Robin Hood 1938

[drrichard]

First post by a new member -

I picked up a copy of the SD 2 disc special edition of Warner's Robin Hood several years back because I did not yet have HD equipment but wanted to see the best possible picture available for this older film. The Warner's restoration technique really made this older film look fantastic.

I now own a Samsung 50" dlp set tied to a Sony BD360 and an Yamaha surround sound system. So when the blu ray version of Robin Hood appeared I bought a copy to see if using 1080 source materials would make this old film pop even more. I was pleased with the results but not overwhelmend.

There was one area, though, where the blu ray version fell down badly. There is a gallery in the extra showing a lot of posters and other movie related artwork. When I view this extra on the SD version it shows in a 16:9 format with the artwork filling the screen top to bottom. But when I view this same extra on the blu ray version the art work is about the size of a postage stamp. What makes this even worse is that the art work is displayed on a screaming yellow background. On the SD disc this is tolerable but on the BD disc it is unwatchable.

Doing some checking I found out that this title had been available on the competing HD format and that HD player all seem to have a zoom feature. So it looks like Warner's just ported the HD version to BD. Alas my Sony 360 does not have a zoom feature nor does my Samsung HDTV.

Have any other owners of this title had the same experience with this extra? Has anyone found a work around that will let you actually see the artwork?