The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring HDTV vs Blu-ray Comparison - Page 5

Just a note, my posts of the DVD caps are for informational reference only, and are not intended to promote any sort of agenda.

I remember thinking how good the Fellowship DVD looked on my 61" 4:3 480i CRT RPTV at that time. It was disappointing once I upgraded to an HD display.

except that the dark knight is not one of the biggest movie of all time, of course.

er, it's WB's top grossing film ever, and 5th overall

What could the "restoration process" possibly mean? TTT and ROTK were already DI, so all they really had to do was go back to those DI's and press a button to make a brand new rec 709 transfer and people are saying they might not have even done that based on the screenshots trickling in. FOTR is a different story, but even then there's not much to restore if they've kept the film master well-preserved over these whopping eight years (and, once again, people are saying all they did was use a pre-existing hd transfer).

Restoration = DVNR.

I used to have a 55" Mits Diamond RPTV that was tweaked like crazy and when I got FOTR I thought it looked good but nowhere near as good as some of the other DVDs I owned and was surprised it was getting such raves. I upgraded to the PAL versions when I got my PJ and they looked noticeably better with my oppo.

You've not seen what DVD can be
But you're right, the MPEG-2 encoding done by the big studios is not pleasant.

good find dave

the blu ray looks light years better in this comparison.

Bjoern shows up here on AVS now and then. Here is the NTSC vs HD shot.


What is interesting is that the latest dvd release of LOTR awhile back was clearly an improvement over the extended editions on dvd. That shot of Bilbo in the doorway on the newer dvd release you can see his toes pretty well.

So they did improve on the dvds, yet hey Warner, wheres the beef on the BD?

yep, the EE dvds looked a little better. The PAL even better...

If the DVDs had the same relative quality as the Blu-Rays among their respective peers, they would not have been lauded as some of the best looking DVDs.

Ahh, so nothing has changed (with Warner) in 3 years, huh?

Brandon

eric, how does your cap compare to what was shown on TNT HD?

what planet are you from?

The one where The Dark Knight wasn't nearly as successful as it was here apparently.

Right now in current dollars Avatar is the most succesful movie ever. With Titanic as second and Dark knight as nr 5.

But if we talk about adjusted dollars since thats the only way of see how successful a movie is in reality.

There I can only check the domestic(US) market for obvious reasons. But there we have The Dark knight as nr 28. And since it was not as great success on the international market as the US market, I think it would be even further down on the worldwide lists.

And the top 5 is by the way

Gone with the wind
Star wars
Sound of music
ET
The ten commandments

Well I think that's the general problem with this release. Warner is not actually willing to invest a buck over what is already available. Thus: the old HD transfers, the old bunch o' extras (even on the same old DVDs from the DVD sets). It's all part of their double-dip strategy.

I recall PJ complaining in an interview that they don't have the film material (the alternative scenes, bloopers etc. etc.) digitized anymore, because NLC requested them to delete all the working files after they got shipped to LA. That means, NLC now have the original negatives and if they are to do anything about it, they have to re-scan them just again. Which is expensive.

Cheap bastards.

A lot of people were waiting for the EE anyway. This is a chance to make our complaints, and make sure that the EE are looking great.

Don't care about HD extras.

Dark knight looks OK, I wouldn't double dip. Don't care if Gone With The Wind made the most money at the Box Office, that's all political nonsense.. cinema has changed over the years.

+1

In addition to inflation, these things are complicated by an increasing population along with a film, such as GWTW, being re-released. If you really want to do an apples to apples, adjust everything to 2010 prices, only use revenue from the first year of release and weight the formula to balance out the changing population.

It wouldn't surprise me, even though I'm only guessing, that adjusted for population, if Star Wars didn't sell more tickets in its first year than Avatar will. After all, the US population has roughly increased 35% since 1977.

who's your dealer? they got some good herb.

It's the posts like these that keep me visiting AVS regularly. Much thanks to all the members like Xylon and eric.exe who give us the real scoop on picture quality to help out with buying decisions.

I wasn't planning to buy the LOTR TE set (waiting for EE), and seeing this just reinforces that decision. If Warner had nailed this release, and they looked as good as (say) Casablanca, I would have preordered the EE set, no questions asked. Now I'll have to wait, and worry, about whether that release will be lazy and half-azzed as well.

Seriously, if Paramount can fund Robert Harris' incredible, top-notch restoration of the tattered remnants of the Godfather films, which probably have only a fraction of the earnings potential of LOTR, why on earth couldn't Warner at least spend the little it would take to strike a new and improved master for FOTR? I just don't understand this.

Thanks for posting all the screen compares eric.

Actually Steven Spielberg had to call Brad Grey and personally convince him to have Paramount cough up the dough for that restoration.

In the case of LOTR, Peter Jackson has already stated that he thinks these Blu-Rays look fantastic, so I suppose no one called Warner to demand any additional efforts be made to maximize the presentation of this set.

Even putting his expertise exceeding yours aside, who's likely to be right about how the movie which they made should look? You or them?

Uhm, since we actually finance the whole enterprise via ticket and disc sales, I'm pretty much confident to say that we (a.k.a The Customer) is right about how the movie which they made should look. In every single case.

I thought until just a few years ago that's a given, but I have to take note that in many parts of life there is a creeping brainwashing going on, in terms of: it's not we who finance their enterprise, but we have to be grateful for what they bestow on us. Also applies to: politics. It's the people who have a government, not the other way around.

So given the increasing politicization of public life, it's no wonder that Warner is behaving like this. Yes, we do payroll Warner, and yes, we can and should demand what the final product will be.

In related news: Warner is not doing well financially. Wonder how that fits into the picture? Of course Warner and a number of other media publishing entities would very much prefer to be publicly funded (but with none of the accountability) so as to decouple the actual production values from earnings, but we are not there yet. Keywords to watch for: newspaper bailouts.

So wait... it looked detailed in theaters, it looked detailed on HDTV, but now it has to look mushy and smeared for BD?

I'm all fine and dandy with directors intent, but obviously there's no intent here.

I think that demonstrates that the issue is not the source material...