DVDBeaver Comparisons

[Gary Tooze]

3 new...

Artificial Eye (2-disc) - Region 2 - PAL "Van Gogh" vs. Sony - Region 1- NTSC

Lion's Gate - Region 1 - NTSC "Irreversible" vs. Tartan (Special Edition) - Region 2 - PAL

Warner - Region 1 - NTSC "The Sheltering Sky" vs. GCTHV (Edition 2 DVD) - Region 2 - PAL

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/

Cheers,

[Gary Tooze]

One of the more important films from the 20th century...

Nouveaux Pictures - Region 0 - PAL "Mouchette" vs. Criterion - Region 1- NTSC

Nouveaux Pictures


Criterion


http://www.dvdbeaver.com/

New addition...

Sony (short version) - Region 1 - NTSC "Don't Come Knocking" vs. Cinema Mondo / Pan Vision - Region 2 - PAL vs. Sony (short version) - Region 2,4,5 - PAL vs. Kinowelt / Arthaus - Region 2 - PAL

Per-Olaf has painstakingly identified the definitive DVD version of the film and the differences between the long (Director's cut) and shorter (Sony) versions.

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/

Best,

[daniel p]

Can't wait for your Yojimbo and Sanjuro comparisons Gary, are they coming soon?

[Gary Tooze]

Thanks Daniel,

In the next two days I expect.

One more....

Artisan- Region 0 - NTSC "The Piano" vs. EiV (UK) - Region 2 - PAL vs. Best Film (Poland) Region 2 - PAL vs. Optimum (Special Edition) Region 2 - PAL

On deck; Angel Face, Yojimbo, Sanjuro...

More...

Warner - Region 1,4 - NTSC "Angel Face" vs. 5-Minutes To Live - Region 0 - NTSC vs. Montparnasse Editions (France) - Region 2 - PAL

Also up soon - Brokeback Mountain

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/

[HerrSchreck]

Is it me or is the WB transfer of ANGEL FACE looking a little low-def & klunky? Agreed with Gary's assessment that it's beyond doubt a notch above the Ed. Montparnasse, but-- judging only from the caps-- it looks a bit disappointing, as this film is clearly a high point of a box I've been mulling over buying-- Mitchum is the man and I dig him, like Brando, in just about any film. No matter how bad the film, he stalks onscreen and for the duration It's A Good Film All Of A Sudden. Then he walks off and it Sucks Again.

Anyhow, looking at some of those caps the transfer looks soft, analoguey, certainly not up to WB's usual standards. Anyone else see what I'm seeing?

[Ornette]

Yes, I totally agree with you Shreck. The transfer is underwhelming, especially coming from Warner, and clearly below my anticipations.

[Gary Tooze]

HerrSchreck,

I agree that the screen caps are rather unremarkable, but part of that is due to having to match existing caps that weren't the best chosen to showcase the image. Initially we reviewed the 5-minutes to live DVD (long since in the bin) which, understandably, could not produce screen caps of any quality. The Warner transfer is not great - but it is acceptable. Ideally a dual-layer job would have been appreciated. I've watched it twice now (on a large tube) and it appeared to be up to standard for CRT.

Also I suspect we may have entered a 2nd tier of healthy Warner/RKO/MGM etc prints. Just a notch below the initial classic releases. There may be limitations on what can be done. This may be the reason some titles were delayed so long.

2 more... you may find Macao the same...

Éditions Montparnasse - Region 2 - PAL "Macao" vs. Warner - Region 1,4 - NTSC

Universal - Region 1 - NTSC "Brokeback Mountain" vs. Universal (2-disc Collector's Edition) - Region 1 - NTSC

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/

Best,

[zombeaner]

Any plans for comparisons of the recent Korean discs of Chungking Express/Fallen Angels and As Tears Go By/Days Of Being Wild?

[Gary Tooze]

As promised....

Criterion - Region 1 - NTSC "Yojimbo" vs. Criterion - REISSUE - Region 1- NTSC

Criterion (REISSUE) - Region 1 - NTSC "Sanjuro" vs. Criterion - Region 1 - NTSC vs. BFI - Region 2 - PAL

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/

Cheers,

[miless]

The current Children of Men review up on DVDBeaver that states:

I'll make some assumptions - this was shot majority (or wholly) on digital video but the print used is fully progressive and must have been bumped to 35mm - probably the same used for the theatrical showings. This is a very good sign. Aside from some occasional heaviness the image looks excellent.

