Video Quality Rating on Old Movies

[boulder_bum]

As a preface, I tried to start a thread on this topic before, and I'm still not quite sure what happened (the conversation didn't get disrespectful last I checked, and I only got vague answers from a mod).

I want to try this again, however, with some ground rules. First and foremost, be respectful: there's nothing wrong with having an opinion and freely expressing it. The definition of forum is "A public meeting place for open discussion", and certainly it's possible to have a civil discourse on this potentially interesting topic in what is hopefully an open Blu-ray "forum".'

Second, this is a thread about video quality ratings of old vs. new films, not a judgement on stories or the films' place in history (outside of the context of video quality).

For my part, I'm going to rephrase the topic in what is hopefully a benign and non-confrontational statement (that you are free to politely disagree with).

Namely, a lot of older movies get high video quality ratings for being true to the source material, but do they truly deserve the 4.5-5 stars they get? My contention is that film and filmmaking technology has improved to the point that older movies sometimes seem dated an ugly to me. I don't like grain, and I think the color accuracy, sets and lighting of old films are subpar.

For example, take the 4.5 star "Jason and the Argonauts" which is praised by the Blu-ray.com review which said, "It's rough, it's grainy, and it's glorious.".

Contrast the screen shot below with the 5 star quality of Avatar:




Is there really any comparison? Does "Argonauts" really look all that close in terms of quality?

I think old animation is another good example. Compare "Snow White" to "Princess and the Frog".





Certainly I can see a rating scale for historical preservation, but should that directly translate into an objective measurement for video quality?