Dawn of the Dead (and zombies in general: just for fun)

[Ian Jane]

Yeah, unfortunately there's no perfect solution on Blu-ray for the movie yet.

[Mike T]

I have both the Arrow BD and the AB BD. The Arrow release IS better, but I don't recall if it's got subs or not and I know for you, Mike, that that's a biggie.

We can live without subs, but they certainly help my wife to follow stuff against accents, mumbling and the general shoddy sound recording of low budget horrors.

And I feared you might have said the Arrow BD is the best. What entirely puts that one offside for me is that the two extra discs (the extended and Argento cuts) are interlaced standards conversions, and that pisses me off when there are perfectly good progressive NTSC versions available. As you know, some standards conversions look like utter shit on a HDTV and having tried to watch two recently (Arrow's original Dawn DVD, and Umbrella's Zombi Holocaust disc) I can confidently say that a bad conversion is like watching VHS. Yep, the conversions on both those discs I just mentioned looked that bad on a HDTV...

[Ian Jane]

I have both the Arrow BD and the AB BD. The Arrow release IS better, but I don't recall if it's got subs or not and I know for you, Mike, that that's a biggie. I can check for you after work. The transfers are, I understand, from the same source but the colors looked better on the Arrow release than the AB release, at least to my eyes - BUT neither are great, in terms of video quality. Both show some DNR and while they are a fair bit improved over the various DVD issues, they don't look a good as they could have. Perfectly watchable and all that, but not perfect.

[Mark Tolch]

I've stayed away from BD presentations of it this far because I REALLY like the film and have heard that the transfer is substandard...but that may only apply to Region A areas.

[Mike T]

I have been meaning to buy Dawn of the Dead, on some sort of digital medium, for years and a while back I did. I picked up the older Arrow edition out of the UK years ago, but much like a majority of their new product...it was shit. Interlaced and a really crappy NTSC-PAL conversion that was all soft and smeary and fucked, really. But there's so many bloody editions of this damn thing I don't know which one to get as a replacement?

• There's Australian discs from Umbrella, which are also shitty standards conversions -- but there is also a two-disc BD availabel locally. Downside: no subtitles.

• Arrow have their three-disc BD edition in the UK, but with all the utter disastrous releases they've put out so far (Tenebrae is already starting to look like the worst of it next to Bird with the Crystal Plumage) I just can't trust these shysters. I can't find any confirmation anywhere on the 'net that the BD has subtitles, but oddly the other discs (both SD-DVDs for the Extended and Argento cuts...and shitty conversions to boot) do. Thus...that sounds like a pretty poor old package. And before the "Amen chorus" weigh in -- pretty packaging does NOT make a good home video release.

This leaves me with Option C:

• The Anchor Bay BD, which by all accounts is pretty good and HAS subtitles, in conjunction with the 4-disc "Ultimate edition" for progressive scan encodes of the other versions of the film (which don't have subs, but I'm willing to forego that fact for the benefit of progressive scan and better authoring than those clueless monkeys at Arrow).

Is this my best option? I am thinking a combo of the AB BD + UE might be all there is in a decent and affordable price bracket?

Additionally: is there any BD editions of the remake that contains all of the extras from the DVD release and is All region that anyone knows of? Apparently the Aussie BD fits this bill, according to some online sources, but again I can't confirm that.

Anyhoo...that's my questions, and feel free to let the zombies consume your brains and let the thread go where it may in the Land of the Dead. :)