Does anyone still buy and collect DVDs?

Some foreign title DVDs have English spoken as option when way of watching a rare DVD movie.

 

Well, not mad, but this is complete nonsense. Films from those decades were shot on film and hugely benefit from the higher bit rate of Blu-ray over DVD. It’s not even close.

 

Not even on an enormous screen?

 

The difference in quality is even more so, in Blu-ray’s favour, on a large screen.

Many old films were shot on formats like 70mm cinemascope - the picture quality is astounding on a well-mastered Blu-ray.

 

This is precisely the rabbit hole I was saying I no longer wanted to go down. I went there with DVD, and I have no wish to go there again. Back when I was buying DVD's, I worried about the color palettes, missing frames, absolutely perfect framing etc. I guess it's the "audiophile" equivalent in movie terms. It was fun for me at the time.

That said, I have no wish to go there again. So for example, the color saturation may not be perfect in Suspiria or Blood and Black Lace - but they're still damn good copies. I concentrate more on the movie these days, falling in love with the acting, plot, and cinematography. I have no problem with the latter, even if a "better" version is released. I've just let the chase go, and I'm left loving the movie itself.

I don't doubt a properly done Blu Ray will be "better" than a DVD. I wouldn't bother questioning it. At the same time, I just don't need the best version to enjoy the film any longer. I seriously doubt there's a title out there that I'd reappraise based on resolution and a change to the color palette. I was careful in buying my DVD's - I didn't stick with one region, for example - and I got the best of each critical title there was. Since I was projecting them perfectly adequately on a big screen, I don't feel the lower resolution is really a problem for me.

Still, we're all different. My push to own all the films I wanted - which included a whole bunch of Italian and Spanish cinema, Giallo's, Poliziotteschi, and arthouse classics such as Keneth Anger etc. - was essentially completed. I am also a fan of silent cinema and have a reasonable collection of them (not the obvious Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton etc., but more in line with my horror roots). Would I enjoy Begotten more with a better transfer? I don't think so. Somehow, along the way, I achieved my goal in owning what I wanted, and getting titles again feels like treading old ground for no good reason.

But hey, we're all different. I will say this - the cover artwork on Blu-Rays, generally, seem much better than the ones we got on DVD. Oh well.

 

Hm, I think you're exaggerating a little there. You use the word "many", but I don't believe that to be the case. In fact I just checked on Wiki, and they only list 45 US titles filmed in 70mm, 17 foreign films. The vast majority of titles are certainly not titles I'd be interested in. Most of them were also projected in cinema's on 35mm, since the projectors weren't in place for the larger frames.

That aside - there is no question that more pixels ought to give a better picture. But as I mentioned earlier, I was projecting DVD on to a 12 Foot screen in my home at the time, and DVD looked perfectly good. I was never sitting there thinking, "wow, the resolution sucks". Would Blu-Ray look better? I'd hazard a guess and say "yes". But it's all relative.

 

Stick with DVDs if you're happy with that format. That's cool.

I'm watching on a 43-inch television (4K, if that makes any difference) and the gap between standard and high definitions is huge. Obviously, variables such as each film's transfer on both formats need to be taken into account. But as far as I am concerned, there really is nothing to debate - the difference is that striking.

 

And if I understand what I've seen, I think the BR case is suitably more compact than the DVD case, yet obviously different from a CD case.

 

I'll still buy a live show release; movies, not so much.

 

Movies just don't have the same replay value as music for most people. And even with music, the music on disc market is waning. The average person without niche tastes probably gets a much better bang for the buck out of a Netflix subscription.

 

Well, you need an upscaler from SD to UHD. Most I've seen only upscale to HD. This is more an issue with the standard resolution of your screen, than specifically a DVD problem. 8K TV's are coming, and your 4K discs won't look as good on those - such is the nature of screens these days. A projector would also probably do better than your 4K screen - you can buy HD projectors cheaply these days.

Mind, you're not interested in DVD, so upscaling them likely isn't for you. Your SD would look fine on a standard HD set.

