So, I've always wondered (and this is directed at Ian in no way at all) why people who write DVD and Blu-ray reviews come up with gloriously wrong-headed misnomers such as...
1. The image exhibits a liberal coat of grain. How? Grain is part of the image structure from film (as opposed to digital). It can't be "put on" over the image like a coat can over the body, as it's already there. Grain isn't something that is "added" to a film's image, or layered over, or whatever hip nonsense is being spread this week. Grain structure comes from lighting, aperture speed etc etc and is the intrinsic element of standard film's image that attributes it its detail. It's not something that has been painted over a pinsharp pristine image for fun or like putting an extra coat of paint on your house. This, and expressions like it, are amongst the dumbest nonsense I've seen (and part of the reason I've stopped reading so-called "tech specs" on reviews of home video media)
2. The image exhibits...a light dusting of grain, a shitstorm of grain etc etc. Again, how? See point one. If it wasn't meant to be there, it wouldn't be there! 35mm doesn't look like it's been shot through glass once it's processed -- and then some dope comes in and pours grain all over it like glitter out of a tin.
3. The image preserves (Ian, you ARE to blame for the proliferation of that word around the internerd, though -- seems once you used it at AVM, everyone and their dog across the planet copied suit) its theatrical aspect ratio of 1.78. How? 1.78 is a 16:9 widescreen TELEVISION standard, not cinema projection AR. Typically, films are projected in cinemas at 1.33 (rare), 1.66 (even rarer), 1.85 or 2.35; if the aspect ratio on home video isn't one of those then sorry, but it isn't in its "original" theatrical ratio at all.
4. The image is presented open matte/Academy ratio 1.37 as seen on original theatrical exhibition. Again, how? Theatrical/Drive-in exhibition conformed to the OARs as listed in point three, and a film shot "open matte" was generally masked off with a fixed aperture gate IN THE PROJECTOR, so how does suddenly deciding to "present" a film open matte make it the OAR? Even Sam Raimi fixed the home video gaffe of The Evil Dead when he instructed Anchor Bay to mask the open matte image off at 1.85...as that was he had shot in mind for (whether people prefer one AR or the other is moot, as Sam shot for 1.85 and that was what he eventually ended up with on home video).
5. Click on image for full size Blu-ray capture...only when you do you get a compressed jpeg image that is compressed down to anywhere between 10 and 1% of the native BD image's resolution (plus it's probably been "tweaked" in Photoshop to boot). Please tell me how a jpeg image at a size of 80kilobytes is anywhere representative, or retains significant resolution, of an image that was originally 6 to 8 Megabytes in size when it was orignally captured? An average seems to be around 500 kilobytes for a BD capture on most so-called "expert" sites -- I get up to that size after Photoshop fiddling and jpeg compression on DVD captures for my blog, and I'm not even doing them for the sake of tech-centric reviews...they're just pics to give people reading the reviews something to look at (because, let's face it, the majority of adults these days are like little kids: if you don't give them a picturebook to read, then they're not going to read it period). If I can do decent screenshots for fun, why can't these people who run the "expert" sites do the same? They do want to be seen as "authoritive", right?
There's more...but my brain is threatening to explode just thinking about all the misleading BS you find in online BD/DVD reviews that tends to sway general public opinion (as Joe Public doesn't normally give two shits about this stuff, but once a handful of wrong-headed internet reviews pop that say similar things they suddenly find that they've become an EXPERT on the matter).
PS: It should be noted that none of the above apply to this site or its reviews!
1. The image exhibits a liberal coat of grain. How? Grain is part of the image structure from film (as opposed to digital). It can't be "put on" over the image like a coat can over the body, as it's already there. Grain isn't something that is "added" to a film's image, or layered over, or whatever hip nonsense is being spread this week. Grain structure comes from lighting, aperture speed etc etc and is the intrinsic element of standard film's image that attributes it its detail. It's not something that has been painted over a pinsharp pristine image for fun or like putting an extra coat of paint on your house. This, and expressions like it, are amongst the dumbest nonsense I've seen (and part of the reason I've stopped reading so-called "tech specs" on reviews of home video media)
2. The image exhibits...a light dusting of grain, a shitstorm of grain etc etc. Again, how? See point one. If it wasn't meant to be there, it wouldn't be there! 35mm doesn't look like it's been shot through glass once it's processed -- and then some dope comes in and pours grain all over it like glitter out of a tin.
3. The image preserves (Ian, you ARE to blame for the proliferation of that word around the internerd, though -- seems once you used it at AVM, everyone and their dog across the planet copied suit) its theatrical aspect ratio of 1.78. How? 1.78 is a 16:9 widescreen TELEVISION standard, not cinema projection AR. Typically, films are projected in cinemas at 1.33 (rare), 1.66 (even rarer), 1.85 or 2.35; if the aspect ratio on home video isn't one of those then sorry, but it isn't in its "original" theatrical ratio at all.
4. The image is presented open matte/Academy ratio 1.37 as seen on original theatrical exhibition. Again, how? Theatrical/Drive-in exhibition conformed to the OARs as listed in point three, and a film shot "open matte" was generally masked off with a fixed aperture gate IN THE PROJECTOR, so how does suddenly deciding to "present" a film open matte make it the OAR? Even Sam Raimi fixed the home video gaffe of The Evil Dead when he instructed Anchor Bay to mask the open matte image off at 1.85...as that was he had shot in mind for (whether people prefer one AR or the other is moot, as Sam shot for 1.85 and that was what he eventually ended up with on home video).
5. Click on image for full size Blu-ray capture...only when you do you get a compressed jpeg image that is compressed down to anywhere between 10 and 1% of the native BD image's resolution (plus it's probably been "tweaked" in Photoshop to boot). Please tell me how a jpeg image at a size of 80kilobytes is anywhere representative, or retains significant resolution, of an image that was originally 6 to 8 Megabytes in size when it was orignally captured? An average seems to be around 500 kilobytes for a BD capture on most so-called "expert" sites -- I get up to that size after Photoshop fiddling and jpeg compression on DVD captures for my blog, and I'm not even doing them for the sake of tech-centric reviews...they're just pics to give people reading the reviews something to look at (because, let's face it, the majority of adults these days are like little kids: if you don't give them a picturebook to read, then they're not going to read it period). If I can do decent screenshots for fun, why can't these people who run the "expert" sites do the same? They do want to be seen as "authoritive", right?
There's more...but my brain is threatening to explode just thinking about all the misleading BS you find in online BD/DVD reviews that tends to sway general public opinion (as Joe Public doesn't normally give two shits about this stuff, but once a handful of wrong-headed internet reviews pop that say similar things they suddenly find that they've become an EXPERT on the matter).
PS: It should be noted that none of the above apply to this site or its reviews!
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