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warren oates wrote:I wonder if they won't be holding back certain more popular titles for a bit, though. I don't see listings for Vertigo, Rear Window or The Birds yet, for instance.

Vertigo and Rear Window are listed. I've got them on my wish list and signed up for email notification. Don't know about The Birds.

Finally went through some of the problem titles and I almost felt like chucking these discs out the window.

Watching this on a 55" screen that is very close to the couch (I live in a narrow apartment), Frenzy is unwatchable to me. The DNR is horrendous, and there are times when it's a ridiculous joke. Check out that early scene when Rusk enters Brenda's office to confront her. On Brenda's shots, the grain reduction really kicks in on the right side of the screen, where the plain-looking walls in the background fall out of focus. But with anything close to the foreground (i.e. more in focus) or anything with more texture to it, the grain returns. You can see this happen with solitary objects vs. the wall surrounding them. It's like the algorithm or whatever the fuck goes on with these machines actually 'cut' out these parts of the frame (as if these parts were stenciled) and then wiped the grain clean off the rest of the frame.

And Marnie really is horrendous, how the hell did they plaster that digital noise over everything? After sampling most of the set beforehand, it's obviously noise introduced into the transfer, there's nothing 'film like' or 'film-grain like' about it at all. The grid pattern that was mentioned was painfully and immediately obvious in that first shot. Atrocious.

Re: The Man Who Knew Too Much, I can see why Harris didn't like it, the color does look like a disappointment. It may simply be an indifferent transfer of a problematic film element, that is nothing was done to improve or fuck up the image. Not unwatchable, but it just looks drab, not what I expect from any film shot in this format.

Rope's color is also a disappointment, but this is also how it looked on the last DVD, so I wonder if this film has just been neglected over the years and in need of a real film restoration? There's also a few spots where you can see details pulsating in and out of focus, but this only happens (if it happens, that is) with a still object that's in focus within a still shot, and things generally keep moving in every frame.

The Birds bothers me. With the first shot (probably because of the VFX), you immediately notice what was described as the grain moving more 'slowly' than it should. It doesn't move like film grain that's set in different patterns in frame after frame, the movement has been dragged enough that it actually looks like animation of some kind. You can see this in every shot, especially in the first shot of Tippi Hedren crossing the street, but it is worse with the VFX shots, maybe because they were much grainier from optical printing and this was the result of trying harder to 'manage' grain in those spots?

The Birds and Rear Window were just released this week in Australia. The discs are region free and quite cheap.

http://www.ezydvd.com.au/blu-ray/birds- ... dp/6139720" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.ezydvd.com.au/blu-ray/rear-w ... dp/6139721" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The separate Blu-rays of The Birds, Rear Window, Saboteur and Family Plot are out tomorrow in Scandinavia, and they're cheaper than the UK ones even with worldwide shipping. No mention of region coding on the back covers.

hearthesilence wrote:Re: The Man Who Knew Too Much, I can see why Harris didn't like it, the color does look like a disappointment. It may simply be an indifferent transfer of a problematic film element, that is nothing was done to improve or fuck up the image. Not unwatchable, but it just looks drab, not what I expect from any film shot in this format.

Out of sheer curiosity, does TMWKTM still open with the Universal fanfare instead of the original Paramount logo? This was the most dubious of the original DVD transfers in this line, as I recall, and the use of an '80s restoration print kind of underlined that.

HA, I'd have to check to make sure because I started skipping through these after a few titles, but I'm pretty sure every single one of these Blu-Ray discs have the Universal fanfare.

In fact, not only do they have the fanfare, they have it twice - first the shiny, new CG 100th Anniversary version, then again with the same CG graphic sans "100th Anniversary" type at the bottom. It's a little irritating when you just want to start the movie and you have to set through all those warnings, and then this animated graphic comes up that doesn't even look correct, and then they do it again.

Does anyone know why Universal decided to release the individual blu rays of Psycho, The Birds, Vertigo and Rear Window in every other country in the world besides US/Canada? Seems strange.

"Psycho" used to be available as a standalone R1 blu-ray. But I agree, it's a problem, even if I'd be likely to buy the set with all those titles.

ianungstad wrote:Does anyone know why Universal decided to release the individual blu rays of Psycho, The Birds, Vertigo and Rear Window in every other country in the world besides US/Canada? Seems strange.

