Gladiator Master Blu-ray Comparison and Review Thread - Page 7

Sapphire Series my ****. This format is turning into a ****ing joke. $40 MSRP to get a recycled DVD transfer filtered to smithereens. And only 1% of the people buying BD seem to care, the rest are perfectly happy so long as it's a step up, however marginal, from the DVD. I shouldn't have to research every goddamn disc for fear of this happening and then import my BD-quality transfers from countries where Hollywood is spelled with a K.

My feeling exactly. I always have to wait to see if the transfers any good when really it should be fantastic as the format allows for fabulous images but cheapskate studio's don't want to pay for new prints or masters to be made.

Indeed last year when i read a statement from one of the studio's that now the format war was over they needed to just get large quantities of titles out to the marketplace i felt that this was going to be a quantity over quality scenario with many terrible releases and indeed thats what has happened.

It actually does annoy me that on forums like these people don't seem to care and will buy anyways. I read the gripes from people and i read them last year also and even made a thread called Film Grain Allowed but most of the people who griped about the quality weren't willing to make a thread devoted to it and when i made the thread i found three quarters of them didn't and don't take part in the thread.

That kind of makes me feel like i am wasting my time trying to do something positive when the people who gripe about it don't join up and take part for whatever reason.

It's a lost cause due to apathy with far too many people.

I really suspect now that its the branching that is responsible here. Like they reused what they prepered for the DVD.

My extended DVD didnt include both cuts, so if anyone could confim if they have a DVD with seemless branching that would be helpfull.

...except that the vast majority will accept it as being fine, and that's where the money is. We're outgunned, my friend.

I certainly hope that you can tell the difference between a low bitrate travesty that J6P listens to through tiny speakers they stick in their ear, and something CD quality (or higher). It is not elitism to not want HT watered down by the mediocre requirements held by the general public (or just plain ignorance, like with MAR). Spin it however you like, but just looking at the slew of threads dedicated to this same type of "lowest common denominator" mastering (Face/Off, Patton, Pan's Labyrinth, etc) a definite pattern becomes clear. HT has always strove to be a cut above the masses, at least until now...

Remember, "elitism" is all relative: MAR (Pan & Scan) loving J6P would claim that people who claim OAR is the correct way to view films in an HT environment is being "elitist".

I'm a complete noob on this so be gentle...but can someone explain to me why this is cropped to hell. I thought one of the main reasons for an HDTV was so I could see everything. it looks like 1/3 of the picture has been cropped out of the blu-ray.

For the HDTV version of the film they used the unmatted version. They film it in a narrower aspect ratio then cover top and bottom to make it a 2.35:1 version. You may think the full screen version is better but the director filmed it with just the 2.35:1 in mind.

The intended aspect ratio of Gladiator is 2.35:1. That's how it was shown in theaters. It is NOT "cropped to hell", as you say. The version you may have seen on HBO is the improper version, showing parts of the picture that weren't meant to be seen. How many 2.35:1 movies do you watch? There are plenty of them. They aren't meant to fill a 16:9 screen.

No, I can't tell a 256-kbps AAC encoding from the original CD except for a few pathological "killer samples", and I bet neither can you. I guess that would make you a, gasp, "J6P" too, eh? I'm really sick and tired of this attitude. The "vast majority" of customers buying high definition software has above average quality expectations, otherwise they wouldn't be buying in the first place. Stop giving the studios excuses for screwing up releases.

And BTW, even if someone has no idea what "DNR", "EE" and all the other fancy acronyms that "forum experts" like to throw around mean, everybody can easily see the difference e.g. between this:



and this:




If you keep saying that issues like the ones seen on Gladiator are only interesting to a tiny minority that considers itself "a cut above the masses", nobody will ever give a damn.

You hit the nail on the head and this is the type of assessment I'd like to see more often from review sites. If a 1080p+ transfer exists, no matter how old or filtered it is, now matter how popular the film is, no matter how many awards it won, it is going to get recycled for the first BD edition because studios are that cheap and people are that easily milked. I've come to expect that. Braveheart got a sparkling new transfer because it didn't have an old one that was "good enough" to recycle and pass for HD.

What makes this so obviously a recycle job and not just a poor transfer job is the fact that the extended scenes look totally unmolested. I would say that makes the transfer for the theatrical scenes as old as the theatrical edition DVD.

Looks like the BD "sharpening" of the hole in his shirt in shot 14 has added a piece of thread that's blurred out in the HDTV version..

No comments !!!


Andrew

In what universe do studios re-transfer a film every 1-2 years? I've never heard of any company doing that on DVD, let alone for HD. Really, what a crock. At least come up with a better excuse.

