Supermartyoh

Chewtobacca said:

So do the DVDs have a particularly bad transfer, or is it just people that people want the extras?  A good HD source would be best.

edit - Well, going by this, it seems that the transfers are pretty shoddy.  They are more or less OAR though. 

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews21/magnificent_ambersons_dvd_review.htm

The link doesn't review the region 1 release, though I don't suppose it's any better.

 

 

The DVD Beaver link does list a R1 release by Warner (its screen grabs are below the French and UK shots and its specs are on the tip right). Looking at the grabs of the WB release, it looks pretty good to my eyes (maybe a shade of EE?).

I don't know about the 1.78 versions of Deathly Hollows Part II (may be cropped or so I hear), but I recall the ITunes HD version being OAR. Ditto on the PSP because I've never had one, but I would assume it is OAR unless the studios decided to crop later UMD titles to fill the PSP's small-as-fuck screen.

Yeah, a lot of Super 35 material like True Lies and Spider Man 2 have all SFX shots done in the negative ratio shot at (be it academy or 1.66) as opposed to being hard matted to the theatrical (2.35) ratio. I know the FF versions of HP 1-2 are full 4:3 and I believe the SFX shots are too (I recall there being minimal cropping throughout when viewed alongside the scope version), while 4-7 are essentially the 1:78.1 framing side cropped to 4:3. 4:3 and HDTV versions of HP3 were cropped because while that one of course was shot S35 at 1.78, I believe WB used the matted theatrical print for all transfers because they were lazy or were on a mad rush to get out the DVDs ASAP.

Papai2013 said:

I am repeating my original post -

Does anyone Have Half Blood Prince on Full Screen, or the open matte HDTV broadcast.

Here's the dvd link -

http://www.amazon.com/Potter-Half-Blood-Prince-Single-Disc-Screen/dp/B002PMV9K6/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1442523699&sr=1-1&keywords=Half+Blood+Prince+Full+Screen

I distinctly recall viewing that release at one point, and I remember it being like the HDTV broadcast but with the sides shaved off to 4:3. I think some of the FX shots were noticeably pan and scanned from the 2:35:1 version, as even SFX for Super 35 format films are usually done in the intended theatrical ratio so blow ups don't look like shit.

TServo2049 said:

I've seen 35mm frames of The Fox and the Hound, The Great Mouse Detective, etc., with cel garbage at the edges of the frames that you don't see in official 4:3 transfers.

I though The Great Mouse Detective was animated at 1.66 like Oliver and Company (one of the last before the CAPS era). If it was indeed animated at 1.37:1 academy like The Fox and the Hound, how come the VHS releases were so tight compared to the widescreen DVDs and BD? It could be that the 90s VHS's used a master cropped from a theatrical print with the reissue title.

One of my friends told me a 7 year old kid on CLG Wiki made over 75 accounts to spam the site and harass users, along with impersonating them (including takes on my former username with sexual profanities!! >:(. This was a month ago and I waz pissed! Still am a little.

I thought Uni released a BD in the U.S, but then I read up and it was pulled when StudioCanal kept moving up the UK release date.

Hopefully, that BD will come (with a better transfer as Universal is the U.S rights holder while it seems SC is the international owner)

A Bronx Tale was probably shot in Academy then masked to 1.85 for theatrical. So the 4:3 version doesn't lose much on the sides, only gaining extra space and showing production gaffes (ala boom mikes) not meant to be seen.

The HBO release is 16:9 anamorphic (double checked, its 4:3 letterbox 1.78:1; fucking HBO Video!!). But being an early DVD mastered from the laserdisc source, its not pretty looking combined with poor compression methods. The Universal DVD is made from a new(er) master and is believed to have its grain structure intact (not released on BD by them in the states as of yet).

Then, like you said, there's the SC BDs which are from the UK prints which have been subject to DNR.

