criterionforum.org

I considered the Warner Archive Performance to be unwatchable. I had the same issue that only one reviewer, to my knowledge, addressed:

From dvdtalk, April 14, 2014:

"The more I watched Performance, though, the more...wrong it looked to me. This presentation is saddled with a video-like, frustratingly digital quality. Despite its not-insubstantial bitrate, the AVC encode is unusually sloppy. Film grain is often poorly resolved, rendered instead as a barrage of unstable, rapidly shifting, little blocks. A few cases-in-point are provided below."

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/64142/performance/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

(I used to be paranoid that the Warner Archive releases were not pressed but recorded on a Blu ray recorder unit. I could spot what I thought was a "sheen" that you always get when you record something manually. I was baffled at the number of positive AV reviews online and wondered if the review copy was different than the one purchased. I don't know.)

I got the HMV exclusive release and I didn't have these issues with it. This feels a much more positive release. It wasn't fuzzy and strange looking.

M Sanderson wrote:(I used to be paranoid that the Warner Archive releases were not pressed but recorded on a Blu ray recorder unit. I could spot what I thought was a "sheen" that you always get when you record something manually. I was baffled at the number of positive AV reviews online and wondered if the review copy was different than the one purchased. I don't know.)

That's just your bias. Recording digitally can do no such thing. The picture will be identical on a pressed Blu-ray, burnt Blu-ray, folder on your PC, streamed, etc, provided the video stream (i.e. its 1s and 0s) are identical.

It's funny how the mind plays tricks - I recently saw someone saying that the longer cut of a recent release "looked much better" than the shorter cut on the same disc, but both cuts were seamlessly branched so for all but two minutes you were watching literally the same video file.

MichaelB wrote:I recently saw someone saying that the longer cut of a recent release "looked much better" than the shorter cut on the same disc, but both cuts were seamlessly branched so for all but two minutes you were watching literally the same video file.

I've read this kind of things way too many times.

TMDaines wrote:

M Sanderson wrote:(I used to be paranoid that the Warner Archive releases were not pressed but recorded on a Blu ray recorder unit. I could spot what I thought was a "sheen" that you always get when you record something manually. I was baffled at the number of positive AV reviews online and wondered if the review copy was different than the one purchased. I don't know.)

That's just your bias. Recording digitally can do no such thing. The picture will be identical on a pressed Blu-ray, burnt Blu-ray, folder on your PC, streamed, etc, provided the video stream (i.e. its 1s and 0s) are identical.

I don't know the process. Aren't there ways to record digitally, faster and with less quality for instance?

I always did find the MoD titles from the DVD era a bit iffy looking and frustrating. The feeling I had was they'd come from superior sources but something in the production process letting it down.


Has anyone else watched the Warner Archive and the HMV Exclusive Blu rays of Performance and considered them visually identical? I'd be intrigued to hear people's thoughts.

Digital is digital. The data either is here or isnt. It is not analogue material, where wear and tear can happen on the tape in a variable way, leading to various loss of quality.

The only loss of quality you can have with digital is on reliability. A poorly recorded disc will start having skips or freezes or things like this, or suddenly wont be detected anymore by the player.

But digital is digital, and the results are binary.

What he said. If there really was a "sheen" present on the BD-R, it would also be present on a pressed BD from the same file.

On a side extended note, that's also why I always tend to chuckle when people used to (it died out a bit) talk at length about how these awfully expensive HDMI cables allowed for a more saturated picture, eliminated video noise, etc etc. Because it didn't, the only possibility would have been to have a signal distortion but that would have had a different result, certainly not interferences that weirdly all go together to lessen the picture quality in an very analogue-signal way.

They certainly weren't helped by an industry that still tries to shuffle $100/m cables while people definitely should know better, but only people with long cables need should get robust cables - and this robustness only should be to interferences !

I'm still amazed to see this kind of conversation still popping up from time to time, because the move to digital was a long time ago, and there since have been many studies to show, either by signal analysis or "blind" tests, that you shouldn't spend any lot of money on a HDMI cable.

It either work, or it doesn't.

Same goes for sound. I still read from time to time "bad HDMI cables can distort sound." Why this Mb dedicated to video would be untouched but this Mb dedicated to sound would ?

Not to disuade anyone from continuing this discussion but I'm fairly sure the original mention of a "sheen" was referring to the disc surface of pressed vs burnt discs, and not the video quality.

to clarify, I felt that something was "up" with the Warner Archive titles in the DVD era. Such titles as Savage Messiah and The Boy Friend, among others.

I don't know about manufacturing processes. I do know the difference between analaogue and digital though, thanks.

They looked similar quality to something I'd recorded off TV with a DVD recorder. The way the unit would lose a generation, and stamp a layer of fuzz on the image. That's what I meant by sheen. Not to be confused with film grain.

Fast forward, I loved WA's Body Snatchers BD-R and i felt Deathtrap was competent, but I didn't like the presentation of Performance, which I had issues with (knowing the film's use of different techniques and film stocks). Did my "bias" lead to me BD-R and finding the BD fine?

