*************** (http://www.***************.com/fusionbb/showtopic.php?tid/138677/) has reviewed The Last Starfighter and gives this HD DVD a 4/5 for PQ and 3.5/5 for AQ:

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VIDEO: Given the films age and budget at the time of its making as well as Universals sketchy track record with catalog titles, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with this one. Needless to say, I was impressed with the VC-1 presentation, although it is flawed. First, black levels are inconsistent throughout the movie, some are spot on and inky black, while at other times they are crushed. For example, right before Centauri visits Alex, he is standing by the trailer park sign with a beautiful starry sky in the background with excellent detail in the foreground and the background. One minute later, Alex is sitting in Centauri’s vehicle and the detail is completely gone with crushed blacks. Granted, given the films age, I shouldn’t be as critical.
Resolution wavers on occasion as well, but there is no doubt when you are watching the movie that it is certainly HD quality and is a vast improvement over DVD. Color reproduction is decent enough, especially with the graphics on the video game as well as the CGI work towards the end of the movie where the reds really “pop” off the screen. Edge enhancement was very minimal as well and for fans of the movie, they will be very happy with the overall presentation.

AUDIO: Universal has continued the trend of lossless codecs with this release, which includes a Dolby TrueHD mix as well as a Dolby Digital Plus English track clocking in at 448 Kbps. I compared the two mixes and the TrueHD mix is vastly superior to the lossy mix, which really isn’t saying much since the overall audio mix sounds very dated. The sound effects come off a little cheesy at times and the overall mix is rather flat and compressed towards the center speaker. Dialogue is also a tad flat, but that has more to do with the original audio recording than any shortfalls in the lossy TrueHD mix.


Post your vote here: The Last Starfighter User Poll Ratings (http://www.snappoll.com/view_results.php?poll_id=214622) (Vote!) (http://snappoll.com/poll/214622.php) AVS REVIEW (http://reviews.avsforum.com/showproduct.php?product=632&cat=3)

What? How can you ding the audio for being true to the original? Sounded fine to me! The theme was glorious in TrueHD at -20db :)

What? How can you ding the audio for being true to the original? Sounded fine to me! The theme was glorious in TrueHD at -20db :)

Chances are the VC-1 transfer is also true to the master. I'd like to know how the appearance of the film compares to "Smokey And The Bandit". If it looks as good or better, then it's a definite buy!

First, black levels are inconsistent throughout the movie, some are spot on and inky black, while at other times they are crushed. For example, right before Centauri visits Alex, he is standing by the trailer park sign with a beautiful starry sky in the background with excellent detail in the foreground and the background. One minute later, Alex is sitting in Centauri’s vehicle and the detail is completely gone with crushed blacks. Granted, given the films age, I shouldn’t be as critical.

Don't know how he can make that assumption. Image content is going to vary significantly between scenes. He's comparing totally different scenes: one is wide and one is at best a medium closeup .

The fact there is little detail near black does not mean the transfer is crushed. Also crushing has nothing to do with the film's age. He's watching a telecine not the film.

I love the way rinky dink reviewer drop terminology they haven't a clue about.

Overall, I was impressed with the picture, and couldn't believe highdefdigest rated it so poorly. Sure it has its problems, but the print is clean as ever and the night scenes on Earth had an amazing level of depth and pop to them. This title certainly exceeded my expectations. (I certainly rated it higher than the Dirty Dancing BD or Big Fish BD)

I often question how qualified these reviewers and their viewing equipment really is.

Overall, I was impressed with the picture, and couldn't believe highdefdigest rated it so poorly. Sure it has its problems, but the print is clean as ever and the night scenes on Earth had an amazing level of depth and pop to them. This title certainly exceeded my expectations. (I certainly rated it higher than the Dirty Dancing BD or Big Fish BD)

Yes it is much much better than Dirty Dancing... I give it a 3.5 stars at the least.