 

Sorry, gotta call BS, like a lot of posts on this discussion. If you have even begun to scan a few movie forums you will see that there are a great many people that replay their movies constantly.

Unlike music where it is physically only a few minutes with only a designated content, a movie or even series of movies have tremendous replay value. Over the years I have lost count of the times I have watched Kubrick movies, Capra, Kurosawa, Kieślowski...etc. I think there are TV series watchers that wouldn't know a good film if it jumped out of the screen and smacked them in the face let alone understand the nuances of a movie like Tokyo Story or Vertigo. If you have only watched those movies once and not "replay"ed them, then one's opinion on the film (even if you liked them) is really the equivalent of baby talk.

I agree that there are a great many that are better served by the left over low license cost of the virtual crap that comes out on Netflix (and a lot of other streaming services), but for those that seek quality, they are not waiting for it to pop up on streaming services that have garbage bit rates, poor encodes, and worse yet, crappy upscales and piss bad transfers.

Sure if you want proprietary productions where actors have sold their souls and doing a shadow of the work they once did by having the "security" of a tv series..but if you want to see art, and I mean true art, you aren't going to go slumming it on the stream.... Hey, but don't get me wrong. I have watched subscription fast food from time to time. But I have no allusions (or illusions) that it is anything more than it is, and that ISN'T a true fine dining experience.

DVD selling even without cases is still very good business. Even the crappiest titles will get you 2 bucks. If you actually have good content, one can easily sell titles up to 15 dollars (WITHOUT ARTWORK).

There is no "hassle" with being smart about marketing good content. DVD's are still huge sellers and there is a lot of titles that have not made it to bluray, and some that have made it, but are still superior on DVD because of being uncut...exclusive extras...sometimes better transfer....they are far from "worthless". Lots of DVD's are actually rare, and get really really good money (like blurays). I know of specific titles that reach into the hundreds.

Now if you are a fool and trading them to an exchange store or any brick and mortar outfit, yeah you are likely to get screwed. Again, if one researches what they got, you can barter as well. A lot of the trade stores have no clue what they have, and the suckers that traded low, well the trade stores often price almost as low, and you can grab up a title and make a tidy profit. And when I say tidy, I am talking 8 times profit easy.

Of course with me, I don't care about that. While I may sell up from time to time with stuff that gets absolutely nutty prices (like the Friday the 13th bluray box set that was going for 300 dollars at one point) well that kind of sucker flipping is too good to resist. I laugh my ass off at the fools that were paying 80 dollars for the Christine Twilight Time bluray when Sony turned around and released it for 5 dollar prices after seeing that whoring out their license didn't make quite as much sense as they thought it did. Of course perhaps they like to take the guinea pig approach (much like streamers do...only for a lot less quality). If it profits enough..ok worth a re-release.

Regardless, you just know something like for example a popular horror series will always comeback.

Still, when it comes to rare titles with certain collectors labels, the DVD copy is also big business. I actually love when people say things like you say, because it makes the market that much more sweet. If I really wanted to go after it, I wouldn't be posting this message. lol The reply was just too hard to let go by.

In closing, I have never ever ever got this foolish idea that because bluray, 4K...whatever comes out that you automatically have to throw up your hands and just stop buying better audio/video content? Did the DVD all of a sudden stop playing? Did the fact that something better coming out make your collection more enticing to nuke and crap on? They are all optical discs, so what the heck is the issue? DVD's still look very good upscaled and while I would never be so naive to think that something that is 5+ times the quality at WORST (and yes DVD lovers there is more to quality then just a pixel count), it is still far better than having degrading obsolete (mostly...but VHS can and does look better than a VHS transfer to DVD) options. For many movies, it is the only way to get the content, so why can't they all live in harmony? Bluray players play DVD's just like they play CD's (well unless you only play things through a PS4..which I digress). This isn't going to change anytime soon no matter what the chicken little's say.

