pygospa

As this release is also sold out, I pulled out my edition from my shelf and took some pictures. Here you go, hope you'll enjoy them!

Thank you for fixing it @deckard99. Btw. don't be puzzled by the number on the front cover card: It's a typing error. "Rache der Zombies" also had #5 printed on the cover card, but came before this, and their next release "Der Kuss des Vampirs" was #7. That being said, here are the pictures of my edition - you might have suspected it from my introduction text which wasn't too objective on the topic of title translations: I choose Cover C. As all of the covers sold out rather quickly I hope these pictures give you some joy or maybe help you in deciding weather or not you want to get it second hand and what it might be worth to you. Also as a specialty, I got a postcard set because I was one of the first 100 preorders. That being said, here you go:

 

8 minutes ago, Grendel said:

^^ Great write-ups @pygospa ! Thanks very much! 🤭

 

Maybe have a chat with @extantsrevenge or one of the other Admin and see if we can set up a Chat/Announcement Thread for Wicked Vision?

You have my 100% support!

Perhaps we could even then combine all our separate threads into it?

Just a thought....🤔

Thanks again!

I love the idea of a separate thread for chatting about those classic horror releases (I then wouldn't limit it to just Wicked Vision releases - there are plenty other good labels, like Anolis, or Indicator, etc. that do great classic horror movie releases). But for the mediabook threads I would think it's better to have separate threads - the idea being that you, me and others can share their pictures or ratings of the movies and the release in that thread, where others could find it if they specifically search for a title, and not having everything going under in a stream of different releases.

For instance, if I find the time, tomorrow, I'd like to add some photos here. The mediabooks are unfortunately sold out, but maybe looking at some pictures will give people joy and maybe if they find an offer online they might consider it (or not) because they know what they'll be buying, and if it's worth their money.

But as you mention @extantsrevenge already: Could you do me a favour? I made a mistake in the title -.- It's not #23, but rather #6 (copy and paste error, I'm really sorry). Can you correct that?

On 4/5/2020 at 8:04 AM, Grendel said:

Good Morning @Veum, @pygospa and other spooky-tooth flik fans;  🧛‍♂️

 

Placed another order with Wicked -Shop today.

They had some lovely sale prices on editions I planned to buy anyway;

With the new release of Colour Out Of Space (i'm goin' with HPL's spelling, heh) soon arriving,  I elected to upgrade some old dvds to Blu, of some related films based on the same Lovecraft story-line.

Should make for a fun triple-bill;

- Die Monster Die ! (Karloff), and

- The Curse ( Wesley Crusher and Claude Akins)

Also remembered this time, to order the Karloff/Lee/Steele crazy-fest "Curse of the Crimson Altar" ("there was a goat...") 🙃 as this release I believe has the uncut version.

note: I think I just snagged their last copy of "The Curse" as it has now disappeared from their selections....🙁

Very nice order, and congratz on getting the last copy of "The Curse" - all three movies are really special releases and I love every one of them dearly. I am a bit sad for you that "Curse of the Crimson Altar" is sold out as mediabook and only available as amaray version, but even that is still good, and the price - especially the current offer - is a real bargain! I hope you enjoy those editions. I already mad a thread long ago for "Die, Monster, Die!", and just saw that all the pictures of that original post got lost, but I just re-uploaded them, so if you want to take a look inside already, feel free to take a look at the post:

https://mediapsychos.com/topic/7238-das-grauen-auf-schloss-witley-ot-die-monster-die-wicked-vision-collectors-edition-19-blu-raydvd-mediabook-germany

And I have already seen that you found the other two threads - I just had to open them, once I saw your order - the movies are worth their own thread where they should get a lot of appreciation :D

Release : 14.09.2018

Link (Wicked Shop) :  Sold out [there is, however a black amaray release still available]

Price : €29,99

Limited : 555 (Cover A) + 222 (Cover B) + 333 (Cover C)

The other post that you'll have to thank @Grendel for (see this post) is this movie. As "Collector's Series" #6 this one is on of the earliest releases by Wicked Vision: "The Crimson Cult" from 1968 may seem like a typical Hammer Horror productions - staring Christopher Lee and Boris Karloff makes it seem like it, even more so, but even though it's a British film directed by Vernon Sewell, it was actually produced for AIP (American International Pictures). The story is based - once more - on a short story by H. P. Lovecraft ("The Dreams in the Witch House"), and is a story of witchcraft and occultism. If you read the German title, however, you might start to wonder: "Die Hexe des Grafen Dracula" translates to "The witch of Count Dracula" - Count Dracula? He's actually not in this picture and there is no association to him what so ever? Well, yes, that's true, but German movie labels in the 60s-80s had this horrible idea of "tricking" people into cinemas by adding something to the title that was famous at the time. And as Dracula was one of the most famous titles of that time, a lot of movies got translated wrongly: La maschera del demonio (Black Sunday) --> "Die Stunde, wenn Dracula kommt" (The hour that Dracula arrives), Operazione paura (Kill, Baby, Kill) --> "Die Toten Augen des Dr. Dracula" (The death eyes of doctor Dracula). "Cult of the Crimson Curse" is just another movie that fell victim to this strange German policy. But this is the smallest problem of the movie: due to the English censoring board, this movie got cut, and most of the cinemas and releases used that cut master, which misses 10 seconds of a whipping scene; the original got lost, and so this cut version became the only variant; until a master was found, that is also used for this release, so the release from Wicked is one of the rare uncut versions, world wide. But there's even more - this movie is the last British production with Boris Karloff, who was sick even when he was shooting this movie - a reason why he's in a wheelchair, wearing a concealed oxygen mask. During his 8 days of shooting he got so sick that he was afterwards transported to the emergency room - which is why a lot of people believe that this is the movie that actually got him killed.