Cast your vote here: The Last Starfighter User Poll Ratings (http://www.snappoll.com/view_results.php?poll_id=214622) (Vote!) (http://snappoll.com/poll/214622.php) AVS REVIEW (http://reviews.avsforum.com/showproduct.php?product=632&cat=3)

The Man Room (http://dvd.themanroom.com/dvd-review.php?id=546) has also reviewed The Last Starfighter, giving both the PQ and AQ 7.5 out of 10:

Greetings, Starfighter. Those two words from ‘The Last Starfighter’ perk up the ears of any 30-something privy to the 1980s rash of science fiction films in their heyday. They also recall a historical milestone in filmmaking where a small effects company pioneered the use of computers to create near photo-realistic digital effects in a theatrical picture. No film had attempted the feat prior, not even the original Star Wars trilogy. It was a desperate battle against incredible odds for the effects artists, much like Alex Rogan and Grig’s Spartan-like stance against an entire armada of alien spaceships.

I couldn’t be more pleased to see Universal Studios Home Entertainment release ‘The Last Starfighter’ on HD DVD relatively early in the format’s existence. The timeless story of a boy looking towards the stars as an escape from his imprisoned trailer park world holds up remarkably well against the test of time, in this case, just over 25 years. Additionally, the demographic sweet spot for HD DVD adopters were at a prime childhood age to be blown away by ‘The Last Starfighter’ when it debuted theatrically and on VHS.

The then-revolutionary digital effects sadly fail the test of time and look archaic by contemporary photorealistic CGI standards. Today’s kids would only relate if Alex were playing Halo 3 and a marine drop-ship with Master Chief swooped from the sky to pick him up for an intergalactic war with the Covenant, not an old quirky con named Centauri in a low-tech flying car. They’d surely scoff at the squeaky clean visuals of a lone Starfighter battling the Kodan Armada, leaving ‘The Last Starfighter’ as a classic gift for children of the 80s to enjoy.

Universal presents ‘The Last Starfighter’ in a VC-1 encoded 1080p transfer unable to hide its age. Clearly little, if any, effort has gone into restoring the original master as dirt, specs and dust mar the print. However, anyone on the fence about upgrading their standard DVD version to HD DVD should be pleased with the marked clarity and detail improvement in picture quality, even if it looks as dated as the visual effects defining it.

The now-common Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio track found on Universal HD DVDs is a step up from the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track found on the standard DVD, but still suffers from the front-loaded tendencies of older catalog titles. This limitation doesn’t hold back Craig Safan’s memorable score from sounding fuller than it ever has; in fact, ‘The Last Starfighter’ main theme has been stuck in my head since when I watched it three days ago.

A treat for Starfighter fans whom have passed up previous incarnations on home video is the half hour documentary Crossing the Frontier: Making The Last Starfighter. A balder, fatter Lance Guest, the actor who portrayed Alex Rogan in the film, narrates an exploration into behind-the-scenes footage and the groundbreaking special effects with tons of archival footage featuring the artists at work. Blurry, grainy 480p clips from the film emphasize the video improvement HD DVD offers, and there’s even an all-CGI X-Wing test Digital Productions, the company responsible for ‘The Last Starfighter,’ performed for George Lucas and ILM in 1978.

Further insight into ‘The Last Starfighter’ is offered in a Feature-Length Commentary with Director Nick Castle and Production Designer Ron Cobb. The pair struggle at times to come up with something to say and even chuckle at inside jokes, but manage to offer up some juicy making-of tidbits not found in the documentary. Also included are HD DVD exclusive My Scenes bookmarking and the Teaser and Theatrical Trailer.

Greetings, Starfighter. You’ve been recruited by Universal to take a trip down memory lane and re-enjoy a 1980s cinematic and visual effects classic looking and sounding better than it ever has. Will you get in the car?

I thought it looked amazing. Definitely some issues here and there, but several scenes "popped" and overall it looked great. By FAR, the best presentation to date. It's a must have for me.

The only thing I can remember to complain about was the video pulsing a bit in the first day shots, It looked like the common problem with older divx/etc codecs when the color would continuously drift due to inaccurate decoding stacking from frame to frame, until you hit a keyframe and its all fixed, just to repeat. It was relatively minor though, and I didn't see any other problems with the rest of the movie. It only stands out in my mind *because* the rest of the movie was so nearly flawless.

There are some captures in the HD-DVD Screenshot (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=786593&page=29) thread. There's no excuse for DNR that strong.

