Universal announces Jaws blu-ray specs!

[dave13]

Originally Posted by X-human

I'm a little apprehensive about these upcoming transfers as Buck Privates is turning out to be over processed. Considering how Jurassic Park ended up there's not much guarantee that they'll even do Spielberg's babies right.

I'm mostly worried about the Classic Monsters and Hitchcock though. If any of these releases are fucked up there's little chance they'll revisit them any time soon.

whats the story on buck privates and jurassic park?

[jscott]

Never understood the hubub about Jaws on DVD, but I didn't see the film until 2000/01, when I got a used copy of the Signature Collection Laserdisc set. After watching the video, I may get the blu, but its not a priority.

[X-human]

Sorry, I meant to link a review for Buck Privates at least. Here's what Robert Harris, who did the restorations on Vertigo and Spartacus in the 90's, had to say:

As part of the Universal 100th Anniversary, I was hopeful that we be seeing something that looked like film, as that seems to be the direction in which the studio is heading. And it does look very nice. Clean, with good black and nice shadow detail. But as my friend Jeff Wells over at Hollywood Elsewhere, refers to me, I'm a "grain monk,' and to my eye, Buck Privates has just a bit too much digital magic going on, and I don't believe it was necessary.

One can clean up an image without removing the appearance of cinema. When you view it, keep in mind that it was shot on the same stock as Casablanca, and you'll get the idea.

Image - 3
Audio - 4

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/t/31...tes-in-blu-ray

So it looks like they did pretty good job restoring the film and then cranked up the DNR. A typical studio fear of old black and white films. At the very least this looks to be what will happen for Abbott and Costello Meets Frankenstein announced for this year too.

Jurassic Park was the same masters originally done for the DVDs so they had Edge Enhancement and lacked finer details. Much like Back to the Future's Blu-ray. It's just laziness on their parts and so I have doubts that they'd pull a 180 this year. Considering the just released DVD boxset re-release of Dracula/Frankenstein/Bride/Creature from last month was the same old transfers all over again (when they already confirmed new transfers are done for Dracula) that's not a confidence builder either.

My only hope is that it's a clue that the rumored 3D release of Creature may infact be on the horizon since they've never paired Creature with these other three together on DVD before; Wolfman is the more obvious choice. It may be a good sign that they're testing the waters on Creature.

[Matt89]

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film3/blu-r...es_blu-ray.htm

I'm starting to lose faith in this guy. Sometimes he's insanely off in his reviews. (Does he even watch the discs half the time?) Some reviews are very detailed and some are just incredibly lazy.

~Matt

[dave13]

Originally Posted by Matt89

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film3/blu-r...es_blu-ray.htm

I'm starting to lose faith in this guy. Sometimes he's insanely off in his reviews. (Does he even watch the discs half the time?) Some reviews are very detailed and some are just incredibly lazy.

~Matt

yeah, those screen captures look pretty sharp at first glance, but there's no grain evident at all! as far as some of the Beaver reviews go, I'm spending less and less time reading what is written, and just focusing on the screen captures. sometimes his writing is well put together, and other times its riddled with grammatical errors and really immature writing style. It honestly feels like they're being written by two different people, although the name at the top is the same...

also disappointed that universal isn't ponying up for any new supplements for these. i don't care too much about those "100 years..." featurettes. even a half-hour retrospective on the film itself would be a nice addition. the digibooks with all their artwork and text are nice, but not worth the crazy prices being charged ($30+ as far as i've seen - its whats kept me from picking up All Quiet on the Western Front).

its disappointing to hear about the Jurassic Park discs as well. I'd kind of been planning on picking the set up when I found one for a decent price. Now, maybe not...

[Jeremy]

It would be interesting to compile a list of Universal's catalog Blu-Ray titles, alongside the names of the people who produced and worked on each release, which may be listed either in the booklet that comes with the disc or somewhere in the menus of the disc itself. The reason it would be interesting is that Universal's catalog Blus seem to be hit or miss. Quite a lot of them show evidence of DNR, but some much more than others. I suspect that Universal probably doesn't have a consistent policy on how to deal with this issue, leaving it up to the individual disc producers to make their own judgement calls.

[Jaws]

The transfer so far looks fucking amazing. Can't wait to finally see TSISW after seeing it a few years ago at a screening.