 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Posted: |
Feb 5, 2014 - 10:59 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
CH-CD
(Member)
|
Ive just found out that many Fox titles have been released in Spain on dvd and Blu-ray(!) in widescreen that Fox archives have released in pan/scan editions .
Among the WIDESCREEN dvds are BOY ON A DOLPHIN, THE RAINS OF RANCHIPUR, KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES, THE GIFT OF LOVE, THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN and TENDER IS THE NIGHT.
I ordered some of these from Spain, and, so far, they're terrific !
I got "Boy on a Dolphin", "King of the Khyber Rifles" and "Woman's World". The prints are fine, although "Dolphin" has a hint of pink, but it's not too bad. The Stereo sound is excellent.
Next, i'm getting "Night People" and "Rains of Ranchipur".
I had a nice surprise today because .....I also ordered a copy of "Plymouth Adventure" and, when it arrived, I found that it also has a copy of the soundtrack CD included.
It cost me less than £4.00, including postage. How's that for a bargain ?
On checking, I see that they also have the same package for "Anne of the Indies", "The Prize", "The War Lord" and several others.
Viva Espagna !
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Posted: |
Feb 5, 2014 - 2:48 PM
|
|
|
|
By: |
philiperic
(Member)
|
Ive just found out that many Fox titles have been released in Spain on dvd and Blu-ray(!) in widescreen that Fox archives have released in pan/scan editions .
Among the WIDESCREEN dvds are BOY ON A DOLPHIN, THE RAINS OF RANCHIPUR, KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES, THE GIFT OF LOVE, THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN and TENDER IS THE NIGHT.
I ordered some of these from Spain, and, so far, they're terrific !
I got "Boy on a Dolphin", "King of the Khyber Rifles" and "Woman's World". The prints are fine, although "Dolphin" has a hint of pink, but it's not too bad. The Stereo sound is excellent.
Next, i'm getting "Night People" and "Rains of Ranchipur".
I had a nice surprise today because .....I also ordered a copy of "Plymouth Adventure" and, when it arrived, I found that it also has a copy of the soundtrack CD included.
It cost me less than £4.00, including postage. How's that for a bargain ?
On checking, I see that they also have the same package for "Anne of the Indies", "The Prize", "The War Lord" and several others.
Viva Espagna !
thanks for the new info CH -- I saw ANNE ..had a cd -- are these cds the same as the US ones? Probably not
Joe- IN LOVE AND WAR is in proper aspect ratio on the Sp release and it is likely sterophonic. Im ordering a bunch of these as there is a sale on now thru the 14th, I believe. I'll add IN LOVE AND WAR.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Wikipedia article referenced in the post above has one line that puzzles me:
"If an anamorphic DVD video is played on standard 4:3 television without adjustment, the image will look horizontally squeezed."
I've played hundreds of anamorphic DVDs on my 4:3 television and none of them have looked squeezed. The widescreen titles all look properly letterboxed. What is the "adjustment" that is mentioned in that sentence? How is it that my 4:3 TV, which was manufactured in the early 1990s, well before anamorphic DVDs became standard, is adjusting the anamorphic data stream to look properly on my set?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
Jan 5, 2015 - 10:26 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
RoryR
(Member)
|
The Wikipedia article referenced in the post above has one line that puzzles me:
"If an anamorphic DVD video is played on standard 4:3 television without adjustment, the image will look horizontally squeezed."
I've played hundreds of anamorphic DVDs on my 4:3 television and none of them have looked squeezed. The widescreen titles all look properly letterboxed. What is the "adjustment" that is mentioned in that sentence? How is it that my 4:3 TV, which was manufactured in the early 1990s, well before anamorphic DVDs became standard, is adjusting the anamorphic data stream to look properly on my set?
Your TV isn't, it's your DVD player. You have it set to show a letterboxed image within the 4:3 frame of your CRT if it's playing an anamorphic transfer. I don't know if your DVD player has the setting (that being a choice of either 4:3 or 16X9) -- and it's been since the last century that I used to have "fun" with this --, but you can change what your player is outputting, and then instead of a properly proportioned letterboxed image on your screen, you'll see an anamorphically squeezed one. If you still have the instruction manual for your player, or if you're brave enough to fiddle around with your player's settings, check it out.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
Jan 5, 2015 - 11:22 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Grecchus
(Member)
|
Watching older films like The Robe and Demetrius, there has always been sufficient optical "spherical" distortion at the leftmost and rightmost extremities of the screen to draw attention. It's like those parts of the screen are tending towards a curved horizon and resembles something like an Escher image, especially when the camera is panning rapidly and the sense of a spherical "goldfish bowl" held statically in front of the screen pervades.
You'd think that when the image is digitally scanned the anamorphically distorted "screen map" can be liberated from the goldfish bowl effect with auto-compensating scanning software of the vertical peripheries. On the other hand, the collateral anamorphic effect from the already unsqueezed image is an indicator of the genuine article. I've got an NTSC DvD of The Spirit Of ST. Louis which is quite heavily subjected to this extremity distortion. It kind of looks more of a convex "out" rather than a concave "in" effect, although it could be down to a side-effect of individual perception.
