Hitchcock on Universal DVD and Blu-ray

[Jeff]

Make them guide the backlot tour at Universal Studios.

[warren oates]

Or chainsaw zombies for Halloween Horror Nights... I wish I didn't think zedz was right, but I do. I fear a possible delay of the box is all about contractual legalities and not remotely about quality control of the effed up transfers. They should just give Nick a guest producer credit and follow his notes for all the less than stellar titles.

[knives]

I would be rather happy if this new freelance Nick could just get jobs at various studios supervising transfers for classic films.

[Caligula]

I've cancelled my pre-order of the UK set.

Will reconsider buying if
(a) Universal does a proper fix; or
(b) The set's price drops drastically within the next year or two.

In the meantime I'll spend my hard-earned cash on labels, big or small, that actually deserve the support.

Also would like to chime in with the chorus and voice my appreciation of Nick's invaluable notes on the release.

[ShellOilJunior]

US pre-order cancelled. I'll wait for them to fix this.

There was no way I'd pay $209 for a box of varying quality.

[peerpee]

I would be rather happy if this new freelance Nick could just get jobs at various studios supervising transfers for classic films.

Thanks very much, but I don't have any expertise in "supervising transfers" – however, I think I know what you mean. I think my expertise is probably in spotting digital fuckery and rejecting poor work, but at MoC I was most interested in getting the entire package right, from cover art > booklet > menus > disc extras > transfer > to marketing copy > and designing print ads. Very few other labels allow such control over all areas. Cohesive and high standards across the board.

It's also exhausting work and I don't want to get back into the frying pan!

[MichaelB]

The number of DVD and BD releases that I've QCed now runs into double figures and there has not been one single disc that I haven't nit-picked to some degree.

The best one, if I remember rightly, needed a handful of minor subtitle tweaks. The worst ones (and I can think of at least three in that category) ended up having their releases delayed by a month or more while far bigger problems were dealt with - incorrect aspect ratios, out-of-sync subtitles, you name it.

I don't blame the producers, as they can't realistically be expected to look over the shoulders of everyone at the authoring house - but it does emphasise how important it is to have a competent QC process in place that's independent of said authoring house. They should of course do their own QC checks, but in my experience they generally only cover usability issues like making sure menu buttons work correctly and other technical issues.

Irony of ironies, only last month I joked on Facebook that I'd involuntarily been proofreading the credits of a film I was checking - it never occurred to me that those credits might actually need proofreading, as I assumed until the Frenzy situation arose that they at least would be locked in place and unchangeable.

[hearthesilence]

So Marnie doesn't look too good either? Christ, at this point, I'm not even sure I'd keep this set as a gift - better off trading it in for the a cheap, used copy of the old DVD set and cash.

[tenia]

Simple question : I've preordered the boxset, since I only own Psycho on BD and Vertigo on DVD.
Is it still interesting or should I cancel, knowing that I'm interested in all the movies the box contains ?

[peerpee]

If you cancel, it will send a message. If you don't - you'll probably get some kind of fix anyway, because the rumour is they've delayed the set.

[warren oates]

Universal might also get the message more strongly if you cancel and also tell them exactly why by sending them a message at their official complaint link.

I just did it, mentioning all the problems Nick has raised in detail, asking that they don't just correct the credits in Frenzy, but the quality of all the botched transfers before I consider getting the set.

[Peacock]

Try asking for MPEG-4 on all transfers as well people!

[perkizitore]

You obviously mean AVC, but if the source is dated it won't make any difference.

[David M.]

AVC is a subset of MPEG-4, so it's still valid enough.

Peacock: the average bit rate on most BDs is so high that the choice of codec (provided it isn't MPEG-2) isn't too significant. The times where I've watched a BD and complained about compression artefacts are almost non-existent compared to bad source material.

What's more, the quality of the encoder matters much more in that regard. Good AVC encoders at 20mbps will outperform bad ones at 40.

[manicsounds]

I said it before, but "TOPAZ" is the only disc in the UK boxset that will be identical to the US set. That isn't a mistake., so it should have English, Spanish, French options only. Don't know why Universal decided on this.

[Peacock]

AVC is a subset of MPEG-4, so it's still valid enough.

Peacock: the average bit rate on most BDs is so high that the choice of codec (provided it isn't MPEG-2) isn't too significant. The times where I've watched a BD and complained about compression artefacts are almost non-existent compared to bad source material.

What's more, the quality of the encoder matters much more in that regard. Good AVC encoders at 20mbps will outperform bad ones at 40.

Thanks for the info David. I guess I just thought from looking at reviews that VC-1 tended to look more noisy and digital, like HD-DVD transfers, compared to AVC.

[peerpee]

I've only clocked the VC-1 / AVC issue because I've been wondering why there's a mix. If they've all been done recently by the same authoring house, why aren't they all one or the other?

As David M. says, one isn't necessarily better than the other --- but at the time of HD-DVD, everything seemed to be VC-1, and when a Blu-ray had a VC-1 encode, it seemed to be a sign of an old encode that was made for HD-DVD. AVC encodes "seemed" to be newer. Since then though, there's been a real mix of both, and I've sort of lost track.

All MoC and Criterion Blu-rays are AVC, as far as I know. Not sure about BFI.

[HistoryProf]

Been tweeting about the UK BD of MARNIE. Have compiled the most pertinent info and am pasting it here and at HTF. Excuse the 140 character limit:

MARNIE BD is not good I'm afraid.

Let's just say the Telecine Colourist on this one has dialled in the "Georges Seurat" setting (this is a detail): http://pbs.twimg.com/media/A2iaywnCcAEoLx-.jpg:large" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This is how it looks on your tv? This is the most depressing screengrab i've ever seen. Marnie is one of my faves....this sucks.

[peerpee]

It's a very close-up detail of the TV. The other photo I posted after it of THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH was also a close-up detail of the TV taken with the same phone (and it looked aces).

Turns out TORN CURTAIN looks like the last 15 minutes of MARNIE -- ie. fuzzbox pedal set to only 20%. They both MUST have been done by the same telecine place, probably on the same day, with the same settings.

These are the only two films in the box that have this digital, crushed, non-filmic type of encode. (Although parts of FAMILY PLOT are absolutely appalling, but that's a different problem.)

[peerpee]

Updated tally posted further down below!

[ShellOilJunior]

Word has spread to Amazon's product page

One person says it's not fair to submit a review before receiving the set. Normally this makes sense but the fact the product is already receiving 5 star reviews based ONLY ON THE FILMS is misleading. Also, misleading is Amazon's practice of combining Blu/DVD reviews for a given release (Although they don't do it with this set).

[MichaelB]

It's actually a pretty useful method of warning people of defects in a product - I almost invariably check out the lowest-rated Amazon reviews beforehand, and they sometimes flag up issues of which I was previously unaware.

And of course if their information is incorrect, there'll be dozens of comments pointing this out, and it's usually pretty easy to tell which are reliable (not least because they tend to be the ones with checkable evidence attached).

[peerpee]

Tally updated down below....

[perkizitore]

If I remember correctly The Birds, Marnie, Torn Curtain and Topaz were problematic in the UK DVD set, they were presented in the wrong aspect ratio. It seems that some of these films have a quite tumultuous career on the home cinema front...

[peerpee]

FWIW, none of the Blu-rays are in the wrong ratio.