They Live Special Edition from Shout! Factory - Page 4

Looks like the standard Universal crap, I am shocked anyone is surprised at this point

I got my copy today from shout. After reading all of these lukewarm review, I am really beginning to regret this purchase. I paid an extra $12 to support shout! and also to get the poster.

Unfortunately, I did not receive the poster and the slipcover is trashed. They charge a lot for shipping too ($6 or $7). I don't know what that shipping premium gets you.

I should've bought this on amazon for far less. Rarely do I feel like I've been ripped off with a blu ray purchase, but this is starting to feel like one of those times.

Wait until you actually watch it...

I watched about half an hour of it. Shout! botched this one badly.

It has all of the elementary errors of bad transfers. It's not quite as bad as the star trek films, but it's close.

Problems include: waxy faces, huge inconsistencies between completely DNR'ed shots and others without. EE is very intrusive most of the time.

Pure amateur hour.

One more serious problem: massive leg in the onscreen menu.

This blu ray release is a joke.

DO NOT BUY! (pun intended).

I have the BD but haven't watched yet, but now I'm really eager to find out whose leg it is....Piper's, David's, or Foster's?

It all falls on Universal. They provided the master. Shout just used what they were given. That is the trouble with the smaller niche studios. They have no ability to tell a large studio "Do better."

Hasn't it been established that Uniblunder has no intention of doing anything right ever? For all we know it's intentional because they loathe the idea that any edition could be the last edition people buy.

Shout is to blame for an absolutely terrible encode. It's not DNR that is scrubbing the grain, it's the amateur encode which cannot even resolve it at all. Shout did the same with Halloween II. Universal's encode was terrific with perfectly resolved grain, Shout's was smeared. It's as if they cleaned up Universal's Blu-ray and re-encoded it, instead of doing the work from a high quality DI. I bet the same thing happened with They Live. Shout used Universal's HDTV rip, cleaned it up, and did a new encode from this low bitrate source. I have a feeling that studios do not give these small label companies access to high quality DI's. Same with the audio, most of these DTS-MA tracks are nothing but lossy DD packaged in a lossless codec.

So has anyone seen the Amazon version ( Universal ) yet ? Still waiting for my copy. I'm glad Shout didn't ship to Australia.

All this talk makes me a bit worried about the quality of 2013 blu-ray cult film releases for titles like The Vampire Lovers and The Incredible Melting Man via Shout even if those titles will be licensed from Fox/MGM and not Universal.

The disc from Amazon is the Shout (Scream) Factory disc. Same packaging minus the poster.
Wait for the reviews before you buy. I'm done pre-ordering sight unseen catalog titles.

That's not true at all. Shout themselves screwed around with the Halloween II transfer. Just compare the Universal BD with Shout's version -- there's all kinds of "clean up" Shout did with that transfer that, as has been mentioned here, took some of the detail out of it. Universal's release is appreciably better. Sounds like they did the same thing with THEY LIVE, and I wonder if they didn't do the same thing with THE FUNHOUSE. Cliff and whoever at Shout handles these releases ought to think twice about "improving" what they receive, because they're making things worse.

For god's sake. Shout's HII is fine. The automated dirt removal process they used to cut down on the white specks that had so many people all worked up (for nothing) on the Universal disc yielded a slight filtering effect across the board, as it seemingly does on every release to utilize that process. *Slight* being the keyboard. The grain pattern is only minimally effected. The caps comparison is up at caps-a-holic and tells the story, and those who've watched both discs can further testify to what the caps show. Right, so, Shout run HII and possibly HIII through an extremely light, tastefully applied dirt clean up but, just for the hell of it, decide to go full on nuts for They Live. Right. This is all Shout, totally. Universal doesn't have abomination after "HD" catalog abomination JUST LIKE this in their vaults, which we totally haven't seen time and time again since their foray into BD, or anything. Yeah.
Edited by Alkaline - 11/10/12 at 2:41pm

Watched last night, awesome trnsfer.

Gonna watch this in a bit.
Edited by Waboman - 11/11/12 at 2:04am

Let me know wabo what you think

I own both discs, I've watched both discs, there's no question the Universal disc is appreciably sharper. I don't need to look at caps-a-holic and read what others can "testify" about to see what I can discern with my own eyes.

Nah. It isn't. etc

Let's stick to discussing "They Live". Thanks.

larry

Hey wabo how was it mate ?

Hey, Franin. I thoroughly enjoyed They Live. It looked great for a low budget 80's movie. Yes, it had some DNR, but I was never taken out of the movie because of it. Then again, I don't obsess over it. I was pleasantly surprised at how good the audio was. I love John Carpenter's score for it too. And Meg Foster and those eyes. A fun time. When does your copy arrive?

Good to know thanks mate, still waiting for my copy.

Watched this last night. Not my copy. My friend's copy. But his system is better than mine, so that's ok.

Anyway, this thing is certainly a bit of a mess. The biggest offender being caked on DNR at times. Piper's face frequently looks downright weird, with that wax dummy kind of look going on. Grain can be clumpy and not natural in look in certain scenes, but it is inconsistent.

The sound was strong. Dated, but never shrill. It feels as thick and rich as the PCM soundtracks on the best laserdiscs so that's a positive.

All in all, this is a pass for anyone other than die hards. But die hards can simply buy the other disc, which isn't as DNR'd. Therefore, it's a full on pass.

Other disc? I must have missed something. What other disc?

I watched a transfer of THEY LIVE late Summer. I believe it was released in Europe. Italy or France. I cannot remember where. But while it was nothing special, it was not contrast boosted and didn't have waxy looking facial complexions.

Yeah, the I could swear that reviews of the IT disc said it was tainted by DNR. I was hoping that this new one wouldn't be the same, which is why I waited. So you're saying that the other version is better? Region B, I imagine... Well, I can probably still rip it if I buy it... or just do the region hack on my BD player.

Remember, it was not a direct comparison. However, while I was not impressed with the foreign release, it did not scream DNR like this one. I remember thinking, "Well, it's not bad. Better than the DVD. But looks a bit filtered." The Shout edition made me shout at the screen, "You @ssholes!"

Yeah, that's too bad. I think the US release is serviceable. It has a very digital, processed look, but it's such a good movie, I really want it on blu ray. I already have two BR players, don't have shelf space for a third.

The sound was so strong it's obvious it could have been remixed into a hell of a 5.1 experience. Not that I want the original sound discarded. No way. I always want the original preserved. But I think this one is worthy of a 5.1 mix and it's a shame the money was not spent on it.

I saw this film in a theater as a teen and me and my buddies went ape **** for it. My God, we quoted the dialog non-stop for months.