To counter the strange practice of weird title translations, Wicked released this edition in three cover artworks from which two look nearly identical; however one has an alternative title on the cover "Schwarze Messe auf Blutrotem Altar" (Black mass on a crimson altar), which is much more fitting - both to the movie as well as to the English original title. Cover A show the German original movie poster, cover B shows the rare Spanish movie poster and cover C that is nearly identical to cover A is the french movie poster, and the one with the better German title. This edition is a 3-Disc set, with one blu-ray and two DVDs, filled with a lot of extras:

• 24-paged, all German booklet.
• English audio commentary with Barbara Steele and David del Valle (very interesting one!)
• German audio commentary with Daniel Perée (the guy behind Wicked Vision), Ingo Strecker and Jörg Kopetz
• Interview with Christopher Lee
• Audio interview with Christopher Lee
• "Creating the Curse of the Crimson Altar" documentation
• German nostalgic cut (only on the DVD)
• two Super-8 editions of the movie
• alternative introduction
• German cinema introduction
• Trailer, radio advertisment, picture slideshow, etc.

And of course, if you'd preordered and where one of the first 100, you got a limited hand-numbered postcard. Yes, this edition is worth every penny, and if you can still find it somewhere, you'd probably should get it right away!

Here's a trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOSZOVbnwRA

Release : 14.12.2018

Link (Wicked Shop) : Sold out

Price : €29,99

Limited : 888 copies

Thanks to @Grendel and his announcement in this post I've decided to open up two threads for two Wicked Vision releases we hadn't talked about, yet. The first one is an European premiere, not only on Blu-ray, there also hasn't been a DVD release in Europe since this release: Based on H. P. Lovecraft's short story "The Colour Out of Space", debuting director David Keith (Firestarter) was supported by Lucio Fulci (House by the Cemetery, Don't Torture a Duckling, etc) as producer for his 1987 movie "The Curse", staring Wil Wheaton (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Big Bang Theory). It's a classic gothic story, that has a typical American 80s horror movie vibe, and comes with a lot of nice practical effects. In Germany this movie was only available for a pretty short period of time when it was released on VHS, as soon the German "Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien" (Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons) deemed it so harmful that in 1989 it was "indexed" (i.e. forbidden to be sold) for 25 years. It got removed in 2014 but only in 2018 Wicked Vision got around to finally do an release nearly 30 years after it's initial release in Germany. And interestingly, without knowing it beforhand they realized that the German first released - even though claimed to be uncut - was actually shorter than the masters they had: There's an extra 3 minutes of never before seen scenes in the German release!

The release is a typical 2-Disc Mediabook edition, but untypical for Wicked Vision there is only one single cover of their "Collector's Series" #23. The 24 paged booklet is completely in German, and rather heavy on the text side (going deep into the works of Lovecraft and how "The Colour Out of Space" influenced many other movies besides "The Curse"), and also the extras are a bit sparse, especially if you are not German-speaking: There is a really great German audio commentary, but that's it. other than that we get a trailer and a slide show. If you where among the 150 first pre-orders you however also got a limited postcard. All in all still a pretty decent release, great picture quality and worth your time (and money).

Here's a trailer:

Here is a re-upload of the pictures I took a while ago, that got lost. I've also like to link to the trailer for anyone not knowing the movie:

Last but not least, maybe you, @extantsrevenge or someone else of the admin team could edit my initial post to replace the "fetch?id=22672" with the picture that used to be in that position? It's this image that I used there as an overview for the different covers available:

So here are the photos that used to be in the other post:

Just now, forenhase said:

Deshalb steht da immer "Coming Soon".

 

Die Admins müssen den Request Button einfügen. Das kann ich selbst nicht tun.

Ach, alles klar. Sorry - ist das erste mal das ich "so früh" dran bin

It von 1990 wollte ich mir immer mal im Steelbook in die Sammlung holen, aber bisher ist es nie dazu gekommen. Freu mich daher schon sehr auf diesen Teil (wobei es noch zwei gibt, die bei Black Barons angekündigt sind, die mir noch wichtiger sind (Shining + Exorcism). Wirklich sehr feine Ankündigungen, von BB ).

Ist eröffnet

Waaaah: Aber wo ist der Button hin? :D
Hab schon mitbekommen, dass da wohl noch ein bisschen was aus dem "klassischen" Horror bei Black Barons kommt, und mir juckt es schon unter den Fingern :D

Sehr, sehr schade zu lesen
 

Aber danke an @forenhase für alles was Du für uns versucht hast. Und Glückwunsch an alle die schnell genug waren (wär ich ja eh nicht gewesen) und eine Edition abbekommen haben. Hoffe, dass jeder sie zu schätzen weiß und sie bei Euch in guten Händen sind.

Dann bleibt nurnoch zu hoffen, dass man sie wirklich irgendwann, irgendwo zu nem humanen Preis bekommt.

1 hour ago, raylight said:

But as @pygospa already said...goal would be easy to reach.

Well it would be easily reached after you collected a large enough collection. I mean, think about how your collection grew: The first 100 editions? I don't think that they would already have all letters in them. The first 500? Maybe - but there are some letters in every language, that are more easily at the beginning of a title, then others. Just think about movies starting with Q. I am currently approaching 1000 blu-rays, and I only have 1 movie starting with Q (technically two, if I'd also take "The Quatermas Xperiment" - but the edition I own has the German title "Schock" on it, so I'd feel like that would be cheating).

