Questions on Alfred Hitchcock's Masterpiece Collection DVD set

I need some advice. I had bought the Alfred Hitchcock fims separately on DVD that came out around 1999 or so and noticed Vertigo and Psycho are not anamorphic. I believe they are in this collector's set.

If anyone has this can you confirm that. Also, How is the picture and audio quality, and how are the DVD's housed?

Is it worth getting (especially since it has his later films (Topaz, and Torn Curtain)

 

For Vertigo, the Masterpiece dvd has the movie in both 5.1 (horrible) and Mono (The way Hitchcock intended it)
BTW, visually, the movie looks great.

 

Steve, thank you for your help. Really appreciate it! Didn't know that about those two films.

 

It's a nice set, at a nice price. However, the packaging isn't the best. The outer velvety box looks nice. Inside are cardboard cases. They slide into slots inside the box. If you don't have the case lined up correctly, it can be hard to slide it back in without damaging the cardboard.

Each case holds 4 discs; 2 on each side overlapping each other. If the disc you want is on the bottom, you have to remove the upper one first, so it's a juggling exercise. The spindles wear out, so some of my discs slide around inside (and fall out of!) the cases. The discs themselves are black with the title written in dark red. For me, they're very hard to read.

Doug

 

The set is fabulous. Here is a very detailed review with screen comparisons of older sets.

14 Hitchcock films including some of his best work and covering over 30 years of cinema. New bonus disc extras and a collectable booklet help mark this as one of the most intriguing releases... in a year marked with extensive value. Re-mastered anamorphic transfers of Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960) only add more fuel to the fire. Is this DVD of the Year material ? or have they just simply changed the shape of the pixels and used the old transfers? Let's see...


http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews17/Alfred_Hitchcock_Masterpiece_Collection_DVD_Review.htm

 

Ken-
In the 5.1 version, Jimmy Stewart is balancing his cane in what's her face's apt. I hear birds chirping.

In the mono version approved by Hitchcock, no birds in the background.
The foley gunshots at the beginning of the film also seem out of place.
The restorer has stated on other forums that Universal wanted it released in the theaters and wanted it more modern sounding.
Universal blew it, IMO
Although having Hermann's score in stereo was good.

I have no complaints with the mono track. Then again if I heard a better sounding one, I'd change my mind.

 

Are the trays similar to the Faces box set where they overlap?

 

I don't know what the Faces box set is. I can tell you they're similar to the recent 2-disc Star Trek movies, but the ST cases are more durable.

Doug

 

The music was re-recorded as well, so I think the only original element is the dialogue. I like the 5.1 mix, but maybe because it's the one I'm familiar with. The gunshot in the beginning sounds odd, but everything else sounds fine. I think I tried the mono track once for a few minutes, and it is in bad shape.

Doug

 

I heard about these upcoming releases. Vertigo is one of my all-time favs. I go the original Universal non-anamorphic DVD release (with orange cover) that eventually "died" on me. I replaced it with another non-anamorphic (purple cover) version. Finally, I upgraded to the "Big Purple Box" version which looks pretty good. Not nearly as good as the hi-def transfer I watched on HDNet Movies. So are these new DVDs from same transfer HDNet used recently?

Most importantly, if we have a new HD transfer out there... where the heck is the Blu-ray???

 

I can remember going to see this in the theater back in '98 or whenever it was. During the rooftop scene when those modern-sounding gunshots were fired, there was plenty of derisive laughter from the audience.

 

Indeed. U-HD showed a lot of their color Hitchcocks a few months ago. It sure would be nice to have the Masterpiece set in BD, but I bet they're worried that people might complain about the earlier films like Shadow of a Doubt needing more work.

doug

 

I think I saw it on UniversalHD too, not HDNet Movies as I previously indicated. Well, what people complain about is DNR and edge enhancement (like the Patton BD). Not that the source elements are old and/or lacking. Wish studios could understand this.

 

The same type of thing

 

That does indeed make sense. I suppose I'll hold off and cross my fingers for a Christmas '09 release of these on Blu-ray.

 

Steve, I think Btomarra is referring to an anamorphic video squeeze, which reduces a widescreen image to standard 4x3 for DVD release.

In playback, the DVD electronically unsqueezes the image to create a letterboxed image on a normal 4x3 standard-def TV set.

This is not the same as a CinemaScope/Panavision optical squeeze.

A lot of collectors prefer the electronic squeeze for DVD release, because then the picture uses up all the available bits for the DVD compression. Otherwise, you're throwing away the black area at the top and bottom, even on a 1.66 or 1.85 VistaVision release like Vertigo. In the case of Psycho, this was shot in conventional 35mm but intended for 1.85. Collectors and historians are divided as to whether they prefer TV framing on films like this -- showing excessive area on the top and bottom of the picture -- or matted framing, where areas of the picture the director never wanted picture to see are obscured.

Artistically, I think the latter makes more sense, but I understand why anal-retentive collectors get upset when they see more picture area on a 4x3 TV transfer.

This is all a moot point with BluRay, since the native picture format is 1.78, plus they have a huge bit-bucket available for data compression (almost 50GB on dual layer).

 

Just about any 'A Hard Day's Night' thread turns to this eventually.

Unfortunately, it's not a moot point when you get into situations where someone feels the need to take content designed to be 4x3 and manipulates it to fit in the 16x9 frame.

 

I recently got the DVD version with mono soundtrack. My video setup has standard audio. I prefer the mono sound. It's hard to accept a remix. I did not find the hiss or compression objectionable.

Of course, I'd be happy to hear a better one, as long as the mix is the original.

 

As far as I know, all the video transfers of Psycho to date have been done from fine-grain positives, not the negative.

I had one of the fine-grains up on a Rank back in the 1980s, doing fixes on Psycho when I was at Modern Videofilm. The matte in the shower scene came and went, and was done in-camera. It wasn't an electronic matte or an optical matte. We had to blow up those scenes for TV so as not to have black bars coming and going in the transfer.

I'm 99.9% certain all the negatives to most Hitchcock films (post-1950) survive, but I can't say what condition they're in. They might not hold up well on most optical printers or scanners, so somebody would have to go through them and do a physical restoration, cleaning the negatives, redoing splices, fixing bad sprocket holes, and so on.

The only full Hitchcock transfers I've done were North by Northwest (for laserdisc in the late 1980s) and To Catch a Thief. I regret a decision I made in mastering to pull some of the green in the night scenes of the latter, because when I saw a Tech print years later, it was clear that -- for whatever reason -- the night scenes were deliberately lit and timed very green. It looked weird as hell, but I can only assume Hitchcock wanted it that way, and I was wrong to try to try to reduce it. NxNW was a lot more normal looking.

Note that I had nothing to do with the super-noise-reduced NxNW DVD that came out about 10 years ago. That's a strange-looking transfer, but it was processed in the early days of Lawry Digital, and they went a little too far with the de-graining.

 

I just received the Alfred Hitchcock Masterpiece Collection today for $90. I played Rope and thought it looked nice. Can't wait to examine the other movies again. This collection is nicely packaged. Can't beat the price considering you get 14 movies. Vertigo and Psycho have been enhanced for 16x9 sets.

BTW, this forum is a valuable site. The education I am receiving especially here on this thread is greatly appreciated. I am an extreme novice about matting, etc. Exciting to read these posts!