A Room with a View (1985)

[Tommy0807]

Originally Posted by monorail91

Not even, I visited WDW (for my third time) last fall and EPCOT felt so Room with a View to me, and I've been brewing on why pretty much since then!

Blu-ray video quality is terrific - the 2-disc BBC DVD had such a weird look to it, which I'd gradually become accustomed to, plus I hadn't seen this movie any other way. Watching it on Blu really feels like a whole new experience though!

Still working through the special features. Helena Bonham-Carter is hilarious.

My copy arrived yesterday, but I haven't had a chance to watch it. Hopefully this weekend. Can't wait.

P.S. Your blog post led me to read some of your other reviews and essays. I especially like your pieces on Looking and Weekend.

[monorail91]

Originally Posted by Tommy0807

P.S. Your blog post led me to read some of your other reviews and essays. I especially like your pieces on Looking and Weekend.

Thank you! I think I've written more about Looking than just about anything else hahaha.

[iliveinparis1006]

Originally Posted by filmmusic

I was wondering if anyone got any shipping notification from amazon.
I know it's out in 2 days, but sometimes I think they ship earlier.

Hello, I preordered this movie on 09/12/15 and received a confirmation that is being delivered tomorrow, October 5. Can't wait!

[Tommy0807]

Originally Posted by monorail91

Blu-ray video quality is terrific - the 2-disc BBC DVD had such a weird look to it, which I'd gradually become accustomed to, plus I hadn't seen this movie any other way. Watching it on Blu really feels like a whole new experience though!

Still working through the special features. Helena Bonham-Carter is hilarious.

I watched it yesterday. I thought the video quality was terrific too. I love this movie!

Charlotte Bartlett: I shall never forgive myself.
Lucy Honeychurch: You always say that, Charlotte, but you always do forgive yourself.

[andyk69]

Originally Posted by Tommy0807

Charlotte Bartlett: I shall never forgive myself.
Lucy Honeychurch: You always say that, Charlotte, but you always do forgive yourself.

JAJAJAJA I love that quote, this is one of my favorite movies ever,
my sister will bring it to me in Spain .... in 2 months!

[Namuhana]

I watched the film today and really quite enjoyed it. The transfer is very pleasing, and though the bonus features are slim, the two featurettes are pretty good. Helena Bonham Carter makes me laugh; I loved all her anecdotes ("John Malkovich was there for some reason, knitting").

[monomark]

I finally received my copy today. HMV had to special order it for me since they never got any on release day. :P

Anyway, I only watched a few minutes from the beginning and while I found the picture to be very good, I must say that I was distracted by intermittent "white streaks" on some frames that I've never noticed before.

In the booklet it says:

It's believed that when the negative was originally processed, it was removed from the final "fixation" bath too soon, resulting in chroma hue shifting across the entire feature. Frames were slightly different even within the same shot, causing distracting color imbalances.

Is that's what's causing the white streaks? A chroma hue imbalance and Criterion's efforts to fix it? Or have they always been there but I just never noticed them on the earlier 2 disc special edition DVD?

[pro-bassoonist]

A Room with a View Blu-ray REVIEW



Pro-B

[fpcheese]

Originally Posted by monomark

I finally received my copy today. HMV had to special order it for me since they never got any on release day. :P

Anyway, I only watched a few minutes from the beginning and while I found the picture to be very good, I must say that I was distracted by intermittent "white streaks" on some frames that I've never noticed before.

In the booklet it says:

Is that's what's causing the white streaks? A chroma hue imbalance and Criterion's efforts to fix it? Or have they always been there but I just never noticed them on the earlier 2 disc special edition DVD?

I watched this the other day, and mine was super-streaky. Every scene. Too distracting to watch. I wonder if there are some defective discs? I ended up just watching it on Hulu instead.

[akiralx]

Originally Posted by monomark

I finally received my copy today. HMV had to special order it for me since they never got any on release day. :P

Anyway, I only watched a few minutes from the beginning and while I found the picture to be very good, I must say that I was distracted by intermittent "white streaks" on some frames that I've never noticed before.

In the booklet it says:

Is that's what's causing the white streaks? A chroma hue imbalance and Criterion's efforts to fix it? Or have they always been there but I just never noticed them on the earlier 2 disc special edition DVD?

One amazon reviews mentions this flaw and felt this bluray was unwatchable because of this - any comments?

[octobercountry]

Originally Posted by akiralx

One amazon reviews mentions this flaw and felt this bluray was unwatchable because of this - any comments?

Hmmmm, the blu-ray.com review was stellar regarding the video quality---they didn't mention any problem with white streaks at all. So I wonder if there's some sort of pressing problem that only affects some discs...

[Tom Servo]

Originally Posted by markbowen

Going from the previous 1:78:1 ratio to the original 1:66:1, logically a small amount of info is lost on the sides. A comparison of the screenshots to my HD-DVD (!) confirms this. It's nothing major, and the restoration seems to significantly improve the color timing, so it's a worthy upgrade.

Awesome. I just saw that it is Originally 1.85:1, and 1.66:1 on the blu-ray, the "preferred" AR of the director. SO I was wondering the same thing, is it extended vertically, or painted over on the sides with black paint.

"Here, cover this up, or chop it off. They don't want to see that anyway"
"Yeah but, there's more room in the viewable area, we could at least only amputate it to 1.78:1..."
"NO! Take it all. Muuuahh haa haa haaaaaa..."

[filmmusic]

Originally Posted by Tom Servo

SO I was wondering the same thing, is it extended vertically, or painted over on the sides with black paint.

You can see it in the caps-a-holic comparisons.
http://caps-a-holic.com/hd_vergleich...ess=#vergleich

We gain more on top and bottom, and we lose just a bit mostly on the right.

