A lot of people have been saying Sea of love has a very drab picture quality and not what they expected. I noticed this on HTF by Robert Harris.

Sea of Love Review (http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/showthread.php?t=260407)

Sea of Love, from Universal, is a thriller that holds up nicely after 18 years.

As an HD release, it looks far superior to it's SD counterpart, but as a gritty film, shot with a generally underexposed look, isn't going to be anyone's HD test film.

And it isn't meant to be.

What it is, is a reasonably accurate representation of what director Harold Becker's work looked like on film.

A couple of points that I noted while considering this film.

Mr. Becker and Mr. Pacino are apparently moving forward toward a 2009 release of a remake of the 1955 caper film, Rififi. Rififi would be their third project together.

If one reads down into the list of credits -- 19th billing to be exact -- for Sea of Love, you'll note a character named "Black Guy."

"Black Guy" is played by a young actor named Samuel L. Jackson. It was Mr. Jackson's 8th appearance in a film.

Remarkably, he now has over 80 to his credit.

Sea of Love remains enjoyable entertainment, which is worth your 113 minutes.

Recommended.

RAH

What size screen does he use? On my 92" screen with 1080p projector, Sea of Love makes Lost in Translation look like Hot Fuzz. If it was meant to loke like this I have to wonder what the hell the director was thinking. I have 500+ films on HD and I have never seen anythig look like this transfer.

Tom

If it's so crappy that no one wants it, I'm more than willing to purchase. ;)

It's a decent movie, but the PQ is nothing to write home about. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's the worst I've seen in high-def, but it's definitely in the lower tier.

What size screen does he use?

Tom, Last I checked he was using a 110" Stewart Screen.

As an HD release, it looks far superior to it's SD counterpart, but as a gritty film, shot with a generally underexposed look, isn't going to be anyone's HD test film.

And it isn't meant to be.

What it is, is a reasonably accurate representation of what director Harold Becker's work looked like on film.

Robert A. Harris is the leading restoration expect in hollywood these days. He was the primary force in restoring many hollywood masterpieces including, Lawrence of Arabia, Spartacus, Vertigo, etc...

He deals with movie film stock all the time and I would venture to say if it is film. He has seen it all and then some. He would be in a position to say that based on the film brand, stock, original camera and information. I trust what he says about if a film looks like it's original stock does. But YMMV!

I didn't think much of the Sea of Love HD-DVD until I put my DVD in. It is a marked improvement over the DVD.

It always it is kinda one of these what you up in versus what get out. Doesn't mean that it is a bad DVD but more that the original film was a very grainy film. If you look at basic info about film grain.

This is what wikipedia says about film grain

Film speed is roughly related to granularity, the size of the grains of silver halide in the emulsion, since larger grains give film a greater sensitivity to light. Fine-grain stock, such as portrait film or those used for the intermediate stages of copying original camera negatives, is "slow", meaning that the amount of light used to expose it must be high or the shutter must be open longer. Fast films, used for shooting in poor light or for shooting fast motion, produce a grainier image. Each grain of silver halide develops in an all-or-nothing way into dark silver or nothing. Thus, each grain is a threshold detector; in aggregate, their effect can be thought of an a noisy nonlinear analog light detector.
Kodak used to use a Granularity Index (GI) to characterize film grain. Alternating images of the film under test and a standard grain were shown to test subjects who indicated when they perceived a match. The standard grain samples were the index. More recently, Kodak switched to a measurement of grain using an RMS measurement. Granularity varies with exposure — underexposed film looks grainier than overexposed film.