Dreadnaught UK HKL vs. FR HK Vidéo

chenlung · Post by **chenlung** » 22 Aug 2006, 00:33

HKL may feature DVNR too which is a real pain.

tom2681 · Post by **tom2681** » 22 Aug 2006, 00:36

You allergic to DNRV too, huh ?

That's why I tend to prefer HK Vidéo's transfers. They're dirty, but at least they're not soft.

chenlung · Post by **chenlung** » 22 Aug 2006, 01:02

Yeah definately, 'Wheels on Meals' FS was a chore to sit through

!

During restorations, there are two options:

1) Torture through removing every single bit of damage manually (costs more) - HKL usually did this and whilst the film looked pretty clean without lots of inspection/comparison, the grain removal and cropping/blowing up to compensate the ratio did no favours - Had it been left the way it was, it may have actually left the transfer looking stunning regardless of competition!
2) Restore major damage (big cracks/scratches or something) and for the remaining part to save time/money and possible sheer lazyness (or tortured staff couldn't take it anymore), use an automatic method which sometimes mistakenly detects features for damage and fucks the pixels around to soften it.

Just thinking: It's possible that softness of the image could be down to the cropping (of what could have been the DVD's resolution - 720x576) to a lesser resolution (700x500) and then upconverting back up to 720x576 - possibly print problems at the sides or something that cases the distributor to crop off the pixels - could be wrong however).

Just remember: For every move, there's a price - Less grain and noise (audio/video), more detail and vibrancy lost.

HK Video did pretty well for the Media Asia prints although the presentations can be rather dirty, grainy and worn out no thanks to weak/strong contrasts/brightness/colour levels and sometimes they can lose out completely for it's sheer uglyness.

Maybe it's me, but I seem to hate French DVDs as SECAM effects (if that's still being used) seem to be too 'orangey' (like in 'Last Hero from China'), 'Tai Chi Master' not only had problems with these, but frame compensation seemed to be used (either artificial motion and/or line combining).

tom2681 · Post by **tom2681** » 22 Aug 2006, 01:40

There are no SECAM effects on french DVDs, I can guarantee that.

There's no SECAM at all with DVD.

The "orangey" tint that you're talking about seems to be some kind of colour filter. I don't know whether it comes from the Media Asia prints or not.

I did notice some strange problems with Tai-Chi Master (can't quite put my finger on them, though). But when you compare it to the Universe disc...