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

I thought the Hitchcock estate only owned five films outright?

Certainly, the Universal-produced Frenzy has never been distributed by anyone else as far as I'm aware - and the same goes for all the Hitchcock films from The Birds onwards. Hitchcock used to own the famously self-financed Psycho, but sold the rights to Universal in exchange for a whopping amount of MCA stock, so I think I'm reasonably safe in claiming that everything from Psycho onwards is owned by Universal outright.

And since the worst transfers in the box are mostly of the films that are indeed 100% owned by Universal (Marnie, Frenzy, Family Plot), Movie-Brat's question is a very good one - and I wish I knew the answer!

MichaelB wrote:And since the worst transfers in the box are mostly of the films that are indeed 100% owned by Universal (Marnie, Frenzy, Family Plot), Movie-Brat's question is a very good one - and I wish I knew the answer!

Marine's another case, considering it's Sean Connery in a Hitchcock movie, I am very disappointed in what had happened to that movie in the video quality department. Last question as I think I made up my mind, what are the chances of Rear Window and Verigo being sold separately?

david hare wrote:But I am totally unclear on the rights to the other late picture.

As far as I'm aware, everything from The Birds onwards was 100% financed and 100% owned by Universal, with whom Hitchcock stayed until the end of his career. I suspect this was a by-product of his 1962 stock-for-rights swap with Lew Wasserman.

Movie-Brat wrote:

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.

Just got the separate release of Vertigo that came out about a week ago, which I assume is the same as the one sold in a set over a year ago. The specs look about the same.

I've searched the internet for info on this mono issue, but most of the forums I went to in search of conclusive info on this topic usually degenerated into bickering where nothing was resolved.

This US BD release has a DTS 2.0 Mono track. So right there it's already not the "true" original mono track, but is this mix taken from the original mono track? That's what I'd like to know too. My guess is this is a downmix of some sort, but I don't know enough about the previous DVD releases to see if this is a downmix of the previously panned "updated" 5.1 audio track found in a few of the previous DVD releases. It doesn't quite sound like a downmix of the "improved" 5.1 track on the current BD release, either, but I'd need to compare further if it's just my ears deceiving me.

Robert Harris seemed to suggest that there is no way this can be the original mono track here

Unfortunately, since he's well past the point of wanting to talk about it, many very good follow-up questions about the track included on this release still remain unanswered.

It being 2.0 is no indication that it isn't the "true" original mono. Many (most?) mono tracks are encoded that way; one track duplicated into two channels so they come out of your left and right speakers, rather than the centre (I assume most cinema set ups were like this?). As far as I know it is the "true" mono, whilst the new 5.1 puts back all of the original effects that were replaced on the DVD 5.1.

EddieLarkin wrote:It being 2.0 is no indication that it isn't the "true" original mono. Many (most?) mono tracks are encoded that way; one track duplicated into two channels so they come out of your left and right speakers, rather than the centre (I assume most cinema set ups were like this?). As far as I know it is the "true" mono, whilst the new 5.1 puts back all of the original effects that were replaced on the DVD 5.1.

If anyone here can conclusively compare the mono track on this release with the Masterpiece Collection's mono and state that they sound about the same, then we can put this issue to rest...at least until someone claims the MC version wasn't the "true" original mono either.

david hare wrote:Michael I had thought, prior to Hitch's deal with Lew Wasserman to take the Universal stock in trade, that Hitch personally held ownership of these four: Trouble with Harry, Man who Knew too Much, Vertigo and Rear Window. Indeed these were the titles finally reissued through Universal in the late 70s/early 80s, only after decades in limbo.

And the fifth title, ROPE, resulted from a similar agreement as the one film of two produced by Transatlantic, the other being UNDER CAPRICORN, that Hitchcock retained ownership of. Economically, if not aesthetically, Hitchcock chose wisely in this instance as well.

I remember reading somewhere that the mono track on the Masterpiece Collection DVD was not the original mono track either but still preferable to the 1997 5.1 botch job.

Finch wrote:I remember reading somewhere that the mono track on the Masterpiece Collection DVD was not the original mono track either but still preferable to the 1997 5.1 botch job.

I just checked the velvet-box Masterpiece Edition Vertigo DVD, and the mono track is the original. The opening scenes gunshots sounds, the waves crashing sounds, are the original sound effects. The 5.1 track has them replaced with modern sounding sound effects.

manicsounds wrote:

Finch wrote:I remember reading somewhere that the mono track on the Masterpiece Collection DVD was not the original mono track either but still preferable to the 1997 5.1 botch job.

I just checked the velvet-box Masterpiece Edition Vertigo DVD, and the mono track is the original. The opening scenes gunshots sounds, the waves crashing sounds, are the original sound effects. The 5.1 track has them replaced with modern sounding sound effects.

