Hellraiser Blu-Ray Transfer Anchor Bay vs. Image Entertainment vs. King Records - Page 4

An "idiot"? I dunno man, that transfer looks pretty rank...


If Image and others don't want people to second guess their materials and integrity, then they simply can't release sh*t to start with. The Hills Have Eyes is an upscale, there's no question about it. Hellbound may well not be, but it really doesn't look that much better, and the HDTV version (while certainly not flawless) is indeed an improvement.

Under the circumstances, Image has gotten no less than they deserve.

Oh, snap! That JP release is only as a trilogy box set? No singles? A pity... if I have to hang onto the AB Anniversary DVD until doomsday, so be it.

Hellbound deserved more.

The Image, German, and Japanese discs all come from the same awful source. But Image made bad worse by cropping it by 12%.
Image must've been in a cruel mood because they are a nice outfit, I mean they manage Criterion.

I fully agree. Image threw themselves under the bus on this one. And frankly, by releasing an obvious upscale on the public in the form of The Hills Have Eyes, they deserve to have the rest of their output questioned and scrutizined for a period of time.

Check this out

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/79785

Surprised at the shock of Image releasing a poor BD. If people haven't been paying attention, their Blu-rays have simply not been that good. They are now the Alliance of the U.S. A lot of the independent distributors really do not care about the quality, as long as they can release something on Blu-ray. We are seeing more and more very questionable transfers for catalog titles. It's only going to get worse, as the major studios pull back more and more from marginal sellers.

To be fair, both the Kinowelt and Image BD releases are cropped when compared to the R-rated HDTV version*, which I think we can all agree is the best looking master of the film currently available. The Kinowelt transfer simply added matte-bars to emulate the 1.85:1 frame - it's not uncommon to scan a print at 16:9 open-matte and then matte it as needed from there, so Kinowelt probably figured that's exactly what they were supposed to do.

As for it being "Better Quality", it seemingly varies from shot to shot. HERE the German encode is doing a better job of keeping what little grain structure the master has to start with, and on THIS shot the minute details of The Box are ever so slightly more visible on the Kinowelt release. They both suck pretty hard, but calling the Image disc "better" is a bit of a stretch...

*The AB THX DVD had similar framing, for whatever that's worth.

The movie was 1.85 : 1 originally in cinema so yes the german and the japanese disc have the correct aspect ratio. US is probably just opened up to 1.78:1. And yes the japanese have more picture information on all sides besides much better colors and sharpness so that is the clear winner in PQ.

Anybody know where I can get that INHD rip of Hellbound? I bought the Blu-ray and it is exceedingly soft.

Is the Japanese version the best one? I'm looking for a superior transfer. Also, I think the Australian version of Hellbound is coming soon, so I'll be looking forward to screenshot comparisons for that one as well.

Now that we have comparisons of all movies I would say this

Hellraiser 1 - US, UK and JP looks best. Maybe JP has a notch with better grain structure though US/UK have much extras.
Hellbound - JP have better grain over US but same soft transfer. Hdtv rip probably best.
Hellraiser 3 - only JP blu-ray out with lossy audiotrack and same old master as older german dvd but with better grain off course.

There are room for improvement on Hellbound and Hellraiser 3 disc.

In the caps a holic comparison between the US/JP of H1, I thought the US exhibited slightly better grain save for maybe one or two shots. Overall a wash. I agree on 2/3.

Just picked up the new UK reissues of 2 and 3 on dvd from boulevard entertainment (only cost £1 and they still have the Anchor Bay intros and II has the THX content and intro) and III only looks like VHS in the extra added unrated scenes.
The majority of the disc looks good.

The JP release of the original Hellraiser has more specs on the print in the Caps-A-Holic comparison, but those scratch repair filters are eating away at the feathers in the dream sequence (HERE).

Now I think they both look really nice, but it's interesting to see how digital tools meant to remove scratches and dirt can effect stuff like this.

Anybody?

Hellraiser 2 from Image doesn't even have subtitles. NONE.

Yeah its really bare bones.

This movie needs a complete remaster...but I don't see that coming in a loooong time. Its one of the most creative horror movies ever made!

Once I discovered that Image Entertainment has released Hellraiser on Blu-ray with a DTS HD Master Audio soundtrack, I thought for sure that this would be an upgrade from the Anchor Bay release, and that the lack of extras was resulting from higher audio/video bitrates. It turns out that according to you guys, the Image Entertainment edition would not be a good idea. So what's the difference between the US Anchor Bay Hellraiser I and the Japanese edition of Hellraiser I? Do they both have the same video and audio specs? Does the Japanese version have other audio streams, such as PCM or DTS HD Master Audio, in addition to the Dolby TrueHD stream?

The one HD place that has it has not accepted new memBer sIgnups or given out member inviTeS for a very long time. Don't believe it has even been put on Usenet. So it will be hard to find but rewarding when you do. (not that I'm condoning that ).

Though you shouldn't have to go to all that trouble if only one of the companies would release it properly.

Do not buy the Image Entertainment editions! I didn't even search for "The Children of the Corn." Here's why. Once I found the specs, it turns out that the "Hellraiser" series was recorded onto a single-layer 25GB Blu-ray disc. Hello? Isn't using single-layer BDs the same as using HD DVDs? I think Image Entertainment knows that, but they can't afford to use the better double-layer Blu-ray discs or something like that. After this research, I will not buy a BD from Image Entertainment until they start taking full advantage of the format! If you're not a fan of sequels (like I'm not), go with the Anchor Bay edition. If you already have it, then don't waste your time on BDs from Image Entertainment! Although the audio specs are better. So I guess if you don't care about your video, then take advantage of the audio if it means that much to you. I have nice speakers and a nice screen. I believe that by playing lower bitrate content that you're not taking advantage of what your equipment can do. If you are a fan of sequels, then make sure the Japan release is multi-region and get the boxed set.

It's a 90 minute movie with no extras. A BD-25 is more than enough room for Hellraiser.

While 90 minutes might be short, wouldn't putting 90-minute movies on a BD50 give more room for higher A/V bitrates, higher sampling frequencies, and more types of streams?

It's not going to give you a better presentation. Maybe more lossless dub's I suppose, but 25 GB is fine for a 90 minute movie (a very dark one at that) with no extras.

I realize this thread's been idle awhile, but the topic is still apropos and so it makes more sense to reawaken it than to start a new one. I very much like Hellraiser (own the LD and bought the Anchor Bay BD) and am curious about II (haven't seen it). Ran across Hellworld on SyFi Channel and it's clearly a different animal, but ordered the BD since it seemed a reasonable outing with decent picture and sound. My question is whether it really makes sense to purchase the Elite Hellraiser II BD over their DVD -- if only marginal improvement then I'm OK with the DVD. If my best bet is to find an AB DVD, then I'll look into that! TIA

I would buy the Australian Hellbound blu-ray, same quality but with extras.