bu ray , old movie picture quality

C

Caribou "QUIT" Barbie™

New member
is it really worth buying older movies on blu ray unless they have been remastered ?
i recently got the nightmare before christmas which was digitally remasterd and the picture quality was amazing ,
i then got clint eastwooRAB unforgiven and to be honest the picture quality was really poor . no better than a vhs and certainly not as good as a dvd . this has put me off from buying more old favorites .
 
I've got the Nightmare Before Christmas on BR as well, I agree it doesn't come off too well, I guess it's hit and miss really. I have Life Of Brian (1979) on BR and the quality of that is stunning, brilliant HD for a film thats over 30 years old. Apparently Zulu was supposed to have transferred well onto BR.

I wouldn't recommend getting Batman (1988) on BR, the quality isn't much better than DVD.
 
It's worth buying the odd specialist blu ray magazine, some of them give very detailed reviews on the picture and sound quality of blu ray releases.

You are right when you say some films are not remastered at all, simply the same old dvd transfer just ported over to blu ray. You may see a slight improvement, but not enough to warrant the blu ray purchase.

But that said, when they do go the whole way and remaster the movie, the effect can be quite stunning.

I recently picked up Italian Job, and that looks excellent. Towering Inferno also has a great remastering job.

But the fact is some companies simply won't take the time and trouble to remaster for blu ray. They will go for the cheap option.

Yep... a couple of quid for a decent blu ray mag will make sure you can sort the wheat from the chaff.
 
To say that a Bluray is no better than the vhs is obviously utter rubbish.

As long as the master has been taken from a good quality 35mm print the high definition quality will be there.

Remastering simply means they have made a new master of the film and if the print used was not very good then the Bluray will be less than perfect.

Whats needed is restoration where the the original negatives are accessed and the whole film is cleaned up with dirt and dust built up over the years is removed to create a flawless copy thats better than what was seen when it opened in the cinema.

Even the worst Blurays are still better than the dvd version , sometimes by not enough to warrant buying again but they are still better

Its also nothing to with the age of the film either.
We've got flawless releases of The Wizard of Oz , North By Northwest and other old films yet some films from the 80's and 90's are not as good looking.

If the releasing company simply goes for an existing print with no restoration then you won't get an image as perfect as it could be.

Similarly there are films of more recent vintage than Oz where the negative or existing prints have either been neglected or damaged and newer films can still look worse than something 70 years old.
 
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