And for the record, the same thing goes for rare VHS tapes and Laserdisc. With many titles this is where a lot of restoration is coming from. As the years go by these studios mishandling their assets is causing material that is very marketable, to go bye bye. All these streamers that don't care isn't helping matters.

Regardless, it is like the old saying, you don't know what you got till it's gone. I still kick myself repeatedly for a famous movie having a film print that I should have nabbed up (and did whatever it took to put the money together), because now I feel like I will never see it again. The music copyrights are what stopped it, and the thought of getting that original film scanned is just flat out painful. Not that it is the highest on my list, but again, it is like I said before, you think it is always going to be a low price, and then one day it shoots up the rafters and will take decades to come back down.

 

I had a standard LCD 37-inch TV for nine years until December. Still a big difference. I also have over 400 DVDs so I’m not against the format of anything. It’s the content that matters most, after all.

 

Perhaps you needed a better upscaler? Or maybe you're more sensitive to it. We're all different after all. I really don't mind if someone is anti-DVD, it won't affect what I do any.

 

I watched the theatrical version of The Outsiders DVD, and it looked much better on the Oppo UHD-205 than it did on the BDP-95. That DVD has a ton of aliasing, but the better upscaling and deinterlacing setting on the 205 (the 95 did not have this) got rid of 90% of the issues. There's still some lines in and around the titles at the beginning, but the rest of the picture is greatly improved.

 

Actually, you kind of describe something I was trying to get at. You could look at those "lines in and around the titles at the beginning" and think - "Man, that looks terrible, what a bummer". Alternatively, you could settle back and enjoy the movie as it is.

I happen to like a lot of cheap exploitation cinema, and trust me, nothing is going to improve the look of some of that too much. In fact, if you take a film like Basketcase - it looked better on VHS. By the time it appeared cleaned up on DVD, you could see all the rotten effects in startling detail, and it took something away from it......

 

You mentioned a better upscaler in your previous post, so that was the point of my post. I still enjoyed the movie previously, but couldn't believe how much the picture improved on the newer Oppo. The only time I had experienced that previously was when a newer/better version was released on DVD with a better transfer.

 

Sorry if it sounded like I didn't get your point - I did, I just didn't phrase it well.

Honestly, if I were buying a new TV tomorrow, I'm not going to buy one that makes my DVD's look like ****. That would be silly on my part, given I have a collection I'm somewhat proud of. It makes sense that SD looks terrible on a 4K set, it's simple math. So if I were going that route, I'd have to research upscalers.

 

I shoulda quoted you.

 

A DVD was never a 1:1 ratio with older televisions because the NTSC/PAL were interlaced signals that had different resolution. Most TV's did not conform specifically to DVD standard, and the issues were obvious. Scalers are much better now, and most bluray players do a fantastic job of getting it to the TV in very good quality (which in turn will treat the signal like a bluray and will pile on the scaling).

So all the things that go wrong with 4K can equally go wrong with SD to HD. The problem that many people see are horrible scalers (which is why people pay big bucks for better players I guess).

In essence some people are shooting the poor hardware enhancers vs the fault of having more pixels to work with, which should not be a bad thing mathematically if scaled right.

DVD (SD) is 345600 pixels
bluray (HD)is 2073600
4K is 8294400

If you divide DVD into HD you get 6
If you divide DVD into 4K it is an even divisor of 24

I don't see the issue myself. Video games do this all the time with the 30 thousand or more retro different resolutions being fit to computer monitors. MAME (multi arcade machine emulator) has fantastic scaling properties and there is no reason that one set standard should be an issue with any 4KTV/bluray player worth its salt.

For my money, bluray players that I have used kick the ass of how DVD's used to look on previous televisions.

I mean for crying out loud, if repeated pixels were an issue just look at how home projectors blow up pixels to astronomical size. Good projector set ups actually do a pixel multiplier to get a better look as opposed to blowing out one pixel to try to do the job.

p.s. Not following your point on Basket Case. The exploitation that you speak of were often meant to be seen in the theaters on film prints which are far more detailed than 4K. FAR MORE. The Arrow bluray has excellent reviews and any cheesy special effects were seen by audiences long before they hit VHS. Any preference is more attuned to video renting memories than the truth of what the director wanted people to see. VHS came later, not before. The fact that they got the original negative, I would think that a fan of the movie would wanna be checking that bluray out. Hell the mountains of extras alone are reading as just phenomenal.