I highly doubt this because Emmanuel Lubezki is a very "Film oriented" cinematographer. IMDB also shows this technical information:

Camera
Arricam LT
Arriflex 235
Zeiss Master Prime Lenses
Film length (metres)
108 m (Germany)
Film negative format (mm/video inches)
35 mm (Kodak Vision2 Expression 500T 5229)
Cinematographic process
Digital Intermediate (2K) (master format)
Super 35 (source format)
Printed film format
35 mm (Fuji F-CP 3513DI)
Aspect ratio
1.85 : 1

just to clear a few things up.

Thanks for your website, btw. It has been very helpful.

[Gary Tooze]

Thanks Miles!

One more...

MGM (2-disc Collector's Edition) Region 1 - NTSC "Silence of the Lambs" vs. Criterion Region 1 NTSC vs. MGM (SE) Region 1 NTSC

New...

Warner -HD - NTSC "Casablanca" vs. Warner (SE) - Region 1,2,3,4 - NTSC

NOTE: In our review of Viva Pedro - Pedro Almodovar Classics Collection we have included a number of image comparisons with the Region 2 - PAL Optimum (The Almodóvar Collection - Volumes 1 + 2).

NOTE: We have added one comparison capture to our, now out-of-print, Masters of Cinema The Savage Innocents review comparing it to the dreadful new ITV edition.

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/

P.S. Spartacus HD comparison - hopefully this week.

[exte]

Umm, Gary... taking and posting photos of a tv is a waste of bandwith and time. Isn't there a way to post screen grabs straight from the source, now that people have cracked/unlocked the hd discs?

[Michael Kerpan]

I think the subtitled Mei Ah (i believe) VCD of Red Sorghum probably looks better overall than the new DVD. (Lower resolution -- but better color -- and okay sound, as I recall).

[Gary Tooze]

Umm, Gary... taking and posting photos of a tv is a waste of bandwidth and time.

Ummmm... Thank you for your opinion. I respectfully disagree. It would depend on the purpose of the image posts. I have also taken photos of my plasma in the review of that piece of equipment. If it too offends you then I would avoid viewing that webpage as well. The DC images in the comparison that you are referring to help us show the differences in subtitles size, clarity and position as well as a marginally accurate visuals of the menus. They are angled so as not to confuse surfers with computer generated captures.

RE: bandwidth - it is a DVDBeaver expense, but if you are so moved to conserve Internet bandwidth I suggest you avoid surfing to DVDBeaver at all - in fact - email me your IP and I will have you disallowed from our Server in case you are strongly tempted in the future. Perhaps a more efficient solution on your part would be to lobby against the Net's billion times more pornography bandwidth useage than we ever abuse. Ditto for SPAM. Please feel free... as it appears as you are obviously heartfelt about this issue. Frankly your concerns are totally misplaced, IMO and your entire post is likewise a waste of time and bandwidth.

Isn't there a way to post screen grabs straight from the source, now that people have cracked/unlocked the hd discs?

Not meaning to sounded condescending to you, but don't you think we would if we were able to? Is there a site that has posted screen grabs of BlueRay or HD DVDs yet? If so I'd be interested to see it.

Regards!

[Darth Lavender]

The 'waste of bandwidth' bit was impolite and I guess a snide reply is kind of justified there. But, as to "why didn't you get screengrabs from the HDDVDs?" I'm genuinely curious about that myself. I'm sure there's probably a reason, but I'm unclear on what that is. Do you simply lack the "key" for the Warner Casablanca disk? Is there some legal reason why you can't post HD screengrabs (DeCSS laws or something like that?)

Incidentally (and someone may want to repost this link in the "HDDVD and Bluray" thread; I'm too lazy) I have found one website which offers full resolution, HDDVD screengrabs (not sure how they acquired them. Promotional images from the studios?) (incidentally, if some person, who knows more about screengrabs than I, can post a few SD screencaps of the same frames, that would be splendid.)

Doing a websearch, I also found a few forums where people had posted smaller screencaps from HD movies.

[colinr0380]

NOTE: We have added one comparison capture to our, now out-of-print, Masters of Cinema The Savage Innocents review comparing it to the dreadful new ITV edition.