Maybe I'm just too fussy, making something out of nothing, etc etc. By any chance has anyone watched the Warner Archive and the HMV Exclusive releases? Has any site done a comparison? And found them identical (audio aside)?

M Sanderson wrote:The way the unit would lose a generation, and stamp a layer of fuzz on the image. That's what I meant by sheen.

And that's definetely something that can't happen with digital where you don't lose a generation anymore. There are, of course, problematic exceptions (copying a scratched disc will lead to a potentially incomplete copy) but they remain linked to technical issues, not a regular process.

Also, to my knowledge, WA's Body Snatchers BD is a regularly pressed BD-50, not a BD-R, since all WA BD releases are pressed BDs.

M Sanderson wrote:Did my "bias" lead to me BD-R and finding the BD fine? Maybe I'm just too fussy, making something out of nothing, etc etc.

It looks like you’re trying to find a pattern where there isn’t one.
It’s only human though.

M Sanderson wrote:By any chance has anyone watched the Warner Archive and the HMV Exclusive releases? Has any site done a comparison? And found them identical (audio aside)?

I believe only the audio is different but I haven’t formally checked yet. I however doubt the visual presentation is different, except maybe a small difference in encode.

WA has never released a BD-R...

My old US copy of Performance was definitely a pressed BD. Although I've got rid of it now so can't confirm any other specifics.

tenia wrote:On a side extended note, that's also why I always tend to chuckle when people used to (it died out a bit) talk at length about how these awfully expensive HDMI cables allowed for a more saturated picture, eliminated video noise, etc etc. Because it didn't, the only possibility would have been to have a signal distortion but that would have had a different result, certainly not interferences that weirdly all go together to lessen the picture quality in an very analogue-signal way.

They certainly weren't helped by an industry that still tries to shuffle $100/m cables while people definitely should know better, but only people with long cables need should get robust cables - and this robustness only should be to interferences !

I'm still amazed to see this kind of conversation still popping up from time to time, because the move to digital was a long time ago, and there since have been many studies to show, either by signal analysis or "blind" tests, that you shouldn't spend any lot of money on a HDMI cable.

It either work, or it doesn't.

Same goes for sound. I still read from time to time "bad HDMI cables can distort sound." Why this Mb dedicated to video would be untouched but this Mb dedicated to sound would ?

My former line manager is a very smart, fairly digitally knowledgeable person, but still could not grasp that the fundamental task of an HDMI cable, or any digital data cable in fact, is to simply pass the 1s and 0s entered into it at one end, through its length, to its other end. He had a copy of What Hi-Fi on his desk.

There were still articles thoroughly demonstrating why expensive HDMI cables are pointless written in 2016, so I guess it's definitely something difficult to accept.

I found this nice example though :
"Think of it another way, if HDMI cables can improve the quality of a picture, could a more expensive SATA cable make a word document better to read? Imagine Dan Brown buying a £2,000 SATA cable and opening up his latest novel to find out that it had been transformed from his usual quality into Dickensian beauty. Of course, that’s nonsense and we’re stuck with Dan Brown’s prose and HDMI cables that can’t touch image quality."

Performance on the Criterion Channel.

I really hope this portends a proper BD release in the future without the ADR replaced voices and with the dialogue and music lost in the wreckstoration.

_shadow_ wrote: Sat Aug 10, 2019 9:10 pm Performance on the Criterion Channel.

I really hope this portends a proper BD release in the future without the ADR replaced voices and with the dialogue and music lost in the wreckstoration.

If you’re region-free, the UK Blu-ray doesn’t include the dubbed voices.

From what I've read, the fix for the missing "Here's to old England" line sounds as bad as it does on the Warner Archive BD, so no sale. Not to mention the "restored" audio during the entire "Memo from Turner" number is missing some instrumentation in comparison to the un-"restored" audio. Ideally Criterion would go back and give us a proper remaster of the original sound, with the original voices instead of the ADR for the mob guys. Which, as a sidebar, makes no sense to me since the ADR voices have exactly the same accents and are not a bit easier to understand than the original voices.

FWIW, the version of Performance screening on Criterion Channel is missing the “Here’s to old England!” line in the Memo From Turner sequence, and has the dialogue substitution of “ketchup” for “claret”, etc. So, it’s even a step backward from the WB Blu-ray back to their DVD audio.

Sad trombone.

That's really disappointing to hear. I don't understand why it's so difficult to present the correct audio for this film.

It is what WB supplied them with. In an added bit of salt in the wound, the closed captioning is for the original dialogue track.

Coming to 4K in February

Before the announcements came, I was almost daring them to release something I actually want to buy in a good edition I couldn’t resist. They got me! An actually loaded release of a film that’s going to look great in 4K.

Well, I'm going to be a Negative Nicholas and say that it is unfortunate however that there is no real academic angle to this edition, there are lots of experts who have a lot to say about this film, and some of them have written books about it, and some of THEM have worked with Criterion before. I don't think this Keiron Pim person counts as academic, as presumably his visual thingy will be more biographical in nature.

That Cammell documentary is already on Arrow’s phenomenal White of the Eye release. Talk about a serious missed opportunity of a release. Wow.