Macrossnalds Employee

Troll posts are getting pretty trolltastic. How is preserving film in the highest quality possible "wasting money" ? If you're satisfied projecting your LD's on a wall at low res (until laser rot sets in), then by all means, go for it. But implying that remastering & porting older films into HD is a waste is ignorant at best (not I said ignorant, nowhere did I accuse you of lying).

You can quote amazon until you're blue in the face, but never have reviews on the site been considered a serious source of information. Hell, I'd believe 2chan before amazon.

Didn't intend to be a troll, just stating my opinion on HD remastering, obviously it's not a mainstream one but I'll try to respect your opinion (that having films in better quality than was ever seen before is a good thing) if you respect mine and don't call me ignorant. I obviously won't change my opinion, you won't change yours either so conversation over.

Now how can you deny remastering with a review like that?

Well that review is just another persons opinion that I disagree with, perfection isn't necessarily a good thing at all to me, whereas authenticity is very much an important and good thing to me. The original print of Cinderella shown in the a comparible original resolution would be better to me than a high definition cleanup job done in 2011 by people who didn't even work on the original production.

Have you just been reluctant to jump into the HD era or what?

No, I'm very much loking forward to picking up Battle: Los Angeles on BD. Am I going to rebuy my entire collection in HD? No, because I don't want all films I own to be in HD.

All of this you are spewing is hater talk, and ignorant hater talk at that.

Please tell me where I've told a lie or been misinformed in this discussion. I believe my arguments are techncically sound and any point of difference is just personal opinion, which I'm entitled to have. You are calling me ignorant which assumes I have made an objective error in my assessment of these formats, which I don't believe I have.

You'd rather watch a non-anamorphic LD projected?

Yes, thats the point of projection with LD, to avoid the pillarboxing you get on a TV by being able to select the aspect ratio and scale you project at. Trust me I can get a very nice and large WIDESCREEN picture with any widescreen (yes, non-anamorphic) LD. Star Wars definitive looks very fine in 2.35:1

Why don't you just convert every movie you want to VHS and watch them on a 6 inch portable black & white tv while playing old Vectrex games on the side.

Why would I want to do that? I seek out the best tech to do the job, not just old because its old.

I'm sorry, what? I've read numerous reviews of Nausicaä and Laputa BDs and pretty much all have praised its technical merits to high heavens.

Have you read the Japanese fans reactions to Nausicaa on BD? Not high praise at all. Check it out:

My link

Through google translate 1 of the reviews, you can see what their main problems with the release are:

In short the picture is dirty.

Is best understood by frame advance look at the Nausicaa Bluray, severe mottling, the same place (clothes, for example) the color of the

Changes frame by frame. What to say and even feel like looking through a sandstorm. To feel such

Making.

Writing to a producer are listed in the booklet that comes with the Suzuki Bluray, video dared under the direction of Miyazaki

You wrote that you do not clean in the dirty so there is no sense to release in Bluray.

"I want you to respect the basic public at the time," said to have been written and Miyazaki, and when the public was more beautiful.

I think that is dirty from the time that is released in theaters.

Miyazaki's animation was a history of failure if you want pictures of software.

Nausicaa VHS & Beta • The adjustments were barely visible in what I have seen the darker the night.

Laser disk with Laputa was left of the image is turned off or what I thought.

Laser disk with a rough image was Totoro.

Images of the DVD Spirited Away • The color was reddish.

... And so on.

Nausicaa Bluray now also been added to this single page of history and the failure of its video software.

It's a crying shame.

The Japanese fans seem to want remastering like you and most people want, but Nausicaa was not remastered to maintain its original integrity (a conscious decision by Studio Ghibli that I agree with) and suffered for it on the high definition BD format due to it. I hear that Laputa and subsequent releases have been drastically remastered to please fans. This does not meet my standards however.

Now if you take that same unremastered print and transfer it to Laserdisc its perfectly fine, it looks and feels like the film and the imperfections you were not supposed to and never did see, aren't seen, and there is no need for a remaster.

I am not hating, merely questioning the need to remaster old films when perfectly good releases are already available. Spending money and time remastering and repackaging nostalgia takes away from time and money directed at new creations. It's a real shame in my opinion. You can have your 1080p on a 50 inch plasma Nausicaa BD, I'll stick to my laserdisc copy which looks and sounds closer to what was originally seen in theatres than the BD release.