Sigh. It doesn't affect me personally since I already have the MoC disc, but I wish ITV would just stick to all night phone-in game shows instead of releasing that terrible looking DVD. There may have been rights problems that meant the MoC needed to go out of print, but replacing it with a terrible pan-and-scan copy just smacks of opportunism and cashing in on the whatever interest had been raised for the title by the MoC release to sucker the public into picking up their substandard disc. Although maybe I'm wrong and they had great plans to release Savage Innocents onto DVD a few years ago!

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The current versions of PowerDVD and WinDVD don't allow screen captures of HD discs. The first versions with HD DVD and Blu-ray support did (via the "Print Screen" key), but this was disabled after some wise guys in the media pointed out that you could copy the movies by capturing every single frame and recombining them in VirtualDub or something. There are people who have managed to make screengrabs through more "illicit" means (as exte suggested) but I'm not familiar with the process.

[tryavna]

I respectfully disagree.

and your entire post is likewise a waste of time and bandwidth.

:-s If that's respectfully disagreeing, I'd hate to see what happens when Gary becomes disrespectful.

[exte]

Regards!

Believe it or not, I meant no disrespect Gary. I always look forward to the next screen comparison you post. I think all of us do. But when you announced a direct HD comparison of a movie like Casablanca (and one coming soon for Spartacus), I got very excited. As I clicked, I thought of the impressive comparisons between the T2 HD and Extreme Edition DVD captures. When I got to the page, I missed the disclaimer about having to use a light meter and camera entirely, and instead jumped to your description, which hailed it as the greatest transfer you had ever seen. Imagine my utter disappointment as I tried to make sure that the image indeed had Samsung at the bottom of it... Anyway, I posted here, then thought better to check the page again and found the disclaimer, and realized you only posted subtitles and menu screens. Sorry I jumped the gun. I guess my bandwidth comment may have seemed a bit too harsh, though... Anyway, I hope all is forgiven here...

BTW, is it true that you would be tempting the studios by posting direct HD screen grabs (if you were able to, at this point)? Would they really see it as a violation, etc?

[Gary Tooze]

I don't know what to tell you. I'll definitely agree with one thing exte said - time consuming. It took me about 7 times as long to complete that HD comparison. I watched Casablanca 6 times this weekend - 4 X HD and 2X SE making pages and pages of notes. I took hundreds of digital photos, went to the nearest photo supply store 3 times and purchased lights, light stands, tripods, a light meter...

This is the best I can do at present. If I could have done better (direct screen caps), trust me, you can bet I would have.

The screen grabs on the site posted by Darth Lavender look to me like very high end digital photos from blown-up HD and BR discs. I don't *think* they are direct screen caps.

I am aware that someone has broken the code, but I don't presently have the means to obtain direct screen grabs.

I bought an HD player and wanted to share my feelings about the quality of Casablanca HD. I still think comparisons give a better frame of reference, hence I tried to identify the differences assuming many already own the SE.

I will do similar with Spartacus, but I'll tell you now that I lean toward the Criterion. There is a flaw in the transfer that is more pronounced in the HD.

I did mean to be abrupt in my response to exte. I am fighting numerous obstacles and I am as frustrated as some of you. I am confident we will get to the bottom of it eventually. Have faith.

Best,
Gary

[broadwayrock]

Gary you might want to ask:

Michael, check this site for some captures of Casablanca.

He has started posting some very good captures of HD-DVDs through (i think) the xbox 360 HD-DVD player connected up to a pc.

[exte]

From his site: "Apparently, Microsoft's upcoming HD DVD add-on for their Xbox 360 console will also be usable as an external PC drive, provided you can get a hold of the requisite driver..."

But then he goes on to say the following...
The following is a possible solution!!!:

HD King Kong 12

HD King Kong 25

"Judging by these shots, it is actually possible to get full 1920x1080 screen captures of HD DVD titles from a PC. The process apparently involves getting hold of the disc's volume key by exploiting a loophole in WinDVD HD, then decrypting the disc, then running the decrypted files in PowerDVD 6.5. In other words, much harder than with a standard definition DVD, but definitely possible."

[Napoleon]

Gary, my jaw dropped onto my desk when I saw the quality of the HD capture, so your time and effort wasn't wasted on me. The difference in quality is astonishing.

[Gary Tooze]

2 new...

Network - Region 2 - PAL "Green For Danger" vs. Criterion - Region 1- NTSC

Universal - Region 2,4 - PAL "The Heiress" vs. Universal - Region 1- NTSC

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/

Best,

[Anthony]

Gary,

I truly appreciate all of the effort and hard work you put into your web site.