Disney's Snow White, 2016 Blu Ray

That is a great point that cannot be repeated too often. I just do not believe that people have the slightest chance of remembering how a movie looked several decades ago. There may be a few exceptions, but far fewer than people think.

 

I think the idea is that folks who prefer physical media and don't use the digital codes (and/or are able to rip their BDs and don't need the codes) make a few extra bucks selling them to folks who don't care about physical media.

I've sold some UV codes in the past. I've occasionally taken a Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital Copy package of a new release purchased for, say, $15 or $20, and sold the loose DVD and UV code and made at least $10 back, sometimes more.

People who buy the codes make out on this too, as they're still paying less typically than "buying" digital copies of stuff off of Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, etc. They can get a UV code for $5 or so instead of $16.99 or whatever for the "digital" copy, and get whole seasons for $10-$15 instead of $30-$40, etc.

It takes a bit of effort certainly to unload UV and other digital codes. I just know, for me, that I'll never use them.

 

not as many ppl have Bluray recorders...much easier to get an HDX copy with a code...

 

on VUDU an HDX code go up to $19.99 for a single movie.
usually:
SD:$9.99
HD:$14.99
HDX:$19.99
and now they have another level:
UHD:$24.95
There's also a variable in the pricing.

 

Ease of use, mostly. Having a digital code for a UV or iTunes copy means not having to mess with ripping software. It's mostly a function of entering the code into a website, or iTunes, and you're done.

I really like the convenience of UV copies, which are stored in the cloud. Most folks use Vudu or Flixster to access their UV locker. I especially use it when I am traveling, or when I am at a friend's house and want to watch one of my films. It saves me tons of hard drive space, too.

 

As Vidiot (and I to a lesser degree) pointed out up thread, Disney is crazy obsessive about this. They are to animation what museum art experts are to classic paintings, maybe moreso as they have access to all the original details of the drawings and colors used in the original movies.

I'd say it stretches credulity that someone remembers exactly how something looked in a theater decades ago, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt. What was the condition of the print? What were the playback sources like at the theater? Do we not believe the tools to ensure the accuracy of the artists intention are better now than they were 20/30/40/50 years ago?

 

Disney hasn't been nearly as guilty of multiple re-releases as some believe. For instance, we've gotten 3 "Snow White" releases over the last 15 years: the 2001 DVD, the 2009 BD (and DVD, IIRC) and the 2016 BD.

On the other hand, I can point to at least seven DVD or BD releases of "Men In Black" since 2000! I've also written up six DVD or BD versions of "Rocky" - and I think I missed some!

Disney wants to optimize earnings, but other studios are much much worse offenders in the reissue shenanigans...

 

^^^ Ah this is the piece I missed.

 

Yes to this.

 

I have found through painful, horrible experience that you can't really remember anything precisely even a week ago. Your mood, how much sleep you've had, the time of day, when you last ate... all these things have a drastic effect on your perception of the way things look. Anybody in the mastering business has had problems when the session takes a break and people go out to lunch, come back 90 minutes later and then immediately complain that everything has changed. Nothing has changed except their perception.

Get your monitor calibrated and you have a fighting chance of seeing what's actually on the disc. Without that, you're only seeing the film through the veil of what the monitor is doing to the picture.

 

I have a Pioneer Kuro that's perfectly calibrated. Beautiful 6500 picture. Some of the Disney restorations don't look film like to me. It's personal taste I guess. To each his own.

 

We may have a different idea of what film looks like. I think most of the Disney films did very good jobs, but I know that purists are unhappy at certain "fixes" that were done here and there. But from the standpoint of color, brightness, grain, and sharpness, I think they're pretty much flawless.

 

No doubt about it. And the knee-jerk nature of the comment can be held against it. Does anyone say to a mastering engineer: "You know, what you mastered just does not sound like music to me." This is like a verbal drive-by-shooting.

 

No. A more appropriate analogy is getting a new remastered version of an LP you love which has gotten great reviews but you find it a bit cold and clinical compared to an original.

 

Whatever is going on with restorations of old Disney films for BD, it goes far beyond the normal videophile obsessive nitpicky stuff. They definitely give those old films a “look” that has some definite pros and cons. I believe film restoration guru Robert Harris when he reviews BDs, while giving the Disney BD reissues high marks and praise, also acknowledges that Disney is giving them a look tuned for “modern” audiences, a look that isn’t like what they ever looked like in the past.

I recall a lot of his reviews seeming to contend that he feels okay about it because the actual film elements, presumably sans the digital cleanup and scrubbing, have also been preserved and properly restored. Sounds good I guess, but who will ever see that? Disney doesn’t seem to regularly do large scale theatrical reissues anymore, and the trend for home video is obvious as well.

They look so meticulously amazingly clean that it starts to look like they’ve been reanimated. An old film from 50-70 years ago shouldn’t quite literally look like it was shot and animated yesterday. I think that’s what throws some people off. It’s not like just a standard overly-DNR’ed job. (Though some have complained of that sort of thing as well on at least a few items like the BD of “Mickey’s Christmas Carol” and a few others, maybe “The Sword and the Stone”?).

When I watch something like the “Sleeping Beauty” DVD, I don’t feel like I’m watching a film featuring animation. I feel like I’m seeing an almost digital-looking camera actual shooting individual cells.

But I get why Disney does it the way they do it. Google around for reviews of the BD of “The Land Before Time” issued late last year. It’s an extreme example of very prominent grain (done on a limited budget, etc, etc.), and some folks think their VHS copies look better (likely because the 480 resolution taken from old video masters smooths out all of that grain).

I love a filmic look and proper grain, and even I’m taken aback occasionally. After years of seeing crappy versions of “Let It Be”, it was mind-blowing to see the clips used in the 90s in the “Beatles Anthology”, taken from a 1992 restoration. So much cleaner. Then, they finally released a few clips from the film in HD on the “Beatles 1” BD last year, and low and behold there’s that classic 16mm grain!

 

Yes agreed. Disney unfortunately will not release film anymore to rep houses. Only digital prints.