What I meant to say, was that it is easier, once you have a certain number of editions. But that, also is an achievement, is it not? I'd love for a "size of collection"-award, say you have 100, 250, 500, 1000 blu-rays, etc. But taking pictures of those and counting editions - that's rather inconvenient. Having all letters of the alphabet is somewhat a substitution for a certain size of a collection (i.e. a size allowing to easily own all letters of the alphabet).

What I'm trying to say is: I wouldn't dismiss the idea. I really like it. And I also like the colors idea - maybe call that one "the rainbow award", or something - having all colors (or more) of the rainbow as steelbook, etc. I think there's a lot of potential for fun in these rather unconventional ideas. Something different to having x editions of label y.

Now that I am thinking about it - I would probably call it something like "lexicographical award" and instead of having half the alphabet I would do something like "A-Z" for the first level, and then the second level should have something like 1-20. Titles starting with numbers would be far more difficult, I'd say (don't even know if you could get all the numbers in 1-20?) - I would miss so many numerals. Here are mine starting with numbers:

2 Guns, 4 Blocks, Die 7 Pranken des Satans (but I would also count something with written Numbers, such as Seven), 10 Cloverfield Lane, 11/11/11, 13 Hours, Der 27. Tag, 28 Days later, 31, 47 Ronin, 52 Pick-Up, 187, 300, 400 Days, 2001 - A Space Odyssey, 2012 - Wir waren gewarnt. THAT would be really crazy challenging, I guess

18 minutes ago, raylight said:

I know my suggestion is a little bit "strange". 😂

 

Hey, no offense. I like your suggestions anyway - it's just not for me, that's all. But just because I wont collect 10 or 20 editions of the same movie doesn't mean you shouldn't, and it also doesn't mean that this award shouldn't exist - it's just not for me And don't forget - we have "psycho" in the name, so I think the rewards should be challenging and somehow underline the meaning of psycho

Btw. I think your alphabetic idea is hilarious. I would love it. But I guess it's rather easy to accomplish, once one has a big enough collection. My girlfriend and I wanted to start watching all our movies in alphabetic order (because we have bad track-keeping of which blu-rays we've already seen, which movies we just saw on Cinema and also because the virtual "to watch"-pile is growing larger in increasing rates), so I went through my list an realized that we already have every letter (in Germany "X", "Y" and "Q" would probably be the difficult candidates - but for X I have all the X-Men-Movies, for Y there are "You're Next" and "You might be the Killer" (Y is actually pretty easy for English titles), and for Q I have just one: "A Quiet Place". But - I would qualify

6 hours ago, Veum said:

Hey @raylight,

 

I know I do not own that many versions of 1 movie 🍿 at all! 😝 

Same here - I usually try to get the "best" version, and then all other versions will look pale in comparison anyways. There are a few exceptions, though, when I couldn't decide, or where I really love the movie and the editions are all very different looking. But most of them are only once in my collection.

Movie I own most copies of is Pan's Labyrinth (Kimchi-One-Click [which I count as one], the Mondo X Steelbook, the Zavvi Steelbook and the Capelight Mediabook boxset -- plus the limited digipack DVD as well as the leather DVD edition), which is 6 times. On second place I have Looper (Filmarena, French Steelbook, and the two variants of Mondo X Steelbook), Logan (2x Filmarena and 2x Mantalab, but I am having one of those open for trade), Ex Machina (MantaLab one-click, Mondo X Steelbook, and both normal Steelbook variants) and Deadpool (Filmarena E3 hartbox, MantaLab Fullslip + Quaterslip and Brinenblatt Hartbox -- again, MantaLab Fullslip open for trade) -- all of them 4 times. And the next batch all 3 times: Alien (2x Filmarena + Zavvi Steelbook), The H8ful Eight (Kimchi-One-Click, one for trade), Phantasm 4 (2x Wicked Vision Mediabook - one of them was a wrong cover they send me, and I was allowed to keep it, 1x Wicked Vision Harbox), The Revenant (2x Filmarena + 1 x Mantalab) and Suspiria (2x Mediabook from '84 - first release + anniversary re-release, 1x Ultimate Boxset containing Suspiria + Remake + Soundtrack in all formats (DVD, Blu-ray and 4k). And speaking of Marvel: I just have all the Iron-Man movies double (I had a 3-in-1 steelbook, but really liked the Zavvi 4k Steels), plus the Guardians of the Galaxy (both Blufans edition, because my previous group buyer is an idiot, ordered the wrong edition and then pretended it never happend - I finally still got my wanted Rocket and Groot edition later).

And that's it. Non of them I actively plan to increase in count - and usually once I've chosen a movie I am content with the version. It has to be a special film (for me Pan's Labyrinth, Ex Machina, Logan, Looper and Suspria are those), to even consider getting them double - or there is a far superior release later on. And in most cases I then offer the previous edition for trade or pass them on to my family. Maybe I could reach 10 editions with one of them (and if so I'm pretty sure that it'll either be Ex Machina or Pan's Labyrinth) - but I am not planning on it,  and those new editions would really have to offer a lot or look stunning in a way non of the other editions could. But generally speaking, I always feel weired having a movie more than once in my collection, and often see it in the way that this double purchase takes space and money that could have been spent on another movie. And I'd rather have more different titles in my collection.

Release : 21.05.2020

Link: Amazon Exclusive

Price : €29,99

Limited : ???