Don't know how he can make that assumption. Image content is going to vary significantly between scenes. He's comparing totally different scenes: one is wide and one is at best a medium closeup .
The fact there is little detail near black does not mean the transfer is crushed. Also crushing has nothing to do with the film's age. He's watching a telecine not the film.
I love the way rinky dink reviewer drop terminology they haven't a clue about.
That's why such reviews should merely state technical details as they are without judging them (or keep the subjective stuff separate) unless the reviewer knows exactly what the film is supposed to look like. I want to know if there is EE and DNR, if blacks are black or elevated, if there is shadow detail or not, if there is 1080p detail or only 720p or even not much beyond 480p. Determining all that reliably is difficult enough. I find it totally irrelevant if the reviewer likes this or that or not. I know what I like or dislike. I can't find reliable sources that give me the technical facts. :mad:
For example if Starfighter looks like the screen shots any review that does not mention this oil painting DNR look is to me an utterly useless review because that look just ruins the transfer for me. Film does not looke like this.

There are some captures in the HD-DVD Screenshot (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=786593&page=29) thread. There's no excuse for DNR that strong.
Yes, the over-zealous use of noise filtering was my main issue with this transfer. It actually looks better with a little noise added, courtesy of ffdshow. ;)

I have to agree regarding the noise reduction. Hopefully they will one day release a version which preserves the original grain.

That's why such reviews should merely state technical details as they are without judging them (or keep the subjective stuff separate) unless the reviewer knows exactly what the film is supposed to look like. I want to know if there is EE and DNR, if blacks are black or elevated, if there is shadow detail or not, if there is 1080p detail or only 720p or even not much beyond 480p. Determining all that reliably is difficult enough. I find it totally irrelevant if the reviewer likes this or that or not. I know what I like or dislike. I can't find reliable sources that give me the technical facts. :mad:
For example if Starfighter looks like the screen shots any review that does not mention this oil painting DNR look is to me an utterly useless review because that look just ruins the transfer for me. Film does not looke like this.

I think it depends on your set. I just finished watching this and it doesn't look like those screenshots on my set.

I'm still wondering if those screenshots are flawed. There's a whooping big pixel spot on the guys nose here:

http://www.cif-forums.com/png/starfighter_3.png

Which surely would have been picked up pre compression?

I realy want to buy this disc and chek it out for myself, however at the same time I don;t want to end up with another 40 year old virigin digital filter fest.

I thought this movie looked good given its age and budget.

Would we really expect a flawless transfer of similarly aged and budgeted films?

I was quite happy to be able to pick this up. I really felt like kid again, and it has looked the best it ever has.

Don't know how he can make that assumption. Image content is going to vary significantly between scenes. He's comparing totally different scenes: one is wide and one is at best a medium closeup .

The fact there is little detail near black does not mean the transfer is crushed. Also crushing has nothing to do with the film's age. He's watching a telecine not the film.

I love the way rinky dink reviewer drop terminology they haven't a clue about.

Mr. D,

My comments about the black crush weren't related to the films age, just that I didn't expect the overall presentation to be as good as a movie released in 2007, so my expectations were so. The transfer was inconsistent thoughout, with some scenes looking excellent, with others not looking so good. Overall though, given the age of the film, the films budget at the time etc., I was happy with the presentation. Have you even seen the movie on HD DVD?

Best,

I was mildly disappointed in the disc. The print was just too faded. This was a more colourful film in the cinema.

I'm wondering if the movie is just more dated than we thought? I thought this was an incredible looking movie when I was a kid. Now, it just seems like it was a poorly done B movie.

And I think that has a lot to do with the transfer.

is it grainy?

my sd disc is VERY noisy.

I just go this from amazon yesterday.. I can't watch it yet because my 360 is in for ring-of-death™ repair, however, something about the back of the cover was quite puzzling:

In the little content detail box it has columns for Side A and Side B, and states that Side A will only work in HD DVD players. The disk is single sided though. Was this originally meant to be a combo, and they just forgot to change the cover?

I'm still wondering if those screenshots are flawed. There's a whooping big pixel spot on the guys nose here:

http://www.cif-forums.com/png/starfighter_3.png

Which surely would have been picked up pre compression?