Heard the audio on some of the captures posted on the site you linked. While AAC and a stereo downmix, it doesn't have that heavy metallic ringing present in the AGPtek, because it seems the HP has a much higher bitrate with its AAC encoding. I may stick to the Hauppauge because it seems easier to use, and I don't feel like spending any more money on internal upgrades for my Pavilion, when I'll likely be getting a Win 10 unit down the road (hopefully with much better specs, ala Intel I5 and 16GBs of ram).

Figured it was dual mono as opposed to stereo, since the source for that was pretty poor to begin with (and Disney/Ghilbi wouldn't have dumped money in fixing the old Eng dub when they had the new one out).

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!

Transfomers: The Movie is a good candidate for this. Almost all releases are 4:3 open matte, with the most recent ones having a widescreen option. There was a UK release by Metrodome that had the full 1.43:1 framing pillar boxed within the 16:9 frame. But the compression was worse than the 2006 Sony DVD, and is subjected to a wretched NTSC-PAL mess (why can't these Euro companies do proper PAL conversions with animated titles? Are they really that cheap!?)

Sorry for the double post, but I'm certain that the Fox Video Laserdisc was also mono (abit uncompressed), since they got their source from Troma. This source was directly ported over to the Fox DVD, with lossy compression.

http://www.dvdcompare.net/comparisons/film.php?fid=8918

Comparing the Fox R1 and the Buena Vista R2 with this site, the latter is said to have a stereo track for the Troma dub. Since Streamline did all their dubbings in mono due to poor M&E materials, I don't know how accurate the specs are for the JP R2. The poster could've confused "Stereo" with "Dual Mono", or mixed it up with the 2003 Disney dubbing (as that was 2.0 stereo in all the recent DVD releases). 

Does anyone have that disc to check if the Troma/Streamline dubbing is indeed stereo? If its the case, than it may be an upmix from mono, or Disney could've grafted the dialogue portions from the Streamline dub onto a stereo M&E track (Unlike Toei, I'm sure Studio Ghilbi keeps all their M+E tracks in good shape, as the 2003 dubbing used it unless they changed the songs and effects). 

(to elaborate on the term "M&E", it means "Music and Effects")

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).

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.

I know this may be a insignificant thing to most, but do any of the foreign prints open with any distributor indent other than the Orion logo? I found it odd that the cut German DVD has a version of the Orion logo with inserted German text... But I thought Orion only had U.S rights while Hemdale (the main production company behind it) released in the UK? Didn't other companies have theatrical rights in other non-English speaking countries?

Question regarding the AR: Was the Super35 ratio Academy or 1.66.1 hard matte? I remember the flashback scene from the 1st jaws being in cropped 1.85:1 on the full frame VHS I used to watch, which leaves me to believe if other shots (SFX or flashback) were in different ARs.

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. 

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) 

Now that I think about it, didn't Kei17 have an avatar of Videl from the 2nd Broly movie? Ether he changed it, or if its not him that said it, I think there may be another user who has the same pic (but I don't know their name).

Yup, sounds like him! I'm mostly into the technical stuff, so IMO, its hard to find intelligent discussions that aren't uptight fan rants on that forum. That's also why I may not be exact with names and such because I only try to find the good stuff, not uptight fan babble like 'TRUNKS WAS GAY IN GT!!" or "PAN WAS ANNOYING!".

jedimasterobiwan said:

 where on there did you hear that?

EDIT: Now I remember! I heard it on a discussion regarding DVD availability of the Big Green dubs. I think the user was Kei (or someone along those terms) that mentioned a Scandinavian company used Toei's Dragon Box masters with the BG audio for the movies.

Found another one... The new Shout! Factory DVD and BD of The Last Unicorn. Not only is it DNR'd with leftover floating grain in some background shots, but knowing Shout's mediocre encoding, it suffers from macroblocking and mosquito noise... FOR 1080p! Previous Lionsgate BD was the best its ever looked (aside from their 25th Ann DVD which was a PAL-NTSC botch job).

Yeah, that's the one. Odd name IMO.