[monomark]

Originally Posted by fpcheese

I watched this the other day, and mine was super-streaky. Every scene. Too distracting to watch. I wonder if there are some defective discs? I ended up just watching it on Hulu instead.

Originally Posted by akiralx

One amazon reviews mentions this flaw and felt this bluray was unwatchable because of this - any comments?

Originally Posted by octobercountry

Hmmmm, the blu-ray.com review was stellar regarding the video quality---they didn't mention any problem with white streaks at all. So I wonder if there's some sort of pressing problem that only affects some discs...

I ripped the first chapter to my laptop and tried to capture a frame where the white streaks are visible but it was very difficult. A frame that had visible streaks on my TV didn't really show any on my laptop so I had to watch the blu-ray and the video file on my computer at the same time to find one.

My conclusion is that the video is fine and that the flicker/streaks are only visible if you have your TV set to "Vivid" mode or something similar. The anomalies are less visible if you have your TV set to "Cinema" and I'd wager they're probably pretty much invisible if you have a properly calibrated TV.

Here's an example:

[Show spoiler]

On my PS3 and with my TV set to "Vivid", I can clearly see streaks in that frame; however, when I set my TV to "Cinema" they're a lot less visible to the point that I probably wouldn't even notice anything when the film is in motion.

So, yeah, this blu-ray seems to require a darker, more cinematic picture mode to properly enjoy it, otherwise all the colour fixes become distractingly obvious.

[filmmusic]

Originally Posted by monomark

On my PS3 and with my TV set to "Vivid", I can clearly see streaks in that frame; however, when I set my TV to "Cinema" they're a lot less visible to the point that I probably wouldn't even notice anything when the film is in motion.

Well, how is the Bluray when you have your TV to "normal"?

[monomark]

^You can still see the streaks/flicker, but that's because the backlight setting for Normal is 70 (whereas for Vivid it's 100) and that's still a pretty bright picture. On the other hand, the backlight setting for Cinema is 30.

Other settings like contrast, brightness, and color, don't really differ that much between all three modes; at most maybe only a differing value of 10 between each of them. So I really do think it's an issue with a "bright screen" highlighting the correction efforts but I don't know if that's really a "problem" exactly...

[nitin]

I would say that's the same as cranking up the brightness and starting to see compression errors that are not visible in normal viewing conditions because the encoder took that into account when allocating where the bits should go.

[pro-bassoonist]

Originally Posted by monomark

^You can still see the streaks/flicker, but that's because the backlight setting for Normal is 70 (whereas for Vivid it's 100) and that's still a pretty bright picture. On the other hand, the backlight setting for Cinema is 30.

Other settings like contrast, brightness, and color, don't really differ that much between all three modes; at most maybe only a differing value of 10 between each of them. So I really do think it's an issue with a "bright screen" highlighting the correction efforts but I don't know if that's really a "problem" exactly...

Your comments are excellent, monomark

Unfortunately, there are many, many people here and elsewhere that view their discs on sets with all of the major settings pushed to the max. Going down that route, you can very easily introduce artifacts that are not on the disc as well.

Here, this is something that should be remembered:

http://www.displaymate.com/LCD_Plasma_ShootOut.htm

The units compete primarily on features and specifications in addition to price. Readers that regularly follow HDTV reviews will not be surprised to learn that after extensive testing, measurements and analysis we found that the units delivered their best picture quality with all of their much-hyped advanced features, which are essentially marketing gimmicks, turned off. In particular, all of the settings that dynamically process the image were disabled, such as Dynamic Backlight, Dynamic Contrast, Dynamic Black, Dynamic White, and Dynamic Color. They all reduce picture quality and accuracy and introduce ugly image artifacts.

Also worth pointing out:

The only way that an HDTV will deliver good color and gray scale accuracy is if it is accurately calibrated to an industry standard specification, which for digital HDTVs is ITU-R BT.709, and is frequently referred to as Rec.709. If you want to see exactly what the director or content producer saw at the studio, then make sure that your HDTV is properly calibrated. This includes an accurate set of primary colors, an accurate white point, and an accurate intensity and brightness scale, which is called the Transfer Function and Gamma.

After you are done calibrating your TV set -- or projector set up -- you should also think of calibrating your PC monitor.

Without the basics set properly, everything else becomes irrelevant.

Pro-B

[filmmusic]

I just got my Room with a View Bluray.
Wanted to ask a couple of things, after just browsing a bit the disc:

1) I noticed some weird things in the sky in some shots in the menu, and I found one of those shots in the film at 15.10''.
Is this the chroma shifting that is mentioned in the review and the streaks that were mentioned previously?
In that shot that monomark posted it's barely evident to me, but in the following shot below it's very much evident!

this is the shot (of course you can't see here the problem, it must be seen in motion):

[Show spoiler]

I don't know how to say that effect in English.

Also

2) In the scene starting at 32.25 I notice the picture is not stabilized causing blurry effects in various frames. I guess this is inherent in the film?

(for the record I want to say that all my settings in my PC monitor are in normal and any advanced features are turned off. I don't have any high contrast, vivid profiles, etc. and I've also calibrated my monitor through Windows: http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-ca...-your-monitor/. I even made a test by lowering very much the brightness and contrast - since it was mentioned that this problem was due to high brightness and/or contrast - to the point that the film became very dark and black at spots, but I still could see very clearly that flickering thing in that shot I posted)

[MattDean]

I watched my copy the other weekend. I watched the first half on my larger 55inch LCD and then the second on the 42inch Plasma - had to relocate due to Saturday ironing chores! Neither TV has any fancy feature switched on (I make a point of that) and on both sets, one is Sony and the other Panasonic, the picture was fantastic.