Bond on Blu Ray

P

Philip M

New member
I recently started watching the Bond series (on DVD) again from the beginning on my HDTV.

I have to say I was disapointed at the quality. The print looked terribly graining and the film scratches noticable. On my old TV I didn't really notice. Recently watched Goldfinger, Thunderball and DiamonRAB are Forever.

So, is it worth upgrading my Bond collection to Blu Ray? Is there a huge improvement with picture quality?

Interested in hearing your thoughts....
 
Which DVD editions do you have?

The Ultimate Editions which were cleaned up, look very good through an upscaler. Dr No is nothing short of stunning for DVD. But earlier issues aren't anywhere near as good.

Are you playing DVRAB through a standard DVD player, upscaler, or Blu Ray player?
 
That's interesting. I don't have the Ultimate Editions, I had them when they were first released on DVD.

I'm tempted to buy them on Blu Ray but this will be the 3rd time I've bought them - VHS, DVD and now Blu Ray.

I'm watching them on my Playstation 3. PS3 is set to upscale.
 
All the Bond films have had extensive restoration in the last couple of years.

Dr No ,FRWL and Goldfinger look especially stunning (forget the awful so called HD version of Goldfinger on Sky - that was tat).

The Bluray discs are spectacular.
If you are a purist you might like to know that the UK Blurays do not carry the original mono or stereo soundtracks but if you are happy with the DD/DTS remixes then no problem.

Multiregion Bluray will allow you to get the US discs which do have the original sound and it also means you can get Golden Gun ,Licence To Kill and Never say Never Again - all remain unreleased in the UK for some unknown reason.

Buy into Blu now and you can get most of them (bar the last 3 I listed) for under a tenner each
 
I hate to labour the point which many people have made over the years, but Never Say Never Again isn't an official Bond film and is not part of the recognised franchise.
 
That's true, but I was making the point that any reason for Golden Gun and LTK not having been released in the UK on Blu-ray are highly unlikely to apply to NSNA.
 
Fair enough, although I'm sure the reason for NSNA is just as unknown as the 'proper' stuff... ;)


(And tsk, Firefox spell checker - that should have said completist!)
 
As the first 2 are MGM releases via Fox and NSNA does not even mention MGM on the case you are likely to be right.

However - since the court case of a few years ago that allowed Eon to embark on an official version of Casino Royale the rights to the 1967 spoof aswell as Never say Never Again reverted to Sony anyway.

So it may all be tied up in the same legalities

The NSNA Bluray makes no attempt to associate itself with the official films.
The packaging is completely different and the menus are aswell
 
These likely issues are probably the same as those stopping a UK release for the Blu-ray Die Hard Quadrilogy.

It's all a bit pathetic really. BoneheaRAB in suits stopping the paying consumer from being able to buy what they want on the format they want because of some clause in a 20+ year old contract.
 
The Die Hard issue is purely down to the fact that Die hard 3 is owned by Buena Vista outside the US .

Fox did reach an agreement to release the third film in a dvd boxset here and they have also reached an agreement to release it on Bluray in Australia.

It's always a problem in the UK where BV seem to have problems obtaining an uncut version.

Australia is region B like the UK so you can buy the DH Quadrilogy from there which is where I got mine even though I am multiregion.(Only DH4 is Region B in the Oz set - the others are region free)

DH4 is still the PG13 version though

I am not aware of anybody bar MGM/Fox releasing the Bond films anywhere and Golden Gun/LTK have been available in other parts of Europe for quite a few months so its a mystery what the problem is here
 
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