Monty Python and the Holy Grail - Page 4

Received my copy of this today. Had a quick scan through, and this looks absolutely stunning. Once again Sony show the other studios how Blu-ray should be done. No filtering, no edge enhancement, just pure film!

Thankfully, the original mono audio is indeed the original mono audio, and not just a fold down of the 5.1 remix. Although it's only dolby digital at 192kbps, at least it's there!

+1

My copy arrived today.

It looks great for the most part, Sony have done some impressive work here.
The parts where it doesn't look great, due to focus issues, poor lighting, wavering contrast, etc, have always been there and it's the soft focus shots that will cause idiots to bring up noise reduction.

They're talking bollocks.

It's a pleasure to watch something that looks like film, for a change.

Sony are the best at what they do

I would not rule out some noise reduction, anyway I saw this film in the theater last summer (along with Life of Brian, and not a halo to be found) and I am sure there was intentional film 'damage', dropped frames, bad transitions and yeah it was quite grainly and all deliberate. Curious if Sony resisted 'fixing' that stuff.

Holy Grail looks fantastic and very film like, acquire with confidence.

Best Regards
KvE

Watched it last night, major upgrade over the dvd in my opinion. Wasn't expecting much of an upgrade, and was very pleasantly surprised!

Agreed. This is one movie where random screen caps do not tell the story of the quality of the transfer. Due to the way it was photographed with a lot of smoke, haze, poorly lit scenes, etc, the quality and graininess often differs wildly from scene to scene - all a result of the *filming conditions.* I think overall, the transfer is outstanding in giving an honest presentation of this film on Blu-ray.

BTW, I watched this as well last night with the "Subtitles for those who do not like subtitles" (or whatever it's called) option - added even more laughs to the movie.

Gorgeous transfer! The colors really stand out beautifully, very detailed image, no post-processing crap at all.

When I it saw in theater the grain did indeed vary wildly sometimes.

The film as a whole is inconsistent, but at least we're getting it AS IS without a lot of mucking about. When it's good, it's brilliant. When it's bad... it's really bad.

Anyone else see the massive change in quality around the 1:02 mark? Reminded me of the TNG Blu-ray episode Sins of the Father. When they buy a shrubbery and return the Knights Who Say Ni. For about 10 seconds, it's pretty clear that they lost some film and had to go back to an SD master or something...

I'm glad the original mono track is included, because the DTS-MA track is pretty terrible. The reverb is really distracting.

Actually there are no SD elements, there are a few segments that look like a 16mm dupe or even dailies but those curious pieces have been there for as long as I can remember.

Best Regards
KvE

Like I said before, I am pretty sure the dodgy' stuff was intentional.

Intentional or not; SD or whatever, it's jarring and I never noticed it on DVD, but then the last time I watched this film was on DVD on a 25" CRT. The abrupt drop in clarity is much more intense on Blu-ray @ 100". It only makes me appreciate the rest of it more!

Wait, you never noticed on the DVD when it dropped from much-better-than-DVD quality down to mere slightly-better-than-DVD quality? That always used to irritate me!

That scene is hardly better than DVD quality. Now that I know about the scene, I can see the drop in quality on a 240p YouTube video. The humor of your post does not go unnoticed, however.

Is the 2.0 lossless PCM or crummy lossy DD 2.0 ?

Dolby

IMO the lossless mix sounds so unnatural that the DD 2.0 "original mono" track sounds superior. The absence of a true lossless mono track is the only real downside to this release. But it's hard to complain when you have an otherwise excellent disc for only $13.