I remember an interview from Tobe Hooper talking about how some fans think that Texas Chainsaw Massacre should be seen on crappy VHS and Tobe was like (paraphrasing for spirit because I did read a quote at one point that I can't locate)...are you crazy?? Why wouldn't I want my film to be seen in the best possible way as intended on first release?

 

Not entirely sure on your point here. I guess you're talking about old tube TV's? I happened to have a widescreen tube TV at the time (a Sony), but of course the whole technology of tube TV's and digital was entirely different. I have advocated better scalers to get the best performance from DVD on HD and UHD. Wiedscreen Tube TV's weighed about the same as a car.

This is essentially precisely what I'd written myself. If you have a poor upscaler - or none - SD won't look very good on UHD.

I agree - with a good upscaler, DVD can look good on newer sets. As I stated earlier, I was blowing up DVD to a 12 foot screen, and with a nice anamorphic image, it looked fine. It certainly was not a pixelated mess. By the way, playing Mame on that screen was brilliant.

This is the only part we disagree on. When Basketcase was transferred to DVD it was cleaned up enormously. Most prints of it were dirty, scratched, and just generally grimy. That's also how they were seen back in the day - your local multiplex weren't showing these films. There was a unique ambience with them. I recall seeing Texas Chainsaw Massacre in London, and again the print was rough, only adding to the spirit of the film.

On DVD they did a great job of cleaning up both Basketcase and TCM. One would even say they're pristine. No-one had seen Basketcase looking so good before. Hell, the thing was even filmed in 16mm. The DVD - and no doubt subsequent releases - look gorgeous from a pristine standpoint. Blacks are black, colors vivid. But it's not like watching it for the first time on VHS - it's lost a something in the process.

Same with the notorious Guinea Pig films from Japan. There is a nice transfer available of each of these films, but the likes of Devil's Experiment is cleaned up to the extent that it's never believable, it's more cartoony. Call it what you want, it had far more impact in a slightly burred VHS version, than in the pristine DVD print where every prosthetic was obvious.

IMO.

 

Yes I was speaking about Tube TV and the earlier HD CRT monitors as well.

I realize you did, and I expanded upon it. The issue I have is that people are often using their old DVD players with HD and now 4K and have no fricken idea about putting a simple setting on progressive let alone having the late generation upscaling DVD players to at least curb the gross error.

You don't need some fancy upscaler to get a good quality DVD look on a 4K setup. A bluray player does that for you (by first going to HD), and then the 4K TV scales again because it thinks it is getting a bonafide bluray look.

The problem is the people that think that their old ass DVD player should look good on anything, and if it doesn't then they poo poo on the 4K setup. So what do they do, go back to Netflix which does the scaling too (but of course with way less quality and actually comparing bit rate...even less than DVD if done properly!).

MAME on a big screen makes me dizzy because of the frame rate issues. I am sure it could be better with tweaking, but a small arcade setup is pretty cool. We do agree on this for sure.

Dirty and scratched does not equate to less resolution. Comparing the transfer to DVD as opposed to a fresh scan from the original negative is just not fair (move cursor off an on the picture to see difference). Also note I am using the Image disc as an example which is not the Arrow 4K scanned version!

Basket Case • US 20th Anniversary Edition DVD vs. US Blu-ray

The original Basket Case DVD is a digitized mess. See screnshot and look at her teeth...uh no. This is not what the director intended at all.

