Hunter in the Dark: R2J vs R2FR

HungFist · Post by **HungFist** » 03 Feb 2008, 14:15

Top: R2J Shochiku
Bottom: R2 FR HK Video

Neither dvd is very good. The R2J is very soft and features weak colours. A ”Digitally Remastered” dvd shouldn’t look like this. The HK Video is much sharper and more colourful, but obviously boosted (see how colours have gone missing in some shots). The skintones are worse and some scenes are strangely blue (although the R2J also shows blueness in many shots, and much if it seems intentional). Overall HK Video seems more pleasing to me, though. I watched it last night and wasn’t too distracted by the flaws, although it has to be said that I was expecting worse and didn't have my mopes very high. Both transfers are progressive.

I noticed a small difference between the prints while making the comparison. The fire cap didn’t match at first, which was because HK Video is missing the 8 first frames of that shot. I don’t know if there are more differences like this, but should’t be anything too big since the same sub script fit both dvds (after dealing with the NTSC/PAL and starting logo differences) without problems.

Shingster · Post by **Shingster** » 03 Feb 2008, 20:38

The french DVD isn't more colourful really, it's just brighter & so the colours can look bolder, still there's a big difference in quality there.

Hey Hung, which French etailers do you use? Any that are english friendly?

HungFist · Post by **HungFist** » 03 Feb 2008, 21:14

Shingster wrote:The french DVD isn't more colourful really, it's just brighter & so the colours can look bolder, still there's a big difference in quality there.

Ah, thanks. I'm not much of an expert when it comes to these things.

Shingster wrote: Hey Hung, which French etailers do you use? Any that are english friendly?

Some years ago I used amazon, but then I had some problems with my Visa Electron and started using asia-diffusion.

asia-diffusion has killer shipping: 10€ + 2 per item. The good news is that size does not matter. Still, ordering just one or two normal size dvds would not make any sense.

Their site is in french only, but it's easy to use. I don't know any french myself, but never had problems making orders.

A friend of mine mentioned that he had used a store called RDM Shopping some years ago without problems.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 03 Feb 2008, 21:27

I've only ever used Amazon and Medias.com (who're Belgium but in English). I'll check out Asia-Diffusion, pity it's just Asian DVDs.

Lourdes · Post by **Lourdes** » 03 Feb 2008, 21:59

Shingster wrote:The french DVD isn't more colourful really, it's just brighter & so the colours can look bolder, still there's a big difference in quality there.

Hey Hung, which French etailers do you use? Any that are english friendly?

It's not brightness, they appear to have done the same thing they do to every release of their which is messing with the colour levels and saturation. If you open one of the R2J caps in Photoshop and do "auto colour" then play a little with the channel mixer you'll be able to turn the R2J caps into near identical matches.

Every cap I've seen from HK Video just looks far too new and unreal.

Shingster · Post by **Shingster** » 03 Feb 2008, 23:40

Lourdes wrote:It's not brightness, they appear to have done the same thing they do to every release of their which is messing with the colour levels and saturation. If you open one of the R2J caps in Photoshop and do "auto colour" then play a little with the channel mixer you'll be able to turn the R2J caps into near identical matches.

Aye you're right, some form of colour "correction" seems mandatory to western distributors (I suspect because it's an easy way to give a print an artificially fresher and more uniform look), but HKVideo is particularly bad for it (as was HKL). I stuck to simple and incorrect terms because I couldn't be arsed to go into it all when I really was more interested in asking Hung for some french etailers links!