Supposedly, beside the Saturn exclusive mediabook in two covers that @CAYENNE-FAHRER has already informed you about here, there is also a third mediabook cover that is coming from Amazon and is exclusive to their house. And while we are still waiting for cover designs from the ringed planet, the largest river already presents us with one, that - in my opinion unfortunately - is already well known as it is exactly the same we already got from Zavvi in a 2000 copies limited steelbook in 2015, and in a variation in 2019 by FYE in another steelbook release. The mediabook looks like it's a standard sized one, but as it is a major label (Paramout) there could still be surprises here. And in addition to that there is no information about extras, restoration, limitation, etc. But for those who didn't get any of the steelbooks and that love the design this could be an alternative - and for Germany it is the first premium release, so it's awaited by many that don't watch movies with original soundtrack and have been waiting for a dubbed premium release.

The movie is one of those that in my humble opinion everybody should have seen. Directed by Tim Burton and featuring an ingenious cast staring young Johnny Depp who in those days (again my opinion) was so much better without the overacting he does nowadays. Besides him we have the lovely Christina Ricci with - if I remember correctly - her breakthrough role. And then of course something for our Harry Potter fans: Michael Gambon (Albus Dumbledore), Miranda Richardson (Rita Skeeter), Richard Griffiths (Uncle Vernon) and Toby Maudsley (voice of Grawp). But that's not even half of it. Michael Gough (Alfred Pennyworth in the Burton/Schumacher Batman movies) and Ian McDiarmid (Palpatine) can also be seen, as well as - last but not least - Sir Christopher Lee (Saruman, Count Dooku, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, ....) and Christopher Walken (I don't even know where to start). Do I need to say anything more to sell you this movie? Well, okay then: It's a typical Burton of his strong years, i.e. a well thought through great atmospheric story that convince you with great imagery as well as a great story and superb characters, and once more a Gothic horror tale that has it's clever and subtle but funny subtext, a play with colors, etc. And last but not least it is a thrilling story, and a movie that even with a large number of re-watches you wouldn't get tired of. And now, have fun watching the trailer:

PS: The movie has recently also inspired a TV series, that I haven't watched (yet), but trailers already foretold that this wasn't going to go well, and it didn't. With a really hyped number of viewers this one constantly lost them - from over 10 millions in the first to just 1 million in the last episode before cancellation. So if you know the series but haven't seen the movie, please don't expect anything similar, and go watch the movie!

As someone who likes classic horror movies and also someone who has fun collecting series I of course ordered one myself. For me it's cover B, as I like my covers to be a wholesome artwork and not some collage of different things. Also I like the art style more on this one. I haven't seen the movies yet, though. Oh, and for completion's sake: There are also releases of this movie by "Kino Lorber" in US and CAN in a blue Amaray, as well as in Spain. And in UK you have a beautiful cover artwork in clear Amaray by Arrow video. But all of them will of course be missing this new exclusive extra that is on  Anolis' release.

Anyone else getting one of these? And if so, which? Or do you own other releases of the movie (and if so, which)? Does anyone know the movie? Is it any good?

Release: 09.04.2020

Link (Wicked Shop*): Cover A, Cover B

Price: ~ €30,00 (depending on the shop)

Time for another classic movie, this time from Anolis who in Germany are rather famous for their "Hammer Horror Series", but who also started a new Series that itself spawned three sub-series. In their "fantastic classic" series which Anolis started in 2017 they release international movies from different studios in Mediabooks (Digibooks**), and they divide them into decades. Up to now there's "The 60's", "The 70's" and "The 80's", each with its consecutive numbering on the spine. These editions - same as with the Hammer Horror Series - are rather limited (though there is no information on how many, nor any individual numbering) and sell out rather fast. They come with an exclusive and extensive thick booklet (unfortunately only in German) with lots of different cover artworks and a large number of bonus features (including audio commentaries that are sometimes in English, and exclusive new fetaures).

The number 4 of the "60's" series is the American International Pictures title "Tales of Terror", which in German is called "Der Grauenvolle Mr. X" (The gruesome Mr. X), an anthology film consisting of three short movies that where produced and directed by 'The Pope of Pop Cinema' Roger Corman, and all staring Vincent Price. All three parts are based on short stories by E. A. Poe, and as such this is part of the "Corman-Poe cycle", i.e. 8 films Roger Corman did that where all based on works of E. A. Poe, that - with the exception of "The Premature Burial" - all stared Vincent Price.

Cover A shows the German movie poster that is a slight variation of elements form the English/International movie poster; for Cover B they chose the rare Italian alternative movie poster. A feature that Anolis is pointing out is a 50 minutes bonus documentary that was exclusively commissioned for this edition from "Diabolique Films" who interviewed Roger Corman. This will probably be in English and could be interesting for you as well.

I'll close, as usually, with the trailer:
 

*) This is not a Wicked-Shop exclusive title, but usually is only carried by specialized movie stores in Germany and Austria. I'd usually link another shop here which I had made good experiences with, but I was asked not to link them here, which I'll respect. I also like Wicked a lot, so it's a good replacement; however they have a really limited quantity, and might run out faster than others - keep that in mind. I did not link Amazon, because Amazon directly doesn't get them, and companies selling them via Amazon usually calculate an audacious surcharge.

**) One can argue if a single tray Blu-ray only package would still count as a Mediabook; however they are also not consequent in this regard - some of their releases are double-trays, some are single trays but with really think trays so you couldn't tell them apart from just the spine size.

