505 Make Way for Tomorrow

[pro-bassoonist]

No argument from me that this is better than the MoC (and obviously the DVD), but I don't think either of them hold up. This looks awful for instance; we should absolutely be able to read the letters on the board there. It reminds me of those infamous noise ridden Italian transfers. Frankly, I find Svet's scoring, especially in comparison to Sullivan's Travels, pretty risible.

No offense, Eddie, but I find the fact that you are offering a definitive opinion without having seen the disc a lot more comical. But this is hardly surprising, really.

[EddieLarkin]

But I have seen the MoC disc, which being the same master, gives me a pretty good idea. That disc would get no more than 3.0/5.0 from me using Blu-ray.com's scoring system, for instance. No offense Svet, but I suspect your 4.5/5.0 for the MoC disc (which back in 2010 was a far less risible score) was a very big influence on your scoring of the Criterion.

Isn't it likely that MoC used the master "as is" (like with Two-Lane Blacktop) and Criterion decided to perform some additional work on it?

For Two Lane, MoC used a Universal master "as is" indeed, but Criterion didn't, they used their own HD master which was used for their DVD at the time.

The caps-a-holic comparison shows that they're clearly using the same master. If we assume that MoC wouldn't have done any filtering, then the culprit must be Universal. Criterion likely insisted on the master pre-filtered or something, rather than performing additional work (because there's really no way Criterion could magic such a better looking image out of what MoC used). Probably the same thing has happened with MWFT, or it's all down to compression differences.

[tenia]

I still believe there are 2 HD masters coming from the same Universal scan : one used by Criterion which is not filtered and the one used by MoC which is.

[Minkin]

Make Way for Tooze