This isn't that much of a surprise. Braveheart recently got the new SE DVD, likley with a new transfer, and Gladiator still has the transfer done long ago.

Next to the Lord of the Rings Extended blu-ray, this was my most anticipated blu-ray ever. How disappointing this is, at first I felt you guys were blowing the DNR out of proportion, then I compared the extended scenes to the theatrical and realized how good it could have looked if it was left alone like the extended scenes.

I hate to say it, but since I love this movie so much and I am actually more excited about the lossless audio than the picture, I'm going to have to pick this up and hopefully be able to double dip in the future on a proper release.

I caught your point, exactly what I was thinking. It was well documented that Braveheart got a major remastering and transfer in late 2007, no doubt that was the source for this BD as well. Of course this is not yet ANOTHER one a mere 1 1/2 later, lol.

I think you may have missed Eric's point.
He seems to have been refering more to the quality of the materials than to the time-frame.

Take, for instance, Warner's (commendable) decision to retransfer those films that only exist in 1080x1400 transfers (Heat and The Perfect Storm.) In those cases, it is not the age of the transfer that is an issue; it is the fact that the transfer was clearly intended for PAL and NTSC DVDs, and perhaps HDTV broadcast. (In fact, I think those transfers are fairly recent as well)

Similarly, in the case of Gladiator, the problem is not the age of the transfer (Universal used some very old masters for HDDVD & Blu-ray and several of them looked wonderful (others did not)) the problem is that Gladiator was a transfer intended for the limitations of DVD (edge-enhancement, DNR, etc.)

Except for the extended scenes, which were transferred at around 2005.


Well, they're sort of related. The older the transfer, the greater the chance that it was irreparably DNRed and EEd to hell because no one at the time had the foresight to think it could serve a purpose beyond downscaling for DVD.

pre-order cancelled.

I can't wait to see what they do with SPR, will probably be another DNE abomination.

I love when people blame the format. The format has nothing to do with it.

Want proof?

The SAME studio, releasing in the SAME format, also released Braveheart, which everyone here seems to be drooling over.

It is obvious from all of these threads, especially for catalog releases, that the single most crucial factor is what source they had in hand when crafting the bluray.

If they had a 2000 source with all kinds of artifacts in it that were used to "optimize" DVD, then the bluray results likely won't be that good.

While we can all ask "Why didn't they do a new transfer", the simple fact is that the economics of it all come into play. If they think they have a good enough transfer sitting around, they are going to use it for the bluray to save money. Especially in these economic times.

None of this has anything to do with the format though.

Yep this is almost the entire issue in a nutshell. Plus add in that the average consumer will likely not notice much difference in quality between Gladiator and Braveheart (no matter how much of an uproar on places like AVS).

So when considering a new transfer the studios will have to weigh how much difference in profit (sales minus expenses) there will be between sticking with an old transfer and putting out the cash to make a new one. They will likely in most cases always make more money by reusing an old transfer even with some people (likely a miniscule percentage) complaining and saying they will not buy and sticking to that.

Those in it to blame a format should be blaming DVD if anything. It is the masters from that format that seem to be causing most of the issues with the new format.

I did mistake that, my bad.

But I have to say that there's zero proof that the format is to blame (as he and Fitzroy claimed). If anything, it's the limitations of DVD that are to blame. Eric's claim is disputed by his own proof of a newer transfer and Fitzroy's by the fact that plenty of good transfers (more so than bad) are released.

Killin me....although its hardly a laughing matter.

Where can I find this $100 coupon vancouver??

Since we are dealing with two similar era catalog titles from the same studio, wouldn't it blow people's minds if both of these movies were worked on by the same people using the same equipment? I have seen some comments directed to crap equipment. In previous threads like this the employees were called incompetent, etc. So we have seen both the equipment and personnel being insulted for a poor product.

Yet in this case, what if the same employees using the same equipment were responsible for both Braveheart and Gladiator? With this hypothesis, what is the most glaring difference? The only difference is....the source they were given for each movie. The shape of the source dictates what other "effects" are added when doing the bluray.

Unless you flat out cannot rent Gladiator, why would you buy it before getting a look at it? If you like it, buy it and you may want to wait till it is cheaper besides.

Folks are saying people are going by screen caps and have not seen the film and now have made a determination. Well if you haven't seen it and folks who HAVE are reiterating PQ issues on the screen caps, why buy it ahead of viewing it??

On the plus side, one will get the extras and great AQ. But if one's main motivation is better PQ, well perhaps better than the SD DVD but not as good as it should be to begin with obviously!

Wow, Now I see it, clear as day. Before this I couldn't see it on my 32" Dell PC monitor. Big difference. Thanks for taking the time to do this.