Thunderball BD Transfer

[L32GTPCompG]

I was able to watch most of Thunderball today and I noticed about 3-4 thin vertical lines stretching up and down for a good majority of the first half. I also noticed in various other scenes large black specs of dirt and grain, particulary during the scene when Bond and the girl's boat comes out of the water after they first meet. I remember most of this movie looking better in the Ultimate Edition DVD with all of the dirt/grain removed. Doesn't this HD transfer come from the same restored Lowry Digital transfer that they did for the rest of the movies?

[Gone2HiDef]

I saw the same dirt stuff in the boat scene too. Good question whether it's the same same transfer as the DVD. After enjoying the clean presentations of Dr. No and From Russia with Love, I was stunned by Thunderball. Great film still, but stunned by those "quaint" imperfections.

[fuwa]

After the main titles sequence the aspect ratio is not changed for 30 seconds whereas in the standard dvd the aspect ratio enlarges immediately after the titles sequence. I saw Thunderball the first day it came out in the theaters and several times after that. I can't recall the picture changing sizes after the opening titles and I don't know which if either home video version is correct.

[jsteinhauer]

Originally Posted by L32GTPCompG

I was able to watch most of Thunderball today and I noticed about 3-4 thin vertical lines stretching up and down for a good majority of the first half. I also noticed in various other scenes large black specs of dirt and grain, particulary during the scene when Bond and the girl's boat comes out of the water after they first meet. I remember most of this movie looking better in the Ultimate Edition DVD with all of the dirt/grain removed. Doesn't this HD transfer come from the same restored Lowry Digital transfer that they did for the rest of the movies?

I, too, was surprised, especially after watching the extra feature regarding restoration of the 007 films on the Dr. No disk. The even gave specific "before and after" examples of where there had been fibers and dirt on the film. Other than those few examples in Thunderball, however, I think BD versions of the Sean Connery movies look incredible for their age.

[Mike Z]

I was pretty sure they did the BD transfer from the same Ultimate Edition DVDs that came out two years ago.

There's no reason they would use a different source than the pristine Lowry Digital prints.

[Daredevil666]

It's not because it's on Blu that it was well preserved. If the movie negative have huge damage, there's only a certain % of repair you can do digitally. Beyond that, it would cost millions to artificially recreate the "perfect" image that probably never was ever if the neg was badly preserved. Maybe it was wasted in the camera filming it. There's only two choices, redo a movie the Lucas way or preserve it as is. I'm sure the damage on TB is either from then, or since (ie it was a huge successful movie, so the neg was more used than for a fair success). As long as it looks like the original movie, I don't mind a bit of damage.

"Perfect" image shouldn't be the yardstick, it should be "transparent to the negative" when it comes to old movies, with repairement done to make the viewing smoother, but only to a certain point (that for compagnies is money and time). The next step is recreating shots digitally. No thanks

[Mike Z]

I think the main point is that the Ultimate Editions cleaned by Lowry are great transfers and there's no reason the Thunderball BD should have defects that the DVD doesn't.

[L32GTPCompG]

The site's review of the movie's video quality states that it was transfered using the Lowry Digital Transfer. However, it also states that there are a few blemishes occurring in some scenes because of the film's age. Here's the quote:

MGM has given Thunderball the royal treatment on Blu-ray. The film was restored using the Lowry grain reduction / restoration process and looks truly fantastic. Thunderball is presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and it’s worth noting that this is the first of the Bond films to be filmed in this widescreen format. Unsurprisingly, MGM has opted for a Mpeg-4 / AVC high bitrate encode in full 1080p as well. For a 43 year old film, Thunderball looks spectacular. I was amazed at the level of detail and contrast the image displayed. There are a few flaws that are apparent from the source, but the encoding is virtually flawless.

Thunderball displays a few anomalies befitting a film of its age. There is an occasional amount of flicker present that comes across the lower left quarter of the picture. In addition, there are also a few instances of lessened contrast and color density probably resulting from damaged film elements. Make no mistake, these are very slight issues and don’t detract from the enjoyment of this 43 year old film in any way. The source is also amazingly clean and free of any distracting compression artifacts. Ultimately, Thunderball has probably never looked this good and it has certainly never been presented for home viewing in anything approaching the quality of this set.