Escape From New York Blu Ray

[DICKIEDUVET]

Just had a little skip through this....Bit disappointed to be honest. I know it was made 26 years ago with a very modest budget but so was First Blood which IMO looks loads better. Probably doesn't help that most of EFNY is shot at night. Even the shots in the interiors look murky though.

No better than an upscale

Prob the best we will be able to get from the source material though.

[brian s]

That's a shame. This is one of my favourites.

Cheers
Bri

[Jim Morrison]

This got a half decent review at the 'Times...

"Detail is strong but the same issue with the softness of the periphery of the frame is noticeable, contrast is very good for this rather dark movie and colours are handled very well indeed. There are very minor compression artefacts and one instance of aliasing, but watching this along with the Momentum special edition I was confident that this represented an improvement on the visual quality of that former release."

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=68349

My copy turned up yesterday so I'll give it a look this afternoon.

[DICKIEDUVET]

It is indeed an upgrade from the DVD, True the colours are good and some of the detail but for a Blu Ray it is pretty weak.

JM let us know what you think.

[HummerUK]

I am just watching my copy...

Sound is very good.
Bob and Weave on front credits is minimal.
Early scenes shot outside do look a little noisy/grainy but studio shots look crisp e.g on Air Force 1.

Most of the movie the image does seem a little soft but of course so much of it supposed to be in low light/shadows.

Picture is 2.35:1 and my PS3 says audio is DTS-HD MA 5.1 48Khz > 1.9Mbps and video is AVC > 11 to 30+ Mbps Runtime 1:38:56

Disc has extras
Documentary "Return to Escape From New York"
3 x trailers
John Carpenter (exclusive interview)
Snake's Crime (deleted original intro)

So for under £13.00 I think it is okay...

HummerUK

[HummerUK]

After watching complete movie and about an hour of extras with John Carpenter smoking I was fairly impressed (except for the smoking that is).

Last couple of minutes of movie does have feint vertical line on the picture about 20% in from right side.

Otherwise rest of movie seems okay.

HummerUK

[Ashzilla]

was realy looking forward to getting this on blu-ray

Is it a realy poor upscale ?

[Geoff_D]

This is better than the DVD, but sadly there's some really noticeable edge enhancement. Other than that it looks about as good as I'd expected.

[7hil]

I was dissapointed by the PQ on Blu-ray too but at the end of the day it was a fairly low budget movie so there may be limitations to how good it can look.

The bluring at the edges is weird though. Will that be due to the print that Optimum have or what? Do the DVD's have the same effect?

[Pecker]

Does this call for a new thread? I rather think it does.

And here it is.

Sorry, didn't want to de-rail this thread.



Steve W

[scotty2112]

Has anyone that has a US ps3 tried playing the extras on this disc.

My ps3 refuses to access them.

[7hil]

Originally Posted by scotty2112

Has anyone that has a US ps3 tried playing the extras on this disc.

My ps3 refuses to access them.

The US PS3 cannot play PAL content which is how the extras have been encoded. This is different from EU PS3's which can play both NTSC and PAL.

[DICKIEDUVET]

Carpenter's The Fog arrived today, As suspected a straight port from the HD-DVD. Which isn't a bad thing. Looks great, Can't beleived the excellent commentary wasn't included on either release though

[scotty2112]

The US PS3 cannot play PAL content which is how the extras have been encoded. This is different from EU PS3's which can play both NTSC and PAL.

Thanks for the reply 7hil.

I had a feeling there might be an issue with pal/ntsc but since it has been advertised as region ABC on the rear of the case I reasonably thought that there would not be any issues with watching the extras,lazy encode or not.

Looks like I won't be holding on to this one.Thanks studio canal.

[Helicon]

Compared mine to my Region 1 DVD last night, and although the BD doesn't look amazing, it does look better than the DVD. The shots outside the prison of helicopters landing/taking off in the car park area and Snakes arrival at the crashed plane show up how much better the black level and detail is. Also, due to a better black level, you can see more of NY city when the camera pans up over the wall at the start.

If i'd have paid £20/25, i might've felt bitter about it, but as it looks better, i'm happy with it. Could really do with restoration of both audio and video though.

Originally Posted by 7hil

The bluring at the edges is weird though. Will that be due to the print that Optimum have or what? Do the DVD's have the same effect?

There's a lot of blurring on the top and bottom third of the screen on Close Encounters too - this is on the original print, and i'm not sure even full restoration can get rid of that sort of thing. Unfortunately.