Phantom Menace R2 Picture Quality

Thanks for the info GarethH have been toying with the idea of the Rock CE and now play has my order

[SILVERBACK]

i have the 2 disc criterion edition of the rock an i have to say its very very sweet :D

[Jase]

At least you guys have received your discs!!

I´m still waiting for mine & others from Play.com!!!

I'm finishing up a R1 vs R2 vs R4 comparison and sadly they are all the same.

Serious edge enhancement issues, some grain, some dirt (tatooine skyline particularly), some lack of definition...

Interesting that all the "good" reviews also went to Skywalker ranch for a jolly...

Jenz.

[Mr.D]

Just watched the region2 of TPM ( still think the film sucks but its got its nice bits)

Noticed a heck of a lot of aliasing on diagonals . Contrast range actually struck me as quite good ie blacks detailed and whites not blown out. Layer change ( assume it was a layer change) is rubbish.

However its nice to see the THX optimode on a region2 disc ( although I have my suspiscions about the accuracy of the colour patterns)

Overall though nothing special and the aliasing issue is a bit annoying.

I just watched SWPM and my visual accuity on the film is that i noticed some grain and the colours throughtout the film was strong and not so strong.
Scenes in my opinion of the people faces were sharp and not so sharp i saw no edge enhancement at the podrace scene and the lift scene which was mention on another forum. But apart from all that, it is still one heck of a disc !!

[meva]

I think all of Lucas' fims are a bit soft in the focus dept, it seems to be his style.

[alanrob]

Originally posted by Jenz:
<STRONG>I'm finishing up a R1 vs R2 vs R4 comparison and sadly they are all the same.

Serious edge enhancement issues, some grain, some dirt (tatooine skyline particularly), some lack of definition...

Interesting that all the "good" reviews also went to Skywalker ranch for a jolly...

Jenz.</STRONG>

Don't tell me you bought all three copies?

[Mr.D]

Originally posted by meva:
<STRONG>I think all of Lucas' fims are a bit soft in the focus dept, it seems to be his style.</STRONG>

Err no it definitely did not look soft. You may have been noticing the fairly narrow depth of field : a consequence of shooting anamorphic.

Trust me no-one shoots deliberately soft.

[meva]

Mr. D I didn't actually mean that he deliberately shoots soft ( although I admit that it does read that way, sorry ) I know focus pullers sweat buckets concentrating on that. Some movies are definately sharper than others, presumably to do with film stock or something, perhaps you can enlighten me.

[Jeff]

I wasn't impressed with the PQ at the cinema so the DVD in comparison is quite good. However I think this was done on purpose, it was always a concern that the original trilogy would look very dated compared to the new films. In any case the film is soft, lacks fine detail and has quite a lot of noise that has been added (on purpose). I have movies that are 10-20 years old and look better than this. Goonies for example is way way better.

[Koosnaff]

And something else I just found, when putting the disc in my pc, it installed the player (I wanted the 'key' link to starwars.com) and after the install, when I tried to run it, it said that it wasn't a valid windows 32bit image. It may be just an issue with Windows 2000 pro, but be warned...

[Mr.D]

Originally posted by meva:
<STRONG>Some movies are definately sharper than others, presumably to do with film stock or something, perhaps you can enlighten me.</STRONG>

To do with a lot of things: filmback ( size of the wanted exposed area) , film stock slower films have less grain higher detail ( doubt you would see this in the cinema though) lens focal length ( varies from shot to shot) shooting anamorphic as I said.

TPM does not look to me as if its trying to replicate 70s filmstocks if anything when I saw it in the cinema it looked way too punchy. I haven't heard anything to the effect that they were trying to match the previous films with regard to stock characteristics. I suspect some of the VFX shots were done at half res ( 1K) relative to 2K which is the norm. And I suspect some of the aliasing I'm seeing is probably down to this not translating well to video land.

So to recap the film didn't strike me as soft with regard to photography nor did it strike me as replicating the 70s ( they could have found 70s filmstock if they wanted it bad enough or got kodak to whip them up a batch).

The region2 dvd doesn't strike me as soft either: I see plenty of fine detail in there , admittedly not on the edges of some of ILM's comps but there you go.
The region2 disc doesn't strike me as anything fantastic other than the nicely done intensity range ( details in the blacks and falloff into peak white ie correct unlike other discs I could mention)


Focus pullers don't really handle the sharpness they change the focus through a shot according to the wishes of the Director of Photography hence pulling focus from one plane to another.

[Confucius]

Originally posted by Jenz:
<STRONG>Interesting that all the "good" reviews also went to Skywalker ranch for a jolly....</STRONG>

A tad cynical maybe, perhaps understandable..... until you read HCC's review (November issue) where it gets 5/5!

[ 19-10-2001: Message edited by: Confucius ]

[Stuart Wright]

Originally posted by Confucius:
<STRONG>

A tad cynical maybe, perhaps understandable..... until you read HCC's review (November issue) where it gets 5/5!

[ 19-10-2001: Message edited by: Confucius ]</STRONG>

Total DVD gave it top marks for picture quality aswell.