Haha, I love how this thread turned totally to something different (a general Wicked Vision Thread, instead about the edition). I just got a parcel from Wicked Vision and why not share it with you guys?

I got:

• Funnyman Cover A -- this is limited to 444 copies and the first 200 overall pre-orders (all 3 covers) got a signed card by the director, who Wicked invited from US for a special cinema screening of the movie (and also to sign these - you can see how much he enjoyed doing it by the line that is supposed to read his name ), but also the first 111 pre-orders for this specific artwork got another card with the signature of the artist which in my covers case is famous German artist Ralf Krause.
• Hideous! -- this is the next title in their "Full Moon Classic Selection" which is their 8th title in this Scanavo-Keepcase series; it comes (as all the others did) with a reversible cover showing the complete original artwork without the frame and the "Full Moon Classic Selection"-Subtitle. Here as well, if you where under the first 200 pre-orders, you'd get a numbered trading card.
• UX-Bluthund -- this is actually not a Wicked title but those two labels are friends and that's why Wicked also carries their products - the label is Anolis and they produce Digibooks for Classics - most of them Hammer Horror movies, but this one is part of their "phantastic filmclassics" series, it's from the 60s and a Japanese movie, with original Japanese title "Kaitei Deisenso", international title: "Water Cyborg" or US-title: "Terror Beneath the Sea". Unfortunately not English-friendly: audio is only Japanese and German dubbing, and subtitles is only German.

Tell me if any of those are interesting for you then I make a separate thread with some photos. Regarding the Full Moon movies: I never knew them before, but because of Wicked Vision I got them anyways and since now I've already watched their "Lurking Fear" which I thought was rather interesting - I loved this 90s style and vibe of it. And I also started the first 5 puppet master movies, and I really love those. Not all have the same quality, but they are really greatly done and fun to watch.

Well, I wouldn't take this chart as 100% strict rule. And as mentioned it is also always a subjective question. What I would do is, go to a TV shop, take a yardstick with you and then, in the shop, go to the size you want, and try out the distance. Do you like it? Do you feel it's somehow off (too near so you cannot see the entire screen easily, or too far away)? If you feel good, go for it, even if this chart does say different. If it doesn't feel good, just go up or down in size a little, and look if that makes it better.

These charts in the end are rules of thumb, and if you look for them, you'll find different ones, where the one is a few inches more or less for a certain resolution, or the distance is a little different, etc. And also it doesn't mean that you cannot do anything else: It's just the optimum.

13 hours ago, StevenWest said:

But again, $30 for a Blu-Ray - and the previous DVD I had looked WAY better. So not to slight MVD Rewind, as they are definitely preserving and expanding the history of lesser known but important films. But is questionable if they didn't bother brushing up the copy they had acquired out of cost issues, OR they crammed it through a bunch of Final Cut plug in's to give it this aged and retro feel? I don't mind Tarantino mucking with his movies to give it that 'grindhouse feel'. But to take liberty with some of these old gem's in this modern age is really becoming dubious at best. Clarity, crispness, color restoration, artifact removal - okay. Director liberty to darken, brighten, extend or edit work on new formats - maybe? But to take something onto a new format and not be bothered with restoration and/or make it look it's age or older for poops and giggles?

@StevenWest: I am totally with you on that! If they do release old movies, what I wish for is that the old vision of directors/cinematographers get respected; at least in the sense that they originally released it (there is one director - George Lucas - from whom I wished that he wouldn't meddle in his movies all the time. I mean, it's his movie, it's okey for him to do so, BUT he should at least also provide the original version in a restored manner). I know of some releases (at least in Germany with labels such as Turbine Media, or Wicked Vision) where they even contact the director/cinematographer and ask for their input on the restoration, to make it as true to the intend as possible. And where you cannot ask the ones responsible anymore, you could at least still guide your intentions with the original releases that where created by them when restoring it. But you are totally right, the emphasis on this whole operation should be on the restore, and not on adding/enhancing/etc.

However, that's a totally different point you are making now than you made in your initial post. I still believe that it should be done - for so many reasons. Blu-ray will future-prove such films: Blowing up DVD on HD will make the quality suffer, as you blow it up 6-times the size. Blowing it up to 4k will further increase the size by a factor of 4. Not as bad anymore, as it was with HD, but now imagine watching a DVD on 4k - that makes a factor of 24; definitely not fun to watch anymore. A blu-ray can however be watched on all three definitions: SD, HD and 4K(*), even though on 4K it will look a bit worse - but then again, that can all be handled with size and distance according to the chart from my previous post.

And I really believe that blu-ray will be the last big physical media format that we'll get. 4K isn't hitting off, and why should it? It's a niche to begin with, only benefiting those that have taste in extremely large TVs inside extremely large living rooms with a really large distance to the screen, as well as a number of 4K enthusiasts; but for the large majority of the population a lot still even stick to the DVD. 4K is supposed to replace HD which is a technology that is not that old yet, and not even adapted by everyone. BD on the other hand replaced DVD that still supported a screen resolution the first of us grew accustomed to since the 80s. Also, physical media is dying in general, and in the same time streaming services are on the rise. But - at least judging from today's point of view (and I strongly believe that this wouldn't change, due to economic assessments) streaming services will only feature movies that will be accepted by the majority of the population. It's just not feasible for streaming services to reserve resources for movies that only a couple of people will ever watch; and taking Netflix' policy as an example: They even now already remove movies from their database once the views sink to a certain threshold. So my believe is that we'll probably loose all these classics sooner or later - it has already begun with the DVD - every movie enthusiast knows a couple of movies that where only released on VHS  and still haven't had a DVD or BD release, and for a number of movies there wasn't even anything else other than the cinema or TV release. These things get lost. And so I can only applaud every attempt in bringing old classics back to blu-ray - probably for the last time on physical media, ever, before they are lost. And BD is just a bit more future prove than DVD will be. Given, of course, the proper care when transferring it, i.e. Restauration not changing the content!

