Enemy of the State

[Chad Varnadore]

Originally Posted by Brian@BBY

I have the original release of enemy of the state that has like 45 inches of black bars and like 3 inches of picture. HORRIBLE!!!

I hope they fixed that.

The original was non-anamorphic, 4:3 letterboxed. If you're using a 16:9 display the image needs to be vertically stretched to optimize the 4:3 presentation to the 16:9 set. Most newer displays should do this, whether they do it well or not is a much more common problem. The recent re-release was anamorphically encoded - 16:9 letterboxed. It should look properly formated without additional processing, but the end quality was about the same. The video was tweaked a little, but it appeared to have little if any more detail than the original non-anamorphic release.

I just finished watching the BD and the full review will be up in an hour or two. Suffice it to say, I think Disney did a great job, especially considering the age of the film and the look of the last DVD. This is one of the most well done pre-2000 films we've seen on either format. It smokes most of Fox's recent catalog output. I was really surprised and impressed.

[GTP]

Originally Posted by Chad Varnadore

The original was non-anamorphic, 4:3 letterboxed. If you're using a 16:9 display the image needs to be vertically stretched to optimize the 4:3 presentation to the 16:9 set. Most newer displays should do this, whether they do it well or not is a much more common problem. The recent re-release was anamorphically encoded - 16:9 letterboxed. It should look properly formated without additional processing, but the end quality was about the same. The video was tweaked a little, but it appeared to have little if any more detail than the original non-anamorphic release.

I just finished watching the BD and the full review will be up in an hour or two. Suffice it to say, I think Disney did a great job, especially considering the age of the film and the look of the last DVD. This is one of the most well done pre-2000 films we've seen on either format. It smokes most of Fox's recent catalog output. I was really surprised and impressed.

I think they did a great job in comparison to what we had....but it could be sharper throughout.

All the Disney titles so far seem like they should be a bit sharper IMO...no matter the codec.

Looking forward to your review though.

For reference....I thought Batman Begins could also look a bit shaper.

[Chad Varnadore]

The review just went up. Sorry, I got caught up with folly on AVS again over Superman Returns. I haven't seen Begins yet - still waiting for my order to arrive. There was a lot of schizophrenic softness in this one. I think sometimes it was the focus, and sometimes it looked like an odd part of the screen was what was actually most in focus, as if filmed on Super35. Still it was as dramatic a leap over the recent re-release on DVD as we could hoped for I think. Detail and image depth looked terrific more often than not.

[Deciazulado]

Great review

Originally Posted by Chad Varnadore

I think sometimes it was the focus, and sometimes it looked like an odd part of the screen was what was actually most in focus, as if filmed on Super35.

It could be selective focus. When you watch in a theater, is a way for the director to make you move your head or point of interest by playing with the focus and depth of field. The better the resolution of a system, or the larger the magnification of the image, the more you notice. Or notice the errors! (In regular DVDs selective focus shots might seem to be all in focus because the image has been shrunk so much)

When I recently saw the Flightplan demo it was so clear you could tell how in one shot the focus-puller passed his mark when he changed focus from one character to another (Or maybe the director didn't want to show all of his actor's wrinkles! )

[Chad Varnadore]

DVD can't do focus if it's not up close. Enemy seemed to have a directional focus, but sometimes where the focus was didn't seem natural for your eyes to find right away. It jumped around some.