The restored Cinderella edition looked so incredible and clean that some parts look like they were done with CG.

Why do you assume this is actually a good thing?

A reviewer on Amazon for the BD transfer of Nausicaa has a similar point to mine:

On the ugly DVD or VHS transfers is easy to miss the fact that this was a super sloppy production, watch it on a 1080p Projector and ohhh-boy~ you'll know. There are missing cells, miss-colored cells, really harsh analog music editing, i mean it's really a mess of a production and watching it at its best really ruined the magic for me, just saying. For some it might be part of the charm, but being a child hood favorite of mine, it was just too harsh.

You see you science nerds may say that a film in the movie theatre can technically be the equivalent of "4000p" or whatever but the screen is also incredibly huge and much more than 4 times the size of any 1080p display in your home. This means the experience in the theatre is not perfectly sharp or completely flawless, its more organic, softer and the resolution per square inch of screen is actually lower than a blu-ray signal in your home. Movies shot on good old film were never intended to be shown at 1080p on a 50 inch display. To do so shows up all the imperfections, leading to the need to "remaster" the original material, thereby compromising the integrity of the original artwork. Like any artwork, a film is a function of its time, it is directly related to that point in history and when it comes into the public domain it becomes ours, in our memories and experiences from the viewpoint of that time. When Lucas made Star Wars in the '70s, he didn't have the budget he wanted, he couldn't do everything he wanted to but that's the movie we saw, and we loved, in that time. If he did have the budget and creative freedom that he has now we might have ended up with a pile of crap like Episode I and Star Wars would have been forgotten in history. You see good and bad can come from restraint. A lot of the best fashion, art and thinking comes from the poor who have to improvise and rise above. Any remastering is just a what if scenario and not canon to the what was actually made at that time and I am not interested.

This is why I would rather watch Nausicaa, or any movie made before the digital age on a Laser disc, projected with a line doubler. The resolution is a sharp as it needs to be, the video flows organically and in a film like manner everytime because it is analogue. Most later laser discs contain rich digital soundtracks that rival Blu-ray's HD Audio, to me they are the ideal format for anything made in the 20th century. I know a lot of you here don't remember the 20th century but I sure do and it was a time when ooh aah visual perfection was secondary to original ideas and storytelling. Kung Fu panda may look super slick but Nausicaa kicks the crap out of it with its organic designs that are full of with character. It is a movie you can love like a woman you might marry who just makes you happy, you love her so much that pretty looks don't matter anymore.

I think you have slightly missed my point Keith but even if the remaster is amazing its a drasticly different product to what was originally screened and what I remember. Its personal preference but I prefer to see a film more or less as I originally saw it for nostalgia purposes. This means complete with imperfections but with the softness of analogue video.

Seriously cool, better than an actual episode of BGC.

In general I don't think older productions work well in high definition. Personally I only buy new films shot on HD on bluray, as older films either end up very grainy with all those imperfections you were never meant to see visible or remastered and super sharp which isn't how I remember the films when I originally saw them. Remastering old films takes away from the nostaglia factor. the HD remaster of DYRL? on DVD was dissapointing to me, I still go back to my Perfect Edition LD in CAV when I want to watch it. However I am glad I picked up the HD set because of the cool extras included.

A good example of an older movie looking better on an older format is Star Wars. The definitive LDs were the pinnacle release of the movies imo, cleaned up but still recognizable as the films I remembered as a kid and still with a strong feeling of nostalgia that is totally lost with me on the special editions and likely will not be present in the Star Wars blurays either.

To me the ultimate media collection would be a variety of formats with most pre 2000 movies on the best possible laserdisc (or Hi-Vision!) transfer, post 2000 on either a well mastered DVD or blu ray with the occassional D Theatre DVHS tape when it is available for that title and a mix of LP and CD for audio archives. To have the right content on the right format means never having to repurchase and satisfies me more than just rebuying on the latest format for everything.

So in short I will not buy a DYRL bluray (or a weird and awkward 3D release that I doubt would happen) release because the remastered DVD taught me a lesson, some movies have already peaked years ago.