There are a lot of black flecks in the opening scenes to this movie and a hair too IIRC. I would have expected those to be cleaned up, but they weren't.

The overly zealous noise reduction is unforgivable though IMO.

It's still an eminently watchable transfer, but is very inconsistent and has a plasticky look in places due to the excessive NR. I'm sure it could have been better, but this is what we got for now.

The thing we have to remember is that this is a catalog title of a non blockbuster. This isn't a high profile title that will get the A-list treatment. It isn't going to ever look like Hot Fuzz. It is what it is and if you like the film, enjoy it.

It's still an eminently watchable transfer, but is very inconsistent and has a plasticky look in places due to the excessive NR.

And you know for a fact that this is due to noise reduction and not just soft-focus photography on cheap film stock?

Brings back of a lot of fond memories of my earlier nerd days. We thought how great the graphics where and how it toke a Cray supercomputer days/weeks/months to process the images for the movie. The CGI looks real cheessy (esp the planet shots) now and how we can get better looking CGI from a powerfull PC. But still a fun movie. Enjoy the walk thru memory lane on this one.

And you know for a fact that this is due to noise reduction and not just soft-focus photography on cheap film stock?

Yeah, because those things look exactly like DNR. :D

Mr. D,

My comments about the black crush weren't related to the films age, just that I didn't expect the overall presentation to be as good as a movie released in 2007, so my expectations were so. The transfer was inconsistent thoughout, with some scenes looking excellent, with others not looking so good. Overall though, given the age of the film, the films budget at the time etc., I was happy with the presentation. Have you even seen the movie on HD DVD?

Best,

I have to say I am pretty much in total complete agreement with Dave's assessment. Except I was more disappointed than he was overall. But it's mostly because the transfer is coming from a print over 20 years old, and definately not in as good condition as others.

And I think we're going to see that when we start going back to the 70's and 80's with catalog releases. I read that Top Gun wasn't all that hot because of the source print. And on the BD side Halloween and Dracula got horrific PQ scores. I have a feeling this is going to be more norm than exception when you go back that far for transfer.

One thing I am going to do is A/B switch between my HD DVD and SD DVD of The Last Starfighter. Not to check the obvious differences in the two (resolution, etc: ), but to see if I see the same sort of CGI anomolies.

It's a classic movie, and I think if you are a fan of the movie $19.99 is the right price. I just think the source material limited the PQ of the movie.

......I think we're going to see that when we start going back to the 70's and 80's with catalog releases. I read that Top Gun wasn't all that hot because of the source print. And on the BD side Halloween and Dracula got horrific PQ scores. I have a feeling this is going to be more norm than exception when you go back that far for transfer.

I don't have any such concern with Warner's stuff. I wish Last Starfighter had as good colour as, say, Adventures Of Robin Hood! I doubt I'll be preordering many, if any, Universal catalog titles after this one. This isn't the first one to leave me disappointed some.

Ok. I have to take back some of what I said. It took firing up the SD version for me to see how much better the HD transfer actually was.

Now, I still think there are some things in the source material that doesn't make this top notch. But I did notice some things in the HD version that I simply didn't watching the SD. For example I did not notice the Gunstar's blue and purple trim on the "wings".

And the resolution does help noticably with skin and facial clarity.

I did however also notice that there are a couple of audio glitches from the original that couldn't be fixed, like the slight 2 second slowdown of the music track right after the command ship blows up on the planet. But that was in the SD version too.

I also noticed the chapter seperation was also exactly from the SD version. Made it very easy to to A/B comparison.

Warner does a fabulous job in restoration and should be a model for ALL studios to follow.

Ok. I have to take back some of what I said. It took firing up the SD version for me to see how much better the HD transfer actually was.

Thanks for this; it saved me a rant. ;)

Geez, you guys are a tough room! Last time I saw this was probably in the theatre, probably one of the early cineplexes. I'd forgotten what an utterly charming movie it is -- cheesy, sure, but utterly charming. All the nitpicking about the transfer is just that: for the most part its very well done and comes up way better than you'll find anywhere else in SD releases. Make no mistake: this looks like an HD transfer and some scenes are completely delicious.

