Harry Potter OoTP DVD Review

I agree. The first 5-10 minutes, in the playground, was so bad I asked my wife to take it back thinking there MUST be something wrong with the DVD.

Some scenes look great while others are TERRIBLE.

Bob

I agree. I just signed on to talk about this, and I see there is already a thread. I think it is the worst PQ I have yet to see on an SD DVD. I was watching on my 120" screen, which really brought out the flaws. I tried watching it on my Denon DVD-3800, and my Toshiba HD-A1, and it looked terrible on both. I am glad I rented instead of bought. I will be buying the HD-DVD set as well.

Thanks, you saved me a trip back to the store.
This is one of the very few movies I actually went to a theater to see, and I though it looked terrible in the theater. I figured it was just a bad print, but I see the same awful quality on this DVD.
Blurrieness, focus fading in and out, noise, you name it. Very bad quality on this one.

Well the HD versions look pretty spectecular. The last DVD of the Goblet Of Fire was one of the worst offenders of macroblocking that I can recall in years. Seems like WB screwed this one up again. Time for HD!

my copy of the DVD has quality issues. Some parts look terrible others okay. From the very start of the movie, with the WB logo coming towards the screen, to the faces of harry, dudley, and dudley's friends, it's grainy and pixelated.

Do these look familiar?





Should I exchange my copy for another one, or are they all bad?

I think they all look this bad. I here that the standard def copy on the back of the HD-DVD looks okay. I also read that the two-disc collectors addition looks fine. Though, I have not seen this first hand.

Oh my gosh, I just turned the movie off about 15 minutes into it, and surfed straight to this sight to see if anyone else thinks this is the worst dvd picture quality they have seen in years. I was actually worried something was wrong with my system!!!!

And then I see that the HDDVD version is getting great reviews for picture and sound quality??? Is anyone else thinking what I'm thinking: that the studios are going to start shafting non-hd-adopters until we all convert?

This dvd is absolutely unacceptable. I think I've seen better picture quality on youtube.

Yes, there is something terribly wrong with this transfer. I noticed it immediately. Some portions of the film looked great, but I noticed the crappy compression (or whatever it is) come back several times throughout.

edit: Is this some bizarre strategy to get us all to buy blue-ray or HD?

I have the two disc collectors edition, and well, you can see the results up there ^

The scene in the playground with harry and dudley is by far the worst looking segment in the film. It's literally like watching it on youtube, if not worse.

I've determined that the problem is one of the below:

1) All DVD's of this movie look this bad, but some people just don't notice because they sit 20 feet away from their TV.

2) Not all copies of the DVD have good transfers, or a "few" (as in several hundred) bad ones got out.

3) Best buy is now selling pirated DVD's disguised as the legit thing (funny, but not likely)

4) This movie just does not look well with certain DVD player / Television combinations

5) Everybody reporting this issue has something wrong with their TV.

6) I don't think it's a ploy to get people to upgrade to BDVD/HDDVD. If it were, all of the discs would be this bad. It appears only a small percentage of them are bad (go read reviews on amazon). Then again, these people could be the same people as #1.

Yeah, it was the scene in the playground (first scene in the movie) that had me checking my hdmi connections and wondering if my dvd player was going bad. Then after the scene where the cat is attacking the ear-on-a-rope i just turned the movie off and surfed straight to these forums.

I will say this: i finished the movie last night, and while the compression does show up in a few scenes later in the movie, it did get much better for most of the rest of the movie. I would never call the picture "spectacular" or "reference level", but some scenes were pretty good.

Thank GOD I'm not the only one seeing this. I just bought and installed a new projector and this is only the third movie I've watched with it. I thought my proj was bad!

Well, this sucks. I bought it to continue my collection. I'm kind of sorry I did. I haven't yet watched mine, so I'm not sure if it's the same way. I can only assume it is.

Isn't this the reason we have multi-disc editions - so there's more room on the main disc to make the feature look better? Not only that, this movie is almost 15 minutes shorter than the first and that one looks better than the others.

You would think. I've always been of the belief that ALL special features should be on a separate disk so that the main disk could be used for the main feature video and audio only. Leave off the "making of" crap and give me a DTS track!

To add to it, the special features on OotP aren't that great, and there's not a lot of substance. The potter DVD's have never had commentaries (one of the few movies I'd actually watch a commentary on so it's extra disappointing!), but at least the older ones had interviews with the characters, etc.

A commentary track with the director, JK Rowling, and Daniel, Emma, and Rupert would be great. Oh well.

Very true. This is the first one of the set that I only bought the single disc edition. The only thing even remotely interesting sounding was the set tour, but it wasn't worth $7 more. The first movie had a lot of fun stuff on it.

It honestly looks like they just tossed this one out there expecting people would buy it no matter what. Of course, they're right...

I emailed Warner Home Video saying that I owned one of these bad copies, and this is their response. That's great customer service. It makes me wonder if the copy they would send me would look better.

"I would be more than happy to help you with this issue. Please respond with an address where I can send you a pre-paid label. Once you receive the label, please return the DVD back to me. Once I receive the DVD, I will then order and send you a new one. I look forward to hearing from you and I apologize for the inconvenience.

Kind regards,

Warner Home Video"

What email address did you use to get ahold of them? Did you tell them you had poor picture quality or did you need to elaborate more?

I would be surprised if the replacement would look any different.

I found a "contact us" link on their website, but the reply came from "Kowaiter, Olga"