The 5.1 track on the blu-ray is redone to be much closer to the original mono track than the 1997 5.1 track that was used in some of the DVD releases, so it's not like this is as big a problem now as it was before. But I'd really like to know where the mono track on the US BD comes from.

Easy Virtue coming up in France, alongside The Lodger, Downhill and a boxset also including The 39 Steps and The Man Who Knew Too Much.

At this rate it's going to be only six more years until all nine restored silents are released. :-"

Alfred Hitchcock: The Ultimate Collection - October 17. This appears to be the same Blu-ray set Universal previously released, only with two additional discs: "The Best of Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "The Best of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour."

Contents of the new discs:

Disc 16:
Revenge (Season 1, Episode 1)
Mr. Blanchard's Secret (Season 2, Episode 13)
Lamb to the Slaughter (Season 3, Episode 28)
Poison (Season 4, Episode 1)
Arthur (Season 5, Episode 1)
Mr. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat (Season 6, Episode 1)
Bang! You're Dead! (Season 7, Episode 2)
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: A Look Back

Disc 17:
I Saw the Whole Thing (Season 1, Episode 4)
Three Wives Too Many (Season 2, Episode 12)
Death Scene (Season 3, Episode 20)
Fasten Your Seatbelt: The Thrilling Art of Alfred Hitchcock

So is this a teaser for the entire tv series being released on blu?

Lowry_Sam wrote: Sun Aug 20, 2017 2:49 am So is this a teaser for the entire tv series being released on blu?

A year later, let me answer this: the two bonus discs are DVDs, not Blu-rays

Hofmeister wrote: Sun Oct 21, 2012 11:30 am The 'gauze effect' is also in the film prints. It's always been there plain as day. I can't be the only one who remembers MARNIE projected.

Not everything we notice is an anomaly, this is what I'm trying to bring out. When HD shows up something that was less apparent in SD, this does not make it a digital artefact.

Bumping up a 6 year old comment to confirm Hofmeister is right about this. Saw a 35mm print of Marnie last night and can 100% confirm the black nylon gauze was there and very visible. The print was in really excellent condition.

Seeing the film for the first time, I was surprised at how relatively tender Connery was in the film. I think I had it in my head that he would be brutal towards Marnie given the film's reputation, but aside from a few obvious scenes, I didn't find that to be the case. Hedren is absolutely marvelous, though. My only complaint is that I'm not sure that the final scene does justice to the terror she exhibits throughout the rest of the film, but i'm still mulling it over a day later.

Yet another repackaging coming this fall, and this one's real ugly

If there's ever a 4K set, I hope it doesn't look like that.

Clearly that box is designed to cash in on the new Addams Family movie.

Beaver's The Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection in 4K UHD reviews

Rear Window 4K UHD
The Birds 4K UHD
Vertigo 4K UHD

Awaiting the Psycho review

I've seen all four of these films on 35, including Vertigo on an IB Tech print, and these caps really look great to me by comparison. Does this mean all the problems with the blu-rays occurred at the encode stage, and not the restoration stage?

These four restorations were all quite highly regarded on BD, though, weren't they? I don't recall them having any notable problems. And while the 4k versions do seem like an undeniable step up, it's all in aspects that one would expect 4k to improve on BD: spatial resolution, color saturation and range, contrast...

Those last two images in the reviews of The Birds and Vertigo really are astonishing though. Just looking at them on my day-to-day Dell 4k non-HDR monitor and the jump in spatial depth is the tipping point for me becoming a 4k believer.

The Birds had some weird filtering, and Psycho had the dated HD master. These still seem like big step-ups from the BDs, especially that color on Rear Window.

senseabove wrote: Thu Sep 10, 2020 7:41 pm These four restorations were all quite highly regarded on BD, though, weren't they? I don't recall them having any notable problems. And while the 4k versions do seem like an undeniable step up, it's all in aspects that one would expect 4k to improve on BD: spatial resolution, color saturation and range, contrast...

Those last two images in the reviews of The Birds and Vertigo really are astonishing though. Just looking at them on my day-to-day Dell 4k non-HDR monitor and the jump in spatial depth is the tipping point for me becoming a 4k believer.

When were these four restorations ever on BD? Vertigo was just restored in 2018.

Ah, maybe I had that impression because, of the four, those are two I could take or leave, so I haven't paid as much attention to reviews of them. Agreed on Rear Window, though. I always felt like a lone lunatic for hating the color scheme on that BD, as it otherwise seems well-regarded.

And I'd forgotten Vertigo was a new 4k restoration since it doesn't seem to be getting as much coverage as such. I'd assumed RW and Birds are just new gradings of previous scans, but maybe that's wrong, too.