Gladiator Master Blu-ray Comparison and Review Thread - Page 9

Originally Posted by 18 Brumaire

I guess the rule of thumb should be that if a catalog title is coming to Blu, and has not been remastered already for DVD (e.g. Braveheart) or has not been announced as undergoing a remaster or restoration (e.g. The Robe), then we can probably expect a recycled DVD master.

Originally Posted by bt12483

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.

Originally Posted by FitzRoy

Or hey, maybe we'll get lucky and some obscure European country will release a region free edition with new transfer that the home country inexplicably couldn't seem to pull out of its ass.

Originally Posted by shadowrage

I posted this earlier in the thread, but it looks like it got lost in some bickering. For anyone that's looking for contact info.
here's the email
PHE_CustomerService@Paramount.com

and here's a phone number(they have a section for DVD complaints) that I found.
Call
323-956-5000

Originally Posted by shadowrage

I posted this earlier in the thread, but it looks like it got lost in some bickering. For anyone that's looking for contact info.
here's the email
PHE_CustomerService@Paramount.com

Originally Posted by ack_bk

The TV station version does appear to be slightly better to me, but clearly this movie needs to be remastered.

Originally Posted by Murilo

I just dont understand how so many good movies are treated like crap.

Gangs of new york (Daniel day lewis plays my favorite role ever, next to brando in apocalypse now), sleepy hollow, interview with the vampire, donnie darko, some of my favorites all in the coal or tier 4 range, and their is very few movies that bad, look how small the list is, what are the chances these good movies get treated so horribly? Now it looks like gladiator. Yet movies like transporter look great (No offense to those who like that movie)

Originally Posted by madshi

A good remastering would probably turn Gladiator into a reference quality Blu-Ray, but I don't think it's necessary to achieve good results. The image quality of the broadcast is not slightly better, it's actually really good. If they used that broadcast master and treated it with high bitrate h264 or VC-1, we'd get a really good Blu-Ray.

Originally Posted by madshi

A good remastering would probably turn Gladiator into a reference quality Blu-Ray, but I don't think it's necessary to achieve good results. The image quality of the broadcast is not slightly better, it's actually really good. If they used that broadcast master and treated it with high bitrate h264 or VC-1, we'd get a really good Blu-Ray.

Gladiator does not hit the stores until September 1st. What are you watching? Here is an actual review of our movie –

"Truly this is an incredible digital achievement. Paramount's MPEG4 AVC transfer seems to have improved in every single facet of the visuals. It's tighter, brighter, superior contrast... it is extremely impressive looking and I hope the captures below support this because this is one of the best looking Blu-rays I've seen this year. The DTS-HD Master 5.1 at a whopping 4404 kbps is ABSOLUTELY perfect.

I don't think I've ever seen supplements on this level. On disc 2 - your shopping list will enact through the Visions From Elysium portal. It's highly impressive - really a great interactive feature. Well, despite your opinions on the film or it's Oscar worthiness - this ParamountBlu-ray is in a class by itself. It's raised the bar for this new format. It covers every nook and cranny of desirability with a plethora of supplements and reference A/V. An unbelievable value for all that is included. I'd say this is possibly the best Blu-ray of the year but I'm just going over the 'Sapphire Series' Braveheart now and it seems equally triumphant. We give this our strongest recommendation."

Originally Posted by darkjedi664

HA, Paramount wrote back to me:

Originally Posted by RDarrylR

Haha - yeah I bit early to be mentioning to Paramount that you've already watched their movie (you have actually watched it yourself right?) that isn't out yet.

Originally Posted by Deviation

I don't know if it'd be really good - the footage from the extended cut is noticeably better - but it'd be good enough that you wouldn't see a lot of complaints. I know that I would have ordered it, for example.

Originally Posted by ack_bk

Depends who your cable/sat provider is. As a previous customer for Comcast (now have Dish) I can attest that many of their broadcasts were riddled with macroblocking and other issues as a result of decreasing their bandwidth as they added more HD channels.