Robert Preston steals every screen moment he's in but here's the miracle: he doesn't walk off with the movie, like Judi Dench might. Everyone else -- Dan O'Herlihy as the lizard alien navigator and mentor, Lance Guest as our boy-next-door hero and his almost left-behind girlfriend in exceedingly fetching denim cutoffs (wow! what legs!) Catherine Mary Stewart. Whoa, and the hair, too -- his and hers and the other "teens" ... talk about an eerie "back to the future"!

And cut the CGI some slack, folks: it took a Cray to pull this off and it's not so bad. I'll let you in on a little secret: Bogart and Bergman weren't really in a Paris cafe in Casablanca ... that was called a "process shot". :rolleyes: Movies are about telling good stories and The Last Starfighter does this in spades.

There's also a nice 1999 tribute feature Crossing The Frontier with detailed remembrances of many folks who pulled off this amazing film.

Highly recommended and a good value buy by HD standards. (And, as another person commented, I too am curious about the "Side B" details on the case as Side B has been gratefully silkscreened over with full movie details.)

I received mine today. It was not a combo despite the cover claiming so, but I don't care about that anyway. The disc had a HD DVD logo on the top in a see-through area of the disc. Is mine a different version from the others mentioned here?

The audio, particularly dialogue, was cracking a lot which was disappointing (DD over coax). I haven't had that happen on any other HD DVD movies.

I hadn't seen it before and thought it was a fun movie. I love campy 80's special effects and action, and the computer graphics were extremely impressive considering when it was made.

I was a little disappointed with the picturequality. It was soft and felt a little faded.

The audio, particularly dialogue, was cracking a lot which was disappointing (DD over coax). I haven't had that happen on any other HD DVD movies.


I was just about to ask the same thing! :) I tried TrueHD and DD+ over HDMI and noticed a lot of dialog had crackle/static. As an example, when Grig is sitting in the starfighter and laughs his wheezy laugh for the first time, the distortion/crackle/static in the center channel was awful.

Anyone else experience this?

Chris

I was just about to ask the same thing! :) I tried TrueHD and DD+ over HDMI and noticed a lot of dialog had crackle/static. As an example, when Grig is sitting in the starfighter and laughs his wheezy laugh for the first time, the distortion/crackle/static in the center channel was awful.

Anyone else experience this?

Chris

I'll check when I get home tonight. I finally got my Xbox back from Red Ring Rehab.

I received mine today. It was not a combo despite the cover claiming so, but I don't care about that anyway. The disc had a HD DVD logo on the top in a see-through area of the disc. Is mine a different version from the others mentioned here?


It sounds like we have the same version. The back of the cover talks about a non-existing B-side, and the disc itself has artwork covering all of one side, with the HD DVD logo in an area without white basecoat.

It sounds like we have the same version. The back of the cover talks about a non-existing B-side, and the disc itself has artwork covering all of one side, with the HD DVD logo in an area without white basecoat.

Mine looks like that too...

It is good to see other people agree that high def digest got it wrong on this film.

I loved this film as a kid and really enjoyed it on HD DVD.

Contrary to what the digest says, I think this is a shining example of how much better a film can look in HD. Sure it is grainy, but you realize it was shot that way if you watch the extras. I have the SD version so I watched the first 5 minutes of that ... and then popped in the HD dvd. then I played them side by side and was amazed. what really shines through is not so much the image clarity but how much more vivid the colors are. It is night and day between the SD version and makes it almost look black and white.

The best scene that I think demonstrates this is the opening with Alex playing the game with Lewis hangin over his should. If you puit that shot side by side with the SD release... it is incredible.

Another major improvement was surprising the CGI. I always thought of the graphics as pretty poor, but when you see the HD version, they were really ahead of there time their. I never saw the original in the theater, but I can appreciate how much better than it looked from when I first saw it on cable in the early nineties at 480i

I know this is a little bit of an older release, but I recently picked it up and was awed.. especially after reading the bad review it had gotten.

In the end, I think this serves as a reminder that HD is not just about resolution and audio, but also color saturation and accuracy.

Never watched this title , blind buy.
Looking forward to it !!