17 minutes ago, extantsrevenge said:

 

@pygospa that was a great and interesting post, thanks for doing that.

 

But why do you have to crish my hopes for a DS9 & Voyager BD release 😭. Also looks like I have a great distance to my 65" TV 😍. Do you work in this field, or why all that knowledge?

 

Appreciate you posting this 👍

Thank you very much for the appreciation, @extantsrevenge. And no I am not working in that field directly - I studied computer science (actually I still am), after having worked a while as department assistance for an in-house IT(-Support) department. So I would say I have a general understanding as well as interest in technical things. And at least small parts (binary system and discretizing analog data) I had came across during my studies, even though my main studying focus is AI and robotics. But most of the technical stuff I explained here I worked out for myself, due to my interest in movies in general.

(*) By the way, there's even a nice experiment you can try for visualizing the effects that blowing up resolutions will have on material of different quality. Just visit the Wikipedia-article on color depth: You will find the same image of a leaf in different color depths, and the one with 8-bit color depth will look the same as the 24-bit one does. If however you now start increasing the zoom factor (on Firefox by pressing ctrl and +; you can get it back to normal afterwards by pressing ctrl and 0), you will soon see, how the 8-bit image will get worse and worse while the 24-bit image will retain it's quality much better. And (at least on firefox) that's only 3-times larger - SD->HD is 6 times larger, and SD->4K 24 times. What you see here with color-depth will behave similar on resolution, so again from HD->4K is the least worse blowup;

Not a suggestion, but if there's ever going to be a "longest technical explanation post"-Award, then: Hey @extantsrevenge, here's my contribution. I want one!!!

I stated out hours ago and just wanted to do a simple response, but then it grew, and grew and grew, and I tried to find better examples and pictures and, and and. I don't KNOW what happend. It already was that way, when I came here? 😇 No I am not schizophrenic... what do you say? These are all psychos here? Oh, well, then... yes, it was me! 😜 Who I am talking to? No one! *goes away humming*

Uh, this is a great post, and I have to confess - I have strong feelings here as well - but also some background knowledge on the technology. First off, there is also always a subjective component to it, and that has many levels:

1. Personal taste: Even though we now have 4k and 8k etc. some people prefer a certain blurredness, they might even feel that super sharp images look unrealistic and off; uncanny. I have this exact feeling with HFR movies. You might feel the same with HD vs SD.
2. Eye-sight: This is something I am confronted with on a regular basis. I am short sighted, so my eyes make things that are near to my eye appear much bigger, than the normal sighted person. My girlfriend on the other hand is farsighted, so for her, everything near is much smaller. This always gets interesting if we look at printed pictures, or smartphone resolutions. Where I can still see small dots on (in my view) bad printing quality, my girlfriend will think an image looks just fine, and where I am totally freaked out by the perfect picture quality on a retina-display smartphone my girlfriend doesn't get the fuzz I am making.
3. Viewing equipment and setup: Even though one could argue that this is already getting objective and technical, I'll argue for a certain subjectivity here, as not everyone has the means to have big screens or viewing distances (depending on your living situations, your house/flat and a bit also your personal preference on how you decorate your living space). There are certain constraints to meet, if you want HD and 4K to play out their strengths. Of course if you have an SD-resolution TV, there is no value in having an HD source, as it has to be down-sampled (however, there are people claiming that at least color-wise you can still get a minimal benefit - I haven't tried that yet). But even if you have a TV capable of 4K, you won't get much out of it, if you only have 20" screen, as all the dots get so packed that you wouldn't be able to distinguish them anyways. Then again if you just sit less then half a meter in front of it you will definitely see those individual pixels again. So here's a two-dimensioned rule of thumb: The larger the screen the larger the resolution should get; but also the nearer the screen, the larger the resolution should get. These are the two factors that have a certain subjective component: If you have a small flat, you'll want larger resolutions, no matter the size of the TV. But if you prefer larger TVs, again you'll want larger resolutions - unless you also have the space to sit far away - but at it also is getting technically, let's jump into the objective side of things:

First of all I feel that it is important to divide this post into three aspects that you @StevenWest seem to use interchangeably: You say BDs are over-hyped and DVDs still fine, because they don't look any worse. However, what you mean to say is SD is still fine, and HD is over-hyped,  because it's the picture format you'll then talk about, not the medium carrying this picture format. In fact BDs and DVDs aren't that different from a technical standpoint. It's rather the laser reading those discs, that - in the case of the BD - can read tinier information, therefore allowing for more information to be pressed on nearly identical material. Just judging from the material, the way these things are produced - you are totally right: We are ripped off. Producing these doesn't cost a penny more. However, there are two more aspects: The picture format - which - as you claim - looks (nearly?) identical. This might be true on a subjective standpoint, as I have already explained, but objectively speaking it is easy to show that this is not the case - given however, that we talk about grabbing this information from the same source, and that is the third aspect, that is often forgotten, but never the less really important.

