criterionforum.org

It seems that they generally ship abroad, but NOT this particular item. Anyway, Overstock is one of those big Amazon Marketplace sellers, i am sure you can get this for 15-17 quid shipped to the UK on release date.

This is more like it: $25 for the Blu and it ships internationally.

Beev on O Brother..

Saw the film theatrically but remember so little of it but I don't want to vouch for the authenticity or lack of it of the new 1080p transfer. Anyone want to chime in on this?

It seems like every Coen Bros. release recently has been warmed up from early releases. Maybe this is intentional and not just studios messing around?

Deakins supervised the new master for O Brother... and said it looked far better than the previous one. Masters for Miller's Crossing and Raising Arizona were supervised by Coens themselves.

Shame Universal was too damn cheap to have the Coens supervise a new master for The Big Lebowski

O BROTHER had heavily manipulated digital grading (one of the first films to have this done to this extent) for its theatrical release. Not only do I recall the colors being artificially vibrant, but the image appeared to have some digital compression artifacts even though I was viewing a 35mm print. I actually haven't viewed this film since I saw it in the theatre in 2000 and the Blu-ray grabs look fairly accurate to what I remember. I look forward to seeing this again.

Keep in mind the DVD Beaver BD screen grabs aren't full resolution. It probably won't ever look like a razor-sharp masterpiece but there'll likely be a little bit of extra detail on the actual disc.

Does anyone here have the UK blu-ray releases of the Leone-Eastwood westerns? I recently bought the box set (including the trilogy as well as Hang 'Em High) and have encountered a strange problem with the Fistful of Dollars og For a Few Dollars More discs. When I view the standard def special features, the picture only fills roughly 1/6 of the screen, and the picture is located in the upper left corner of the screen. Has anyone else experienced this with these titles? 'Tis very annoying.

One-Eye Jacks is coming from Koch Entertainment on November 8.

RobertAltman wrote:Does anyone here have the UK blu-ray releases of the Leone-Eastwood westerns? I recently bought the box set (including the trilogy as well as Hang 'Em High) and have encountered a strange problem with the Fistful of Dollars og For a Few Dollars More discs. When I view the standard def special features, the picture only fills roughly 1/6 of the screen, and the picture is located in the upper left corner of the screen. Has anyone else experienced this with these titles? 'Tis very annoying.

MGM, huh? I have the same problem with the MGM US "Dances With Wolves". A firmware update supposedly fixes the problem, but if I do, I lose my region free-ness of my player.

Thanks for the reply. Even if a firmware update would solve the problem, I - like you - would rather keep the player region-free.

One of The Onion's headline-only 'Newswire' bits that I found spot-on

*waits for domino to say The Onion's not funny anymore*

manicsounds wrote:

RobertAltman wrote:Does anyone here have the UK blu-ray releases of the Leone-Eastwood westerns? I recently bought the box set (including the trilogy as well as Hang 'Em High) and have encountered a strange problem with the Fistful of Dollars og For a Few Dollars More discs. When I view the standard def special features, the picture only fills roughly 1/6 of the screen, and the picture is located in the upper left corner of the screen. Has anyone else experienced this with these titles? 'Tis very annoying.

MGM, huh? I have the same problem with the MGM US "Dances With Wolves". A firmware update supposedly fixes the problem, but if I do, I lose my region free-ness of my player.

Replying late, but I had this happen on the Dressed to Kill disc with my Sony player. I had no problem with the display when I switched it over to my Sherwood...but, Sherwood being Sherwood, I had to load and reload the disc three of four times before it'd finally play at all.

A question for the audiophiles. What exactly would you be missing if you were listening to a 7.1 mix on a 5.1 system?

I am in no way an audiophile, but I'm quite sure the 7.1 mix would simply be downmixed to 5.1 with no loss of information.

stevewhamola wrote:I am in no way an audiophile, but I'm quite sure the 7.1 mix would simply be downmixed to 5.1 with no loss of information.

Well, you will lose the rear spatialisation. Instead of 4 "rear" speakers, you will only have 2. But this, indeed, is only true if it is a 7.1 mix that does use the 4 rear channel. I'm not sure all 7.1 mixes are this effective.

Thanks. I heard a 5.1 mix on a 7.1 system and the rear speakers weren't giving out anything, and it felt too front-heavy.

Many multi-channel mixes are front heavy to begin with. Many audiophiles don't think any more than two channels are necessary, anyway. Multi-channel rarely enhances a film in any significant way, and more often offers a distraction when the mix is artlessly done. It's nearly as big a gimmick as 3-D.

Love me my audio gimmicks. 5.1 lossless, down-mixed from 7.1 or otherwise, yummy.

Donald Brown wrote:Many multi-channel mixes are front heavy to begin with. Many audiophiles don't think any more than two channels are necessary, anyway. Multi-channel rarely enhances a film in any significant way, and more often offers a distraction when the mix is artlessly done. It's nearly as big a gimmick as 3-D.

I really don't understand how anyone who's seen a movie in the last few decades can say that with a straight face. And I'm deaf in one ear!

Donald Brown wrote:Many multi-channel mixes are front heavy to begin with. Many audiophiles don't think any more than two channels are necessary, anyway. Multi-channel rarely enhances a film in any significant way, and more often offers a distraction when the mix is artlessly done. It's nearly as big a gimmick as 3-D.

When I properly calibrated my system with a level meter, the most significant change I ended up making was a really drastic reduction of the volume levels of the rear speakers and subwoofer. I suspect a lot of people turn them up far too high in an attempt to justify their existence.

Oh, they do. Nearly every time I've watched a film at someone's home with a multi-channel setup, the volume on the rears was cranked. Another trend is to have the volume of the subwoofer far too loud, or to even have the overkill of two subwoofers.

...with the result that what might be a perfectly decent mix at the production end becomes crunchingly obvious (or, to use your own terminology, "artless") in a way that the sound mixer clearly never intended.

It really was quite startling just how much the meter ordered me to turn down the rear/subwoofer volume levels, while only recommending minimal tweaks to the front speakers. But I couldn't argue with quantifiable evidence, and I have to say that the improvement was dramatic: previously bombastic soundtracks became far subtler, with the subwoofer slightly reinforcing the bottom end rather than completely swamping it.

The other change I made was to turn the screen's factory-set sharpness down to zero - another common problem that, amongst other things, leads to a significant exaggeration of digital noise on Blu-ray transfers.

Have you considered professional ISF calibration?

That would also sort out things like colour temperature.