THX-1138 (HD Transfer - 720p) (Released)

Is this the original 1971 version or the George Lucas Director's Cut? If it's the director's cut (which I would assume, knowing how Lucas does with his films), then why bother making the DVD of it?

How do you figure that downscaling the HD broadcast will yield a better result than the retail DVD?

ChainsawAsh said: (my LD2DVD, frankly, looks like shit).

Is that the one Blaksvn seeded, or your own capture, or are they one and the same?

ChainsawAsh said:

Yeah, I guarantee the compression artifacts you'll see from an HD broadcast will be worse than those on the DVD.

Actually, much of the time an HDTV broadcast down-converted to DVD will look better than the official DVD (but not every time...)

Obviously compression artefacts in the source depend on whether it's MPEG-2 or h.264 encoding, original transport stream or re-encoded to fit on a DVD9.

But you should also consider that many official DVD releases suffer from EE, DVNR or simply shit transfers (a la the old Blade Runner release).

However, the main reason for the improvement is that DVDs are targeted to the lowest common denominator - those with interlaced CRT displays. Thus, the image on a DVD is usually filtered vertically to reduce the effect of "interline twitter" on these screens. An HDTV transfer will more often than not end up having more vertical detail.

American Graffiti was also broadcast in Europe for the first time a while back in HD, but good luck finding it anyware on the net.  Also HDNET released it in 1080i.

The original non lowry, non cgi raiders is also out there somewhere in HD.

The version of graffiti is the lowry cleanup and added cgi shot one though. 

The betterlooking copy of Raiders is also cleaned up by lowry but has an additional cgi shot.

THX 1138 should not have any dvnr applied to it. It was shot documentary style and in techiscope and is supposed to have a heavy amount of grain.  American Graffiti is also supposed to have that look.

The indiana jones films also were supposed to have a fine amount of grain.  It was desided by Douglas Slocombe the cinematographer, Spielberg and Lucas.  Supposed to remind us of the old movie serials.

Star Wars on the other hand while shot like lucas wanted as documentary camera style, was designed to have less  grain than those other pictures and finer detail in the visuals which is why they used the vistavision process for the optical plates.  Also the film was shot with a fairy tale, fantasy look.  Brighter colors and warmer tones than Lucas other movies.  Supposed to be expensive Hollywood type pictures shot on soundstages.  The Hollywood LUCAS immerged on star wars, although he makes his films outside of hollywood because he thinks he is an independant completely.  Although without Fox funding Star Wars it would have never been made.

Though the videogame coloring appeared with the Phantom Menace.  The same oversaturated and blown out palette was Used on Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, and Indiana Jones KOTCS.

Too bad they ruined phantom menace and crystal skull.   2 movies completely shot on film that were altered in post production to look like they were shot with HD Video.  Although perhaps the digital intermediate process is also at fault here.  No longer actually physically editing the film on a kem or movieola and on a digital avid machine.  Also the 2k not as good as the actual film.  and then reprinting back to film removes the quality of the image.  IF the digital intermediate was more like 4k maybe the ruination would not happen?

Well at least the grain structure on indy IV was not destroyed to make the film look more clean. 

That was done on Episode 1 for the dvd release.

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0367882/technical

the proof is right here.  2k digital intermediate.

otherwise why would Lisa Tutunjian have been paid and credited as the DI editor.

The rough cut or assembly cut by spielberg was done on a moviela, not sure if i misspelled that. 

Considering the cgi was not shot live action except for certain elements and created in a computer.  It is far easier for them to work in the digital realm in terms of editing, when a film starts out as digital because it does not have to be scanned in.  not only do they cut costs there, but also they don't have to go to a film processing labs they have quick turnaround on shots and film costs more now than digital.  In the past it was the opposite.

Not sure what digital resolution  the cgi effects on phantom menace were rendered, but the physical old style opticals and model shots done on film and the live action Photography would look better if they went back and did a 4k scan.  Again i am not aware of the HD resolution Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith were shot on, but there is no way it dupicates the resolution of the oneg on even the phantom menace, much less any of the original trilogy films. 

As for them looking better in digital projection i don't doubt it since they were captured on video.  From what i have read there is some generation loss from taking a digital movie and then printing it back to traditional 35mm film.  This seemed to be for the most part retified on revenge of the sith because the HD Camera bugs had been worked out.  But i saw Clones in the the theaters on film and i can tell you first hand it looked like shit.  Ebert saw it in both film and later dlp.  Guess which review was better.

Sure some  projectionists should be fired because they don't know how to handle a film print properly , and theater owners who show a film with a bad setup should not be allowed to show a print.  I saw Indy IV in less than spectacular condition.  This was first run.  It had several scratches and what looked like was heavy dupe grain, the fine grain detail was nice i had no problem with that.  

The colors looked muted and yellow, perhaps a bad print. The sound was too loud and was not well defined the surrounds were fucked.  This is a multimillion dollar theater,  but a shopping mall one.  So i guess what did i expect. Hey at least the film was centered properly and shown on a 2:35:1 proportioned screen.  Before they bought the new screen they would crop the wider films.  Since most of the films they show are 1:85:1 or whatever they shoot in these days i frackin don't know,lol.

Maybe the focus was bad or something.

I have noticed that a lot of modern films are a victim of the loudness war and their soundtracks are a mess.  I totally look back to the days when the stereo mixes on film were well, mixed well i guess is what you would say.  Then some of the first 5.1 tracks in theaters were really excellent as well whether dolby or dts. 

Some people have had problems with some of the new films audio when watching at home or in the theater like Casino Royale, the Dark Knight.

The older stereo mixes balanced out the dialogue, the music and the sound effects well so they complemented each other.  Now we get tracks where the sound effects are too loud and drowning out everything else.

Was the 2 disc dvd in the deluxe cardboard sleeve not that good? It came out in 2004.

I thought the Phantom Menace looked pretty good on dvd. It didn't seem overly smooth like the rediculous Lowry cleanup of the OT. Clones looked like crap and III was a little better.

I only saw Crystal Skull in the theatre once. While I thought it looked okay, the part at the end where the thing was spinning around and the woman got sucked up, it looked very obviously CG as if it was really blurry and clipped whites.

Does anyone have the previous HD version of Blade Runner that was superior to the first dvd? The archival versions on the dvd appear to have the highlights artificially boosted and some questionable color timing. I'd like to see screens of an earlier HQ version as well as what the '87 laserdisc looked like.

http://www.bulletsnbabesdvd.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2401

http://www.bulletsnbabesdvd.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4199