Posted by The Man With No Name on 07/27/06 22:39

"Peter Oberberg" <nospam@neverspam.org> wrote in message
news:6wzmevo1kp.fsf@pino.hiskp.uni-bonn.de...
> Hello all,
>
> is there anyone, who owns this DVD (English mono audio track, English
> subtitles)? I have just watched it and thought the video quality
> somewhat suboptimal (not very sharp). On checking the disc, I found
> out, that the size of all files on the disc amount to somewhat about
> 3.5G, which is below even the space on a single layer DVD.
>
> Are there other editions around, where the video files comprise more
> space and perhaps have better quality? Maybe watching it on the
> 1400x1050-TFT display of a computer, as I have done, reveals
> shortcomings not reckognisable on TV? Or could it be, that no better
> digitization of the source material is possible?
>
> Thanks for sharing your experience!
>
> Peter

I'm guessing it's an older DVD and as such the problem is mainly just in
the mastering (the old DVD of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has some atrocious
pixelation in the final scene. It's almost like watching a real-media file.)

A quick check of www.dvdcompare.net reveals that there's an American
version which is probably about the same quality (it's DVD10, which means
it's single-layer, and seems to be about as old as the UK DVD (generally
speaking, DVDs produced in the 1990s (regardless of when the movie is from)
tend to have pretty mediocre video-quality)

Basically, my only suggestion (unless a Special Edition gets released) is
to make sure you've calibrated your monitor correctly (with one of those THX
setup things)
There is perhaps the possibility that the American DVD might be slightly
better (generally speaking, I've found that American DVDs from the late 90s
tend to be mastered with a little more care than their PAL counterparts of
the same era,) but I don't think it's worth paying money to find out.

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