Unbelievably Poor Transfer of a Movie Classic
480154
"One Eyed Jacks" was photographed in the super high-quality format known as VistaVision.  Look at the Blu Ray edition of Hitchcock's "North by Northwest" to get an idea of how clear, sharp and vibrant such films should look.  This DVD of the amazing, scenic Brando western actually looks worse than a bad VHS copy.  If the people that turned out this shabby mess had deliberately tried to come up with an unwatchable travesty, it would be hard to imagine how the result could have been worse.  The banner over the top of the front cover states that it is digitally remastered.  If this is the case, we must assume that their source material was a bad 8mm print.  It is dark; the color is muddy and terrible, and the image looks about as fuzzy and low-resolution as any home video product you are ever likely to encounter.  We continue to hope that, if Paramount continues to neglect this hard-hitting title, that they might at least provide the original VistaVision elements to an outfit like Criterion, or Twilight Time Entertainment so that people who care about releasing quality editions of films could do it justice.  What a shame!
1512832
This is an awful VHS transfer to DVD. The picture is murky, muddy and alternates between dim and bright while the sound quality in badly dubbed.
I do not recommend anyone to purchase this tripe.
4381779
They re-release the Graduate on DVD in 2005 only to distribute the EXACT SAME product only without a very attractive interface and special features, but with the same crappy picture and sound quality!

I give the film "The Graduate" from 1967 as many stars as any ratings measure can grant, but this DVD is a very poor represntation that is disrespectful of the genuine classic piece of cinematic art and cultural revolutionary comedy-piece that this movie was and always will be!

It's a shame. The picture is still grainy and the "widescreen" is still a full-screen image with black bars at top & bottom and NOT a true 16X9 formatted image for widescreen televisions! This true masterpiece of film demands nothing short of the best optimization that current-day technology can (and should) provide! Anything less is completely unacceptable! I'm sorry, but this is a travesy. The Graduate deserves the most pristine image and sound quality that the DVD format can give and viewers should demand nothing short of that high-standard of excellence.

The sound is in a lousy mono and the picture is fuzzy at times, desaturated, grainy, noisy, and compressed too much. The producers of this DVD obviously aren't die-hard fans and did a half-a** job here. Most fans of this film would gladly pay a few extra dollars for a better version, so why go cheap on such a great classic is beyond me?!? That's just a moronic business decision of a cheap corporation that doesn't know art from a hole in the ground, always cutting corners to salvage every penny. For shame!

I wish the Criterion Collection would remaster the Graduate and finally do it right! Amen.
953518
Don't get me wrong - the film itself is a gem.

This transcription, however, is really bad. The original is 16:9, and the transcription is 4:3. There's none of that pan/scan stuff, which would be bad enough in itself - they just cropped the edge of the screen. To call it 'amateur' would be an insult to amateurs. Think 'bootleg copy'.

This is the second example of crappy transfers from European productions that I've come across in the last couple of weeks. Both involved British productions currently unavailable in the US. I assume the business model is to provide USA-compatible copies of difficult to obtain European productions (c/f A Month in the Country), hoping that the target audience will accept anything.

We don't. Anyone feel like producing something worth buying?

And just to repeat - the rating is for the transfer: the film is at the very least ten stars.
4766969
"Our Town" has been one of my favourite films for many years, and I've been waiting a long time for a DVD version to appear. Like the  previous reviewer, I knew I was in for disappointment ( to say the least )  when I saw the quality of the DVD. With the jumpy, out of focus, dirty  print to the almost inaudible audio track throughout I have seldom seen a  worse example of "remastering" in a long career of movie  watching. Avoid this one - instead have a look at the wonderful Criterion  re-issue of "Brief Encounter", for an example of how a classic  film should be treated.
126579
An hilarious movie worth having but an exceptionally poor transfer.  I can abide scratches and artifacts but the contrast was terrible, making for a dark, dim viewing and there is NO excuse for not cleaning the film gate!
3992878
The movie is fantastic but the DVD quality is super poor. The early low lit images tip off that the transfer is very low quality. There is image shift that makes the film look like a weird experimental animation. The bed in the first scene is literally dancing up and down. If that kind of mind tripping distraction is your cup of tea, buy this overpriced DVD that Criterion Collection will probably release WELL at some point and with some existent extras. Come on, the movie isn't any longer than Seven Samurai and it's on two discs?! Take the hint.
1549660
As with "A Touch of Class", I couldn't enjoy the undeniable artistic merit of this film because of the lousy technical transfer to DVD. Once again, the DVD box blurb states a 4:3 screen ratio, but what you actually see is a 16:9 image made to fit into the 4:3 frame. In this transfer we see less of the "black bars" at the top and bottom of the screen as the 16:9 image has been cropped to fill up more of the 4:3 space. So, while we see an almost full 4:3 picture, in reality we have actually lost peripheral screen detail in the process. Additionally, my copy has an annoying purply-blue vertical line at the leftmost edge of the frame which is most distracting to screen content. For me, this is another great film ruined by those (who should know better?) taking dodgy technical short-cuts!
2176960
I basically mirror the comments of previous reviewers who give this film high marks for storyline and action.
My main complaint is the outrageous quality of the transfer over to DVD. I have yet to come across a DVD that has such terrible image quality.  It is like looking at an old VHS tape.  Image outlines shimmer and fluctuate.  Lighting and shadow effects darken and lighten. Sound quality is OK in my opinion. Nonetheless, the image quality is an annoying distraction which degrades the overall enjoyment of this finely done Sci Fi thriller.
If you must get this DVD, write to Warner Studios and tell them how lousy a job they did on this DVD transfer.  This film deserved much better attention to image quality. I am sure many of you would have screamed bloody murder if "Alien" had been so poorly done.
Warner needs to come out with an "Outland SE" to rectify this problem. ...
428795
This is a review of this blu-ray transfer and not the movie itself.
I preordered this great film and have looked forward to the restored version of this classic  coming to blu-ray, but boy what a disapointing transfer.  The sound is great, but the quality of the picture transfer is lousey to say the least.  It looks a lot better on DVD. At least it does on my 65 inch Vizio TV.  Both sides of the picture are out of focus and lack color.  Be sure you rent this before you buy to see how it looks on your system.  I am very disapointed with CBS (Fox) for ruining this film.  If any of you remember the Fox Tod-A-O release of "Oklahoma" on DVD and how "bad" it looked, this is another disaster by Fox.  It is a Warner Brothers picture, but rights have returned to CBS who sold the film rights to WB.  Buyer beware.
3410244
What a waste of money it was to get Universal's version of "it's a wonderful life" - a horrid blurry transfer with a greenish caste to it. The republic version, aptly described as being derived from the original negative, has rich tight blacks and is sharp as a tack. A great movie to have in any collection
378180
I really hate it when a film is transferred to blu-ray without any processing. Many parts of this one are grainy, which is unacceptable on a blu-ray disc. The scenery is quite nice and handled fairly well but the transfer stinks. It is not worth buying in this condition; you might as well get the regular DVD if you really want it.
2701650
This review is for the awful transfer and NOT the movie.  I just watched the blu Ray copy and I'm so mad!  This is one of my fave films but the picture is blurry most of the time and it looks no better than VHS!  I thought films had to be remastered for blu Ray but obviously Warner Brothers doesn't care about Giant???
1508928
This review is specifically for the Chinese import DVD version of "Song of the South" produced by the company Bo Ying. It has English and Chinese text on the front and back cover.

