Just screened this one and this has to be the worse transfer in my entire collection. Pour excuse for HD. It looks no better then DVD and a lot of DVDs looks better then this. Very sad.
Some scenes look very good so what happened to rest of the movie is depressing.
It is the softest thing I have ever seen yet there are scenes where it looks fine giving you hope the transfer is not that bad but it returns to the dominating blurry soft look.
Video noise is very bad in parts. The deep space scenes look great, sharp and clean. The indoor space ship scenes are riddled with background noise on top of the blurriness.
Ive yet to see a transfer this bad. I cannot believe any format would put something out of this quality and it makes me wonder if anyone is actually quality controlling this stuff.
Im sure we will get some who say it does not look bad is you have a smaller flat screen but on my 8 foot wide screen this one wins the award for the worse excuse ever for the use of the word HD:(

You wont find any use of EE on this one:)

wow worse than traffic?

This is a B movie, isn't it?

My copy of this is about to be shipped from Amazon. Not exactly a high profile title - as long as it looks better than releases that have come before, I should be OK with it.

Would you at least say it's a step up from the SD DVD (which I have :))?

bad product like that doesnt help the hd dvd 'movement' at all.

makes me wonder a little.

I'm a do it right or don't do it kind of guy so sorry to hear it getting this treatment irrespective of the film genre.
Art

Would you at least say it's a step up from the SD DVD (which I have :))?

Trevor I have never seen the DVD but I have DVDs better then this.

bad product like that doesnt help the hd dvd 'movement' at all.

makes me wonder a little.

Agreed 100% On top of that I paid the going price as I would for top transfer:(

I'm a do it right or don't do it kind of guy so sorry to hear it getting this treatment irrespective of the film genre.
Art

Art

I know you know a good transfer when you see one and appreciate it. Your system will cringe with this one. I agree, why even bother. Doesn't anyone within the industry even look to see what goes out the door, sad.

I love these sci-fi classics and while some of them have been a rewarding purchase this one was disappointment. O well, still plenty of good ones to watch so its not all that bad.

Just a heads up on this one.

Fudge, mine already shipped. I don't have the dvd so I guess I will keep it.

Here are my thought from the other thread: Mind you, I was viewing this on my 40 inch LCD model LNT4061f. I can agree that it's a bad transfer, but I wasn't expecting Serenity. Is it better than my DVD? Hell yes.

Alright. I watched this last night. First let me start by saying I'm a big Galaxina fan. That sounds strange I know, but it's one of the few movies I had on VHS as a kid and I wached it a plethora of times. I even went as far to order the import of the German special edition. That release was the first time I seen it in it's original aspect ratio and I thought the pic quality was awesome! It was definitely the best that I've ever seen it.

Now when I popped in the HD DVD version, I wasn't thinking it was gonna be leaps and bounds better than my German import and at first I thought I was right. From the opening credits I was thinking "Ok this looks like crap and it looks like there is no difference between the two transfers". Boy was I wrong. I popped in my import and paused it on a certain frame and paused the same frame on my HD DVD. WHAT A DIFFERENCE! My old German import which I previosly thought looked great NOW LOOKS LIKE COMPLETE ASSS.

With that said..don't get too bummed on Galaxina until you have something to compare it to. I only had the German import to compare to and I don't know how the 25th anniversary version looks. So keep that in mind.

The blind buyer will be bummed for sure, but those who know this movie and especially those who have the ability to compare the SD DVD version and the HD DVD version will be pleased.

Would you at least say it's a step up from the SD DVD (which I have )?
Trevor I have never seen the DVD but I have DVDs better then this.

So, that makes it difficult because you have no previous basis of comparison.

My personal experience is that the SD DVD is not especially high caliber -- upscaling accomplishes next to nothing. If you were even able to get a reasonable upscale PQ from this title, then it could be considered worth it ;)!

No offense intended, but declaring whether an older SD DVD release on HD Optical loooks "HD" or not is a wildcard situation in my opinion. Comparison really has to be limited to the film itself and whether or not the current release is an improvement over previous incarnations :)!

Amazon just shipped my copy today. My expectations weren't very high for this transfer, but I love the movie so I figured I'd pick it up.

I'll also be watching on an 8 foot wide screen, so it should be interesting. I've seen the German import and liked it, so if this improves on that one I'll be happy.

Guys I deleted my last post.

DeathStalker2 I just played this on my living room system which is 6 feet wide and it looked much better so I think you are spot on. It did not look good in my main system but on my smaller setup which is still much bigger then most flat displays it really made a big improvement. The colors really rock at times. Its just to soft for something 8 or 10 feet wide. Watching it a little smaller it looks half way decent and I have to say its not bad.
People reading my previous posts dont be to alarmed. If you are not watching this on a FP system 8 or 10 feet wide I think you will be ok. Yes it is soft at times but it still has its moments and i can say it does look better then dvd.

That's great Alan.

Thanks for letting us know. Much appreciated.

I saw Galaxina in the theater when it came out, but that was too long ago for me to remember if it looked high-quality there. (That was before I even owned a Laser Disc player, so I didn't go to theaters judging the picture quality anyway!)

This was pretty bad. The colors are good, but the noise is just painful to watch. I have a few of the BCI HD discs (both formats), and while none of them are reference quality, this is by far the worst of the bunch. As others have said, why bother?
J

J

I did not know if the noise was from my system or not. This is where it looked better on my other system so I was beginning to think something was wrong on my end. If the transfer did not have the noise it could be considered half way decent. Oddly enough the in space scenes are solid, sharp and no noise.

This was pretty bad. The colors are good, but the noise is just painful to watch. I have a few of the BCI HD discs (both formats), and while none of them are reference quality, this is by far the worst of the bunch. As others have said, why bother?
J


Is the noise you refer to just on the HD release, or is it also present on the SD DVD? I wouldn't really count on a new master being created for the HD release of "Galaxina", so I wouldn't be surprised if the noise was in the master from "way back" :)!

I saw this last night, and although this is one of the worst transfers I've seen on HDM, it's miles better than BCI's debut effort, Ultimate Force. There are few scenes where the image is nice, sharp, and truly high def, however, those are few and far in between. The transfer was encoded in AVC and appeared to be 1080i60. The image stuttered badly when output as 1080p24 but was watchable at 1080p60, so I think this may have been telecined from a video source rather than a film source.