Originally Posted by darkjedi664

HA, Paramount wrote back to me:

Originally Posted by madshi

They quoted the DVD Beaver review. But they quoted the old version. I've been in contact with Gary (the DVD Beaver reviewer) and after pointing him to this thread he kindly agreed to revisit his review. He's a friendly guy to talk to. The new revision of his review now mentions that DNR and EE were used:

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompare7/gladiator.htm

So you can tell your Paramount contact that the review they're quoted has been modified to take account of the filtering issues that were found and documented in this thread...

Originally Posted by darkjedi664

HA, Paramount wrote back to me:

Originally Posted by madshi

They quoted the DVD Beaver review. But they quoted the old version. I've been in contact with Gary (the DVD Beaver reviewer) and after pointing him to this thread he kindly agreed to revisit his review. He's a friendly guy to talk to. The new revision of his review now mentions that DNR and EE were used:

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompare7/gladiator.htm

So you can tell your Paramount contact that the review they're quoted has been modified to take account of the filtering issues that were found and documented in this thread...

Originally Posted by fpconvert

Looks like a pretty good review from dvdbeaver.

At least they watched the disc before passing judgment.

Originally Posted by madshi

Well, as I said, a full remaster would probably result in a reference quality Blu-Ray. But the Gladiator BEV broadcast I have on my harddisk is really good quality as it is. There would have been no complaints if Paramount had used that master untouched with high bitrate MPEG4/AVC (and in OAR, of course).

Well, of course I wouldn't expect the Blu-Ray to use low bitrate MPEG2. My point was that the (uncompressed) master they used for the BEV broadcast is really good quality. So they could have used that master to produce a good quality Blu-Ray disc (using MPEG4/AVC instead of MPEG2, of course). They wouldn't have had to do a full remastering.

Originally Posted by ack_bk

Agreed. Only Paramount knows which master was used and why. The rest is just speculation.



Maybe. I am still not sure that this would have held up the scrutiny of many of the videophiles here at AVS

At any rate, here are the options to watch Gladiator:
A. Blu-Ray
B. HD cable/sat provider (of course YMMV here, between the provider regarding codec, bitrate, OAR, logos, edited for time and content, etc).
C. Download/streaming
D. DVD
E. LD
F. VHS/D-VHS
G. OTA?

For me, those would leave me with options A, B, C, and D. The times that I had seen bits and pieces of Gladiator on cable/sat I am pretty sure it was on either TNT/TBS, was edited for TV, had the animated logos and ads.

So I would probably still go with Blu-Ray personally. But like I said, I will be renting it first unless and taking a look for myself unless I can find it for $12 or less.

Originally Posted by fpconvert

Looks like a pretty good review from dvdbeaver.

At least they watched the disc before passing judgment.

Originally Posted by fuzz!

well someone at dvdbeaver may think it looks alright.. but the screens they posted look just as bad as the screens posted here (filtered).

maybe if they saw some of the unfiltered extended caps here they could appreciate the detrimental affect on the movie.

btw thanks very much eric.exe for you work on the caps.

Originally Posted by fuzz!

maybe if they saw some of the unfiltered extended caps here they could appreciate the detrimental affect on the movie.

Paramount's MPEG4 AVC transfer seems to have improved in every single facet of the visuals although it's not without it's digital manipulations with some minor edge-enhancement and some DNR. The image is certainly brighter - perhaps more than it may have been intended to be. It's tighter all around and is pretty impressive looking and I hope the captures below support this because this is one of the most anticipated Blu-rays I've seen this year - although some will snub the manipulation. Strangely the 'extended scenes' seem to have had no digital tinkering. People who project to a very large screen will find the filtering more visible. The image is frequently dimensional. There is also a marginal amount more information shown in the side edges (compared to the DVD versions).