The first thing that struck me in a "how could he"-sense of way is this sentence - as it totally shows what I mean by the first aspect, I talked about (comparing plain media formats, without considering the format of the content these media carry):

On 12/31/2019 at 7:19 PM, StevenWest said:

What's even more hilarious is many of these BD only issuers like Shout! and such are actually issuing VINYL RECORD soundtracks to go alongside their BD releases! That to me is like ordering Beluga Caviar with white bread to put it on! Nothing against caviar or white bread - but whens the last time anyone ever had a caviar sandwich?

And I feel like there's a lack of understanding here, which is why I'd like to go into such detail about the technicality here: You are comparing an digital format (saved on BD or DVD) with an analog one (saved on Vinyl), which is simply comparing apples with oranges. Our real world is continuous, i.e. with enough patients (and the right king of tools ) you could split everything you see in smaller and smaller parts - there is no limit how small you can get. You can always half a number, even if it is 0,0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001. And getting to your example: In a truly analog taken photograph, every possible visible color you can see with your own eyes would have been captured by the photo. You can take a magnifying glass and go over the image and you wouldn't see "breaks" in a gradient - every possible and even so tiniest nuance of color is there. Video is a series of photos, so a analog film is just like an analog photo. And when it comes to music we get sound waves, that - if recorded analog and if copied to analog medium - will retrain its continuity. Vinyl records are an analog medium, i.e. the waveform saved on the disk is 1-to-1 exactly the same that was produced by the original instruments and singers, and is as such reproduced 1-to-1 without any information loss on your home stereo. It is like that, because the wave patterns are cut into the vinyl - there is of course a start and a ending point (as there would be for a picture with the colors pure white and pure black) but in-between these two states, the knife that cuts a vinyl can cut a theoretically infinite state of depths. In that regard, records are and have always been far superior to any other format (including tapes which is also a lossless analog format, but we all know the hassles that format has), it's durable (if well treated - you can find records from the 40s, i.e. 80 years old, that will still play), it is far less prune to wear and tear; but of course it is unhandy.

The counterpart of analog is often considered digital, which in 90% of the cases is true but the real difference is in the continuity - whereas most analog medium is capable of reproducing the continuous things we perceive in the real world, digital media, due to the way they are build, cannot.(*) They are discrete. A computer for instance only knows the values 0 and 1 (on a technical level that is current or no current, on a mathematical level we get the Binary-System). Of course we can start encoding things with these two states: 0 = white, 1 = black. But then we could only show two colors. Okey: 00 = white, 01 = light grey, 10 = dark grey, 11 = black. Only four colors. You can however go on; with 3 digits you get 8 colors, with 4 digits already get 16 colors, with 8 digits you are at 256 different colors. However, this gets limited by the space we have to save all of this information. 8 digits are 1Byte of information. We cannot do this indefinitely. Not so the analog photo camera that will get you the theoretically infinite nuances of color.

To get back to your Vinyl example - if I take an analog audio-wave and discretize it, I have to define my range, e.g. I could say I'll have a 4-bit-Range (in computer science the number of digits of binary numbers is referred to as bit, so this is a four digit binary number, i.e. all combinations of 0000 to 1111). That gives me 16 concrete different states I can represent (see the image at Wikipedia). The result is a a sound wave that jumps from one state to the next, so you don't get a curve anymore, but rather a stair case:

Information in-between is lost. And this is audible - at least to some: It sound's tinny and not as full. This will never happen with vinyl. To counter this effect on the digital side, what we do is we try to enlarge these numbers as much as feasible: No one uses 4-bit in audio: A CD has 16-bit, and the more states we have the smaller the distance between them can get (i.e. the more "samples" we can take per second). We usually take 44 to 48kHz (i.e. 44.000 - 48.000 samples per second) - so many that the ear gets "fooled" into believing to hear a continuous sound that he cannot distinguish from the original source.

For hearing, this is easy as the human physiology is not optimized on hearing. It's optimized on seeing and here things become more difficult.

Discretizing a picture means two things:

1. Discretizing the color (as mentioned above) - you need at least 8-bits to fool the eye, and it is mostly used on images on the internet; Blu-ray and DVD both use 24-bit of colors. UHD-BD uses 30-bit.

2. Discretizing the picture at hand into little dots. This is called rasterizing.

As the color is the same for BD and DVD you cannot expect any difference here, but the rasterizing will also have a color effect as we'll see. Because we are in the digital world, our raster is fixed, regardless the size that we'll do: We'll take a picture and cut it into a number of small squares. Each square is one pixel. And each pixel can only have one color. So we take the color that is most present in the pixel and use that as the color for our entire pixel. And thus we get a rasterized image:

The reality is of course a bit different - we usually don't use only the colors from the original image. Instead we'd mix the colors. If the pixel is just black, it's black, if it's just white, it'll stay white, but if it's half white and half black, we'll get a grey pixel, so we get a more "smooth" image.