They're coming. If you check the release dates of Topaz (Nov.) and Frenzy (Dec.), it's apparent that they're doing a gradual roll-out of the titles, saving what we might call the Big Three for last (which appears to be some time in 2014). What's odd is that on this scheme The Birds is going to miss its 50th Anniversary year. I guess maybe they figure they'll sell some more of the sets for Christmas this way. Anyway, if you're in hurry, everything is available from the UK and they're all supposed to be Region Free.

Shadow of a Doubt is available in the US individually though not in the UK and elsewhere (as far as I'm aware). My copy of the US BD shipped last week.

ianungstad wrote:Does anyone know why Universal decided to release the individual blu rays of Psycho, The Birds, Vertigo and Rear Window in every other country in the world besides US/Canada? Seems strange.

The Essentials box set that includes all of those plus North by Northwest is still only $38 at Amazon, much cheaper per title (even if you already own one or two) than you're going to get them individually.

Finch wrote:Shadow of a Doubt is available in the US individually though not in the UK and elsewhere (as far as I'm aware). My copy of the US BD shipped last week.

It's available on Amazon UK so I think it has been released. Universal released Rear Window, Saboteur, and Family Plot a few months ago, and all the rest came out at the end of September.

Forgive me for what is probably a pointless question, but did anyone ever pick up the stand-alone Blu-ray of Marnie? And if so, does it have the same digital noise problem for most of the film as did its initial release in the big box set?

Hi, first of all I'm new here and I'm just starting a Blu-Ray collection of my own. My birthday is approaching and one of my potential choices is The Alfred Hitchcock: The Essential Collection. My question is, is that set worth getting? I just want be sure especially since I heard the transfers on some of the films are not really good unfortunately but like I said, I need to be sure.

I'm fairly certain that set is mostly okay. The Psycho and Rear Window transfers were probably among the best reviewed of the larger Universal box set, the Psycho disc is generally good as well. The Birds, on the other hand, was met with a good deal of criticism, however, and there are many on this forum who feel that North by Northwest, like Warner's presentation of The Searchers, is lacking with colors that don't pop as they should, and an overall "ugly" look.

I hope I've summarized that well.

I have the old velvet box DVD set, and from what I read about the inconsistent quality of the blu-rays, I've never felt much need to upgrade. If don't already own most of the films, though, this is still Alfred Hitchcock- you are buying the movies for the films themselves, not the image quality, so it may be worth it.

It helps that one can find it fairly inexpensively and for about the same cost as 5-6 of the individual releases. That's what got me to jump even though I only really wanted to own about half the films.

Drucker wrote:I'm fairly certain that set is mostly okay. The Psycho and Rear Window transfers were probably among the best reviewed of the larger Universal box set, the Psycho disc is generally good as well. The Birds, on the other hand, was met with a good deal of criticism, however, and there are many on this forum who feel that North by Northwest, like Warner's presentation of The Searchers, is lacking with colors that don't pop as they should, and an overall "ugly" look.

Sounds like I'm better off with the DVDs with some of the films like The Birds, North By Northwest and maybe Vertigo. Alright, I think I'll be fine buying Blu-Rays for Psycho and Rear Window. Thank you sir.

My understanding is that the Vertigo disc is a big improvement over the DVD (and has the original Mono soundtrack as well?), for what it's worth.

Drucker wrote:My understanding is that the Vertigo disc is a big improvement over the DVD (and has the original Mono soundtrack as well?), for what it's worth.

I thought the Blu-Ray didn't have the original mono. Though that aside, I guess Vertigo will do as well so thank you as well.

Wasn't the title sequence of Vertigo completely redone from scratch, and they misspelled some names in the credits?

No, I believe that was Frenzy- the Vertigo disc is lovely.

That was indeed Frenzy - they initially "restored" the opening credits, but didn't think to hire a proofreader. But they corrected it for the release version (although sadly that disc has other problems, notably heavy DNR).

See, the whole Frenzy thing is why I'm now suddenly hesitant on buying the Essential Collection. It just seems like to me, I'm better buying off Psycho, Rear Window, and Vertigo separate. From what I've been hearing about, I'm curious as to how does Universal even screw up the very films they own?

Universal doesn't own the Hitchcock films. They are licensed from the Hitchcock estate and have been distributed by multiple studios over the years.