I was excited to see an official (looking) release of this classic film on DVD. Unfortunately, this is not the one you're looking for.

It is a factory pressed DVD (not a burned copy), but the quality is substandard. By seeing the picture quality and occasional video dropouts, it was clear to me that this was made from a PAL VHS tape version of the film converted to NTSC. To make matters worse, there is a blue animated logo that appears EVERY 4 minutes and 45 seconds. It starts at the top right and moves across the screen to the left and stays on the screen for 20 seconds at a time. Really? Who wants to see that every 5 minutes? Certainly not me. (Click on "View and share related images" for a screenshot of this.)

However, if you're so inclined, there are a few good things about the disc. There are optional dubbed languages in Chinese and Mandarin as well as subtitles for those languages. There are surprisingly good English subtitles, too. They duplicate the natural "dialect" of all of the characters. Other than these things, the DVD is bare boned. Just the movie and no special features.

I doubt that this is authorized by Disney as there is no mention of the Disney company anywhere on the cover, the disc, or in the DVD content itself. In fact, the very beginning of the opening credits are cut to avoid "Distributed by Buena Vista" and even "Walt Disney Presents".

Bottom line, if you love the movie, you're better off getting an un-authorized copy of it from a place like MayanCastleDVD dot net or just doing research and downloading it from the internet. There are versions out there that are much better than this Chinese import.
555659
This item, a spirited film version of Zorro starring gorgeous French actor/icon Alain Delon, was apparently produced by the French in the 70's, but the copy sold on Amazon is of very inferior quality.  The transfer to DVD seemed to have been made from a poor theater print, with lines and color dropout all through the video.  The film itself is fun, and Delon makes one forget Tyrone Power, since he is so much the better (and better-looking!) actor.  Additionally, Amazon neglected to mention that it is dubbed, passably, into English.  Very jarring effect! Shame that Lionsgate or one of the other foreign film distributors hasn't gotten hold of this and issued a more respectable looking copy, with its original French soundtrack and subtitles.  Let's hope for this!
4464343
Watching the original versions of the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD is like travelling back in time - not so much to the innocence of youth but more to the days when picture quality was never much of a consideration on video releases and Fox had the reputation for the worst transfers in the business. Watching the new DVD is to step back into an age of low resolution standards conversions with all the loss of detail and motion blurring that that entailed: certainly if you've got one of the old remastered video releases you might as well hold on to that, because the quality isn't as poor as this. The sound quality is pretty awful as well. From Lucas' past track record it's all too easy to imagine this is just a scam to allow him to sell a remastered version a couple of years down the line, but it's even harder to dispel the notion that somewhere Lucas is whining "See how soft the focus is? How can you say these are better films?"

Although commonly blamed for the death of cinema as we knew it, in truth Star Wars was a huge breath of fresh air after the increasingly stale and formulaic week-in, week-out reality of woefully unimaginative and derivative downbeat on-the-cheap 70s cinema. It wasn't merely a matter of having a happy ending, more that there was a sense of panache and unapologetic adventure that had been missing for too long at the time (even the decade's best adventures, such as The Wind and the Lion and The Man Who Would Be King, saw their heroes destroyed by society in an age that had no place for them). Looking at it for the first time in years, its much better directed than remembered, extremely well constructed and beautifully designed, introducing the `future is old' concept that many would attribute to Ridley Scott. It also, unlike the prequels, has the saving grace of Han Solo, a character whose deprecating sense of humor undercuts the more solemn and potentially pretentious moments in a way that would be much missed amid the talk of apprentices, trade embargoes and midi-chloridians in the prequels. It's still fun and it still works, even in the very worst transfer of the originals.
1674611
'The Enemy Below' is one of my favourite WW2 films but this Blu-ray release by Kino Lauber should be avoided.

The transfer suffers from fuzzy imagery (only partially disguised by edge enhancement) and damage to the source elements
(particularly noticeable in the opening credits) and it rather looks like it has been poorly scanned from a release print.

I was able to do a direct comparison with a version saved on my Sky+HD box and the latter is vastly superior in video quality.

My