El cid & fall of the roman empire

[rondanto]

These will be released next week in the uk. Will these be region free?

PRE ORDERS

[Arkadin]

hard to say.
but the German bds are locked so I would say most likely they will be.

[Dubstar]

and ???? what's the region coding for these puppies?

[richieb1971]

Both are region locked. I just checked them in my own region A ps3.

Sorry.

[Mobe1969]

WTF eh? Like are they trying to protect the staggered theatrical releases in other countries?...

[Douglas R]

Originally Posted by Mobe1969

WTF eh? Like are they trying to protect the staggered theatrical releases in other countries?...

The problem is that rights for these titles are held by different companies in other territories. The distributor can't pay for world wide rights and make them region free.

[Douglas R]

Both are only £7.99 in-store at HMV.

[deado]

So... are they the same poor transfers as the German versions?

[Douglas R]

Originally Posted by deado

So... are they the same poor transfers as the German versions?

They are the same as the German versions, which is as expected, because the UK, French and German Blu-rays are all licensed from the Weinstein Company who remastered the films for U.S. DVD release. I had hoped that the Anchor Bay UK discs would at least have English sub-titles but unfortunately they don't. Sadly this is probably the best these films will ever look. I'm just glad I had the experience of seeing them in 70mm.

[The Apocalypse]

Are the transfers bad then? Play.com is selling Fall of the Roman Empire for £7.99 and I wanted to get it.

[Schonfelder]

Still waiting for a review on these two...

[Dubstar]

Originally Posted by Schonfelder

Still waiting for a review on these two...

yeah, hurry up, I have a friend who is going to be in London over the weekend and I might want to have him pick them up both for me.

[HotRats]

Had a quick look at Roman Empire and compared with the Region 1 boxed set DVD it looks like a decent improvement on my plasma screen, I didn't watch the entire film so I may have missed some horrible fault later on or only visible on a bigger screen. The blu is clearly from the same source as the DVD as the slight judder and colour fluctuations in the opening sequence are identical. Its not a huge jump in detail though Sophia Loren's face shows more detail in her first appearance. Colour looks better contained than the DVD, sound is stereo 2.0 or 5.1 DTS HD MA, bit rate is around 20mbps during the opening hitting high 30s during a battle scene. No extras on the blu ray, all the extras from the US three disc set are present on a seperate DVD, you're not losing any quality having two discs worth of extras put on one as they were single layer. Locked to Region B

Maybe not in the same class as the forthcoming restoration of Ben Hur looks to be but solid value for money at only £8.

[johnf14]

For the money, these are not too bad. 'Region B locked'. My biggest complaint is that the overture, intermission and exit music have been removed from 'Empire' bringing the run time down to 3 hours (Not 172 mins as the package claims but still 5 mins less than the DVD which is 185 mins). They also dropped the commentary on 'Empire', WHY? 'Cid' has all those features intact with the same 188 Min run time as the DVD. No subs on either.

[Kaminari]

Beaver reviews:

El Cid
Fall of the Roman Empire

The colour scheme is very good and level of detail is decent for a reduced print, but the grain has been unduly filtered. DNR is not quite on the level of Patton or the awful first transfer of Gladiator, but the characters do have a waxy look.

[Dubstar]

^ the links aren't working.

[Arkadin]

I think bd.com has disabled dvdbeaver links so that people can't post reviews anymore.
apparently that's how they roll now.

[Dubstar]

but I don't even see the actual reviews on DVDBeaver's own website...

[Arkadin]

oh, well they might have posted the reviews from the German bds that were released 2 years ago.
so they would not appear on the list at the left on the main page; you would have to use the search box.
looks like they don't have any reviews up of the UK discs.
that's probably what they did, and they must have disabled the links because they weren't the UK discs.
I own the both German bds, and they are pretty decent.

[deado]

Originally Posted by Arkadin

I own the both German bds, and they are pretty decent.

I also have had the German BD's and I have to say that considering these films were shot on 70mm, they could look WAY better than they do... even Patton looks better overall than these to be honest. And at least that's in it's 2.20:1 ratio, not 2.35:1 35mm reduction print. If these films were to have the same restorations as Sound of Music or CCBB then they would look spectacular, but as has been mentioned due to the rights it probably won't happen. We can only hope for a US release down the line that's better.