DVD's were often taken from old 2nd 3rd generation sources and remastered from there. "Remastered" is not re-scanned and you cannot compare the 2 much as you cannot compare the 4K scan that they did on Texas Chainsaw to the 2K scan they did more than 10 years ago. An example that I am ecstatic about is Maniac which looked like complete and utter ass on DVD and bluray. William Lustig has found the original negative and if it is what he says it is (which was mismarked on a box using the original marketed title), this discovery should look phenomenal. His work on his pornos being transferred has been reviewed very favorably, and I trust his information for this future release. Maniac was made with great sound in mind, and Savani was absolutely going for broke in making this for a theater experience.

Compared to what came before, I still have doubts. DVD's often have a shiny new look based on remastering tweaking that promote digital noise reduction, but it is fake detail that is often just people getting all nuts over a smoothed over look vs reality. However, the colors being more even and the good compression can still be quite pleasing...but compared to new scans of negative? In the words of Bender from the Breakfast Club, not even close bud!

16 mm has detail well beyond DVD. Some have argued that it is the equivalent of 3K resolution. I actually argue more if you consider the chemical molecules and elements at play. But this isn't about what is on the original print, this is about what is transferred, and it is a fact that you need at least twice the resolution scanned to get even close to an APPROXIMATION of the analog source input.

And as I said before, if one is seeking memories, that is a different story. I do respect your opinion, but I respect the directors even more. I want what they intended, and the only way to get close to that is to push for theatrical filmed version. Also contrary to popular belief, I don't necessarily promote a negative only approach because often the transfers are color corrected wrong and they ignore what people saw initially. See Criterion for the latest Bull Durham cluster!

I get how you feel though. There are people that prefer the Nintendo scaled down look vs the Arcade version. In some cases the Nintendo version can be better for some because of smart programming(Contra childhood memories), but in most the Arcade (Theater equivalent) is where it is at.

If you look at this screenshot along with the previous it is obvious as hell that it was transferred from a interlaced VHS type source and all film grain lost (see the streaking right under her skin on first link). I say if one is going to go that route, go find a VHS source and do a transfer yourself because I can guarantee that you will do a better version by putting that straight to a large file or bluray. DVD dumbs down the analog source and actually loses information. This is something I could never get through to some posters because there is always the "it is SD so what is the point in transferring". It is a terrible sickness that goes through the internet like a sick plague. Remember, twice the resolution gets you approximation.

Another example, look at the wall. Do you see the horrible pixel blotches? The bluray has pure grain (and yes grain is important, because the human brain sees the detail from frame to frame..if you can see it on a wall, can you imagine the details on a facial recognition where one glint can change a personality to an nth degree!).

Basket Case • US 20th Anniversary Edition DVD vs. US Blu-ray

While it is true that bad resolution can hide bad special effects, you also lose a lot of other details as well, and will say the movie had a lot of camp and those details don't matter...tell that to the actors, the special effects makeup people, the set designers, ...etc.

In the case of say Mortal Kombat where it was designed with an arcade crt arcade monitor in mind with a low resolution and scanlines to hide the square pixels and to have a more lifelike look..yes (and that is why one should use smart settings to dumb down the HD monitor to scale properly and have digitized scanlines-see picture left vs untouched right).



Basket Case, no, the director wanted the theatrical look and at if one is a huge fan of the movie, a scan from the negative and all the extras..hell yes I would upgrade! Arrow is just an awesome company.

As for one's budget and what is important to others, yes I can relate. There are certain movies I say are "good enough" because I don't like them that much, or want to upgrade/buy other instead.

 

We have a MAME problem.

I never play Mame with scanlines. I much prefer the games without. Yes, I remember how it was - but I see scanlines as an aesthetic I can do without. I am aware that many, perhaps even most, Mame users think my viewpoint is little short of blasphemy, but I take it on the chin and move on. I just know what I like, and what I enjoy. I created a few hundred bezels for Mame, but since they were Custom bezels, and not original bezels, the vast majority of the Mame community weren't interested. I even got some messages attacking me for "re-writing history". Luckily I created them mostly for myself.