Would these films have looked quite so "field-distorted" when originally projected at the time they were made (and, therefore, the effect is a result of a physical limitation of, to all intents and purposes, photography and projection lenses coupled together), or is there a mismatch between the lenses used to originally photograph the films and current-day lenses subsequently used to generate the DvD and Blu features we see nowadays?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Your TV isn't, it's your DVD player. You have it set to show a letterboxed image within the 4:3 frame of your CRT if it's playing an anamorphic transfer. I don't know if your DVD player has the setting (that being a choice of either 4:3 or 16X9) -- and it's been since the last century that I used to have "fun" with this --, but you can change what your player is outputting, and then instead of a properly proportioned letterboxed image on your screen, you'll see an anamorphically squeezed one. If you still have the instruction manual for your player, or if you're brave enough to fiddle around with your player's settings, check it out.
That makes sense. Either my DVD player was set up correctly out of the box, or I made the proper selection at that time and have never given it another thought.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
Jan 5, 2015 - 2:50 PM
|
|
|
|
By: |
joec
(Member)
|
Watching older films like The Robe and Demetrius, there has always been sufficient optical "spherical" distortion at the leftmost and rightmost extremities of the screen to draw attention. It's like those parts of the screen are tending towards a curved horizon and resembles something like an Escher image, especially when the camera is panning rapidly and the sense of a spherical "goldfish bowl" held statically in front of the screen pervades.
You'd think that when the image is digitally scanned the anamorphically distorted "screen map" can be liberated from the goldfish bowl effect with auto-compensating scanning software of the vertical peripheries. On the other hand, the collateral anamorphic effect from the already unsqueezed image is an indicator of the genuine article. I've got an NTSC DvD of The Spirit Of ST. Louis which is quite heavily subjected to this extremity distortion. It kind of looks more of a convex "out" rather than a concave "in" effect, although it could be down to a side-effect of individual perception.
Would these films have looked quite so "field-distorted" when originally projected at the time they were made (and, therefore, the effect is a result of a physical limitation of, to all intents and purposes, photography and projection lenses coupled together), or is there a mismatch between the lenses used to originally photograph the films and current-day lenses subsequently used to generate the DvD and Blu features we see nowadays?
I think that the " Escher image" distortion is part of the charm of the early CinemaScope films. They were meant to be projected on a slighly curved screen to impart a feeling of dept. Perhaps this made the distortion more acceptable. I wonder how these films would look as a "smilebox" blu-ray presentation
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
Jan 5, 2015 - 5:55 PM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Grecchus
(Member)
|
I think that the " Escher image" distortion is part of the charm of the early CinemaScope films. They were meant to be projected on a slighly curved screen to impart a feeling of dept. Perhaps this made the distortion more acceptable. I wonder how these films would look as a "smilebox" blu-ray presentation
I'm assuming the spherical lens shape is constant and extends in even distribution around it's very centre - that is, it's principal axis. If the cinemascope screen were to be swapped from the horizontal to the vertical in span and aspect, the same problem would inevitably result. In other words, it's a "current" technology problem, whereby the limits of lens engineering and production methods determine the "artifact" behavior herein under scrutiny. In the 50s, therefore, there was no way around the problem. As you say, the effect does lend a kind of charm, other than when the panning action is taking place leaving the eye to experience a heightened sense of the bulge at the centre and the pinched extents at the sides. We don't see this happening with modern widescreen films, presumably because lens technology is that much more advanced than it was in the 50s, leaving the whole of the widescreen expanded image with a (more or less) one-to-one correlation over it's entire expanse (remember the corrective "surgery" of Hubble.)
What I was alluding to in the previous post is that much as we have had advances in sound engineering to correct mangled mag tape so as to make possible presentations of scores that are of the highest order, the same sleight of hand could be applied to correct older films that can be restored digitally. The fact is there may be a certain level of moral ambiguity in removing any traces of the cinemascope process, when the first thing that generally appears in a cinemascope film is the very process introducing itself. I am sure the corrective actions could be applied. It behoves a controlling exec somewhere to ponder the problem carefully, especially when going to the financial expense of restoring a film for HD distribution. It's definitely a tricky one.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
Jan 6, 2015 - 11:25 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
RoryR
(Member)
|
I'm assuming the spherical lens shape is constant and extends in even distribution around it's very centre - that is, it's principal axis. If the cinemascope screen were to be swapped from the horizontal to the vertical in span and aspect, the same problem would inevitably result. In other words, it's a "current" technology problem, whereby the limits of lens engineering and production methods determine the "artifact" behavior herein under scrutiny. In the 50s, therefore, there was no way around the problem. As you say, the effect does lend a kind of charm, other than when the panning action is taking place leaving the eye to experience a heightened sense of the bulge at the centre and the pinched extents at the sides. We don't see this happening with modern widescreen films, presumably because lens technology is that much more advanced than it was in the 50s, leaving the whole of the widescreen expanded image with a (more or less) one-to-one correlation over it's entire expanse (remember the corrective "surgery" of Hubble.)
The company PANAVISION came into being to make improved anamorphic len assemblies (it actually takes several lens) to address this very problem, but even into the late sixties older "CimemaScope" lens, mostly made by Bausch & Lomb, were in use by companies that couldn't afford the newer lenses. I recently watched 1967's PREHISTORIC WOMEN (AKA "Slave Girls") from Hammer and you can see the distortion on the sides in some shots, but even a movie as high budget (for the time) as 1968's PLANET OF THE APES has the effect, in a second unit aerial shot near the beginning of the movie, a shot of the spaceship in the lake taken from a helicopter that then pans across the barren landscape. You can see the distortion effect as it pans, but it's because they're using an older anamorphic camera.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
