Mallrats has the same edge enhanced high contrast video look of The 40 Year Old Virgin - what are they doing to produce these?!

Mallrats has the same edge enhanced high contrast video look of The 40 Year Old Virgin - what are they doing to produce these?!

And there was hope that 40YOV remains one of a kind...

It is not so much an "enhanced high contrast video look" - it looks upsampled with lots of EE - plain and simple.


Why keep releasing titles hardly anybody waits for while not even having a decent (IMHO acceptable) master tape at disposal???

Maybe they just scanned it with a rubbish telecine machine (film scanner)? Are there scanners that scan at 720p and internally up-sample to 1080p?

I'm still gonna buy it because I love Kevin Smith.

Clerks 2 looks amazing... I believe it's strait from the 2K DI.

I had Mallrats preordered then canceled after things seemed to get hit or miss with Universal's catalog titles. I can overlook other artifacts, but edge enhancement is the absolute worst of the worst. Maybe they crank up the sharpness dial to avoid the "softness" complaints.

Clerks 2 does look great. I think Amir mentioned that it also had a 24/48 true HD track? Not that it matters much on this movie.

Mallrats ends with a "Deluxe Digital Studios (http://www.bydeluxe.com/)" logo, are these the people responsible for the poor transfer?

I had many scenes zoomed in looking for edge halos on Mallrats and saw none period. Seems like people are throwing the term EE around quite a bit...

I had many scenes zoomed in looking for edge halos on Mallrats and saw none period. Seems like people are throwing the term EE around quite a bit...

yeah both movies where heavy on detail but both were low cost movies that had poor use of a camera creating parts that look soft or slightly out of focus least that is my opinion. Though apparently some 40YOV could have a couple of bad discs rolling around. Rachael Belemy was screaming about how bad this looked then loved it after she exchanged the disc.

Seems like people are throwing the term EE around quite a bit...


Probably because quite a few blu ray/HD DVD titles still have it...regardless, conflicting reports have made me move this up top at Netflix so I can peep it for myself.

I had many scenes zoomed in looking for edge halos on Mallrats and saw none period. Seems like people are throwing the term EE around quite a bit...

Yep. Suddenly everyone's a video expert. And PICKY.

Whatever. People who cancel preorders, etc., just because they read a post here about bad PQ are way too gullible. Or else they didn't really want the movie in the first place.

I own 40 YOV and while it's not the best-looking HD-DVD I've ever seen, the complaints about that title are waaaay over the top.

Shrug.

Out of all the DVHS/HD-DVD/Blu-ray titles I've ever seen, 40 Year Old Virgin has the distinction of having the worst edge halos of the lot. That ain't being picky, it's the truth. It still looks okay, good even, but it's a step below the stellar treatment that Universal has meted out to the majority of their HD-DVD releases.

I sure hope they didn't dial up the 'sharpness' for Shaun and Hot Fuzz or I will be PISSED.

What do you call this then?

(photograph of 1080p LCD running at native resolution, time 00:00:46)

I'll take people's word here over most of the reviewers out there. A few complaints from people who's opinions tend to reflect similar to mine will have me renting first. It doesn't take a video expert to see edge enhancement.

I sure hope they didn't dial up the 'sharpness' for Shaun and Hot Fuzz or I will be PISSED.


Amen to that! Two titles worth buying a format for. I'm hoping they don't screw up Dawn of the Dead either.

Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz both looked great in the cinema, I have high hopes for the HD-DVDs.

Yeah. The trouble is they fall under the 'comedy' banner, films of which seem to have suffered the most from Universal's worrying penchant for edge-sharpening.

I would like to chime in here and say that I did not think Mallrats looked anywhere near as processed as 40 Year Old Virgin. I did an A/B comparison with the collector's edition DVD and the increase in detail and lack of compression artifacts is readily apparent. I didn't notice a significant amount of EE while watching the movie, despite being constantly distracted by 40YOV.

My only complaint, as stated in the "Insider's Thread," is that none of the multi-angle video commentary made the transition to the HD-DVD.