Back to DVD, I don't think we have complete agreement. I guess to purists, the very act of converting film - analog if you will - to pixels, is going to involve compromise. The only way you can get around it is at the granular level, I suppose. Like, how many grains in a frame v. how many pixels. In the end though, film and pixels are always a mix and match. A quick Google search tells me a frame of 35mm is 20m pixels or so. So perhaps 12m for 16mm.

That said, you got enough pixels, and you get closer and closer. 16mm won't ever look as good as 35mm though, there's just less data there. I've not argued more pixels/resolution won't give a better picture quality. My argument is - in the examples I gave - something gets lost in the translation. We live in times where for all intents and purposes we can own something close to the original negative ourselves. Back in the day though, we were at a drive-in, or some fleapit, and what we got was a long way from that. And yes, aesthetically it was just perfect back then, imo. Pristine from the negative copies - not so much. Something is lost. It's not bad by any means, but hey, it's different.

Would I upgrade Basketcase? No. Sorry, I wouldn't. But hey, for those that want to, I hope the work gets done and they can have what they desire.

 

The Mortal Kombat example is a great example and programmers absolutely programmed with scanlines in mind. Playing Pacman without scanlines really???

If one sees an original arcade monitor (and not the emulated garbage that is prevalent in most sports bar) it is obvious that the programmer for instance wanted the power up dots to be round, not the blocky scquare thing with points. They programmed to blend.

You really think the picture to the right is better??

As for your artwork, that is different. While I like original artwork, having a personality for your house is one thing. But the scanlines being aesthetic is just not true. The programmers used it many times over and contrary to popular belief, monitor resolutions were actually custom fit to the programming because they were cheaper than the processors! You know why there are tons of different resolutions paired with the scan lines, because they were an essential part of the gaming experience. Cutting that out, is like cutting out the very heart of what you actually SEE. Now emulating glare and curve in a screen is another matter. Except for rare instances, programmers obviously had a uniform pixel count so they didn't incorporate the curve.

Which is complete and utter bull (not going after you, just the mindset that puts it all together so easily), because film is not designed by a pixel and never truly can be.

Relative. More space is more chemical element in that space...of course I could argue about the nano level in the other direction and perhaps the less chemical gives way to the "absence" makes another image, but then that gets into philosophical...

And that is where we agree. The look of the film print is the bible, not the negative. Much like my Mortal Kombat monitor look.

Here is the equation to video games:

The code without filters-the negative
The game in the arcade with scanlines and original monitor duplicated chips etc...-the film print
The Nintendo/Atari/Sega etc...-the VHS/Laserdisc/DVD copy
the Playsation 2/Sega Dreamcast (being touted as "arcade perfect")-bluray...not quite film print level, but very very close...and in some cases, perhaps spot on.
Newer computers and smart programming-4K bluray and yes back to arcade/film print like quality in most cases (but still short when you really look at detail of film and original hardware with games).

Pong and other analog circuit based games...kinda like 70 mm film prints, even scanned at 8K, there aren't computer processors...or scanners today that have even got close no matter what the "K" lovers or processor whores try to sell you.

Perhaps you don't love the film that much (nothing wrong with that). For those that do, no replacement to getting the best that it can be.

Did you at least click on the link for comparison?

 

Trust me, I know that - as a Mame user - I'm way out of whack with what the vast majority of people want. What I want is a game of Pacman that uses the same code as the original game. That it looks precisely the same isn't a concern. To mark myself as even more of a disgrace, I simply use the HQ3X "Image Enhancement" setting, which blends things to my liking, without making everything look blocky. However, if I didn't have that, then it'd be blocky for me. Scanlines were the technology of the time, and yes they took it into account, but it's not an essential part of the game. Most Mame users seem to believe it's an important part of the aesthetic, which I accept. As I say, it's not something I enjoy, in fact it detracts. Call me a loser.

Not sure I understand how to read the information in that link - is it showing resolution, or frame cropping? Resolution I can deal with, frame cropping is a whole other thing, that few would support.

I don't know how to quantify how much one likes something. I liked it enough to buy it. Worse are the Basketcase sequels, which to my knowledge have been treated poorly on home releases.