rather than spend the money on a fresh transfer they simply gave us this.

Voyage Home arguably looks the worst, like someone applied the watercolor filter and turned it up to eleven.

 

I keep hoping that for the 50th anniversary, Paramount will finally do some proper transfers for the Star Trek films. But my hopes are not high.

Fang Zei said:

GoldenEye is another truly atrocious set of screenshots. It's baffling how it looks that bad when we've seen it look much better in hd broadcasts and RMW's show reel. The home video department at MGM/Fox/Sony must've somehow thought nuking it with the watercolor filter was a good idea.

BTTF, Jurassic Park and theatrical LOTR fall into the category of middling but acceptable for me. Could've looked better, could've looked way worse.

 I wish there was a way to stop this DNR fetish. Goldeneye and Predator were the worst. I just got the first Predator Blu-ray, kept my old two-disc set and called it a day.

Is the new BTTF set going to have new transfers? I thought that as opposed to the DVD versions, the LOTR BDs came right off of the DIs? Haven't looked at my JP BD yet. The Vudu version I've seen a bit of actually looks OK. I'm waiting on the the Mega Middlle Earth collection with all six movies before I get LOTR, hopefully with the BOTFA EE due out next moth, the boxed set can't be far behind.

 70% of FotR theatrical went through digital grading but it was still finished photochemically. TTT and RotK were straight DIs.

The new BttF set will likely recycle the existing transfers, but we'll see.

Wrath of Khan was the only Trek title to get the 4K treatment, so they'll have to redo all of them in order to sell them yet again on UHD blu. There won't be a better time than next year, but again, we'll see.

nevermind.