But I think it's pretty obvious that it's the same here, as it already was with the audio: The finer we chose this raster to be, the better the end result will look. And our raster is the pixels that the image format accepts. For SD (standard definition, found on DVDs) this was set to 720x480 pixels. For HD this is 1920x1080 pixel. This is 6-times more pixels than with the SD format. And here are two rastering formats of the same fish from Wikipedia, and they are in scale to resemble the difference of SD and HD:

Now hopefully you will see how much more information there is on the second image than there is on the first. So from an objective perspective - you yourself have to confess, that there is much more detail, the image is much better and preferable to the first one. But now let's get back to the 3rd point I made about subjectivity:

Try to enlarge the image of the second fish, until the raster is of the same size as the first one - you will see that now the second fish doesn't look too good anymore. Same if you keep the image of the second fish as it is, but walk back from your monitor and thus enlarge your distance - you will get to the point where the second fish looks the same as the first one did up-close. And here's why we actually gotten to the point that HD was introduced in the first place. In the early television days, screens hand the size of a shoe box. Today however, people have TV screens that cover an entire wall. If you blow up the second fish you'll reach the point were it looks like the first. If you blow up the first one, it'll only grow more ugly. SD was good for small screens, but wasn't designed for growing TVs. HD is. And same goes with the viewing distance: The smaller the screen was, the nearer people sat in front of the TV making that screen bigger you'd either need to move back to retain picture quality, or if you cannot, then the resolution needs to get bigger. There are charts that will tell you exactly, what you'll need depending on both, your distance to the TV as well as your TV screen size:

So given that you've already told us that you have a 26" display, HD will only pay of if you sit somewhere between 0.6 and 1.2m away from your television. Most living room  wouldn't allow for that short range. I myself have a 40" with a sitting distance of ~2.5m, so HD makes sense - 4k would make sense at ~70", which I'd never get. I feel like 50" would be the maximum I'd feel comfortable with, but I wouldn't feel comfortable sitting just 1m in front of it.

So hopefully the first two aspects are clear now - totally objectively speaking, BDs are better due to their capacity (and I even got some SD-TV series on BD, which allows to reduce the number of discs drastically), and HD is always better than SD, due to a much larger number of details. However, if you are far away, or (due to your screen size) the pixels get really large, you wouldn't be able to yield the better details. Now there was a third aspect and I really like your comment that is connected to that, which is also connected to the price discussion you initiated:

On 1/1/2020 at 3:51 PM, StevenWest said:

And yes, some DVD's can be real crap too. Some publishers just rip a VHS onto DVD pretty with no tweaks or anything. But for say Criterion, there can't be that much difference between their DVD and BD's of the same title can there?

So if you get everything I tried to illustrate above, you can answer the question for your self: Yes (and no). Yes, because a DVD will simply not show you all the fine details. It can't because of the rasterizing. So the BD is of much better quality (which maybe you just cannot see due to your setup - that's why the no in brackets). However, if there was a prior DVD release, the DVD wouldn't have changed in quality anyways. At least not, if they did a new re-scan of the original material AND if that original material was eligible for a higher quality re-scan.

For this we need to get back to my statements from the beginning: If I have an analog movie, I have a theoretical continuous information material, which means I can blow it up however I want, and it shouldn't make a difference. And you might know this already: If you have a analog photo, you can make copies of it in standard photo size, or in poster size and it wouldn't look any worse. If you, however take a digitally printed picture, from a magazine or a flyer, and blow that up, you'll get something like this:

The reason is that again, we have discrete dots instead of a continuous spectrum. So the first takeaway is: If the movie was captured on film (i.e. analog), there is no problem. However if it's captured on digital camera, you're out of luck if the resolution they captured it on, is too small. Especially TV series and movies where captured on inexpensive digital cameras, and to keep costs even further down, this was done right in the format needed. So here, you will never get something on BD that will look better than on DVD. Just won't work. Best example is Star Trek. Ever wondered why TOS and TNG as well as all the movies where released in HD but DS9 and VOY were not? Now you know. An HD upscaling would require so much more work than would be feasible, so it just isn't done.

We're only in luck if we have it on film, or if the photographer had so much foresight as to produce it in a high quality. Digitally filmed movies where usually filmed in 4K, making 8K somewhat of a deal breaker. But even for film it means a lot of work: The material was usually scanned for the master copy, then all the effects (color grading, etc.) where done on that master copy and then the from this master copy all the other copies where created; for a HD release these masters have insufficient quality, i.e. the rasterization is larger than needed for HD. So all this work has to be redone. Rescanning them for a larger image also means, that more things will be visible that maybe shouldn't have. And last but not least - and here's where the "theoretically" plays out: practically film is a chemical process, and these chemical processes leave their marks, such as film grain; so in the end a lot of restoration is needed. It's needed because of the BD release. And this is what drives up the price for BDs. Now DVD collectors cheap out on this - and it is their right to do so, because in the end, the high resolution get's down-sampled for DVD again, and all the higher details are lost again. But it's not the BD you pay for - it's even not the picture quality. But the process to get there. At least for BDs (4K is of course another thing - but as it is always with new technology: In the beginning they are a bit more expensive).

And keeping this in mind, I think it's a bit unfair to criticize companies such as Shout!, Arrow or Criterion. These companies are not money-hungry, otherwise they wouldn't bother with cinematic classics that have a rather select group of collects, but focus on current blockbusters. These come in the right format, no work needed, press them on BD, ask your 15€-20€ or put them in a Steelbook and make it 35€ - and there you have your margin. But putting so much manual labor into correcting and restoring old films, re-scanning them for perfect picture quality from film rolls that are 30+ years old - that is costly also on their side. And that is (mostly) only done for the BD, because it's worth doing it for those - it isn't just for the DVD.

Now having said all of this  - and if you've read up to here: Kudos to you, for sticking to the DVD. I myself did that until Christmas of 2014. Because I was of the same opinion as you were. I never tried BDs at home as I didn't have a player for it; I just watched DVDs and I had such a large collection I didn't want to part with. Plus, I really detest these blue Amarays in their cheap plastic look that also destroys the mood of most of the artwork due to it's jarring blue. Then my brother gifted me a Blu-ray player because he was shocked that I still used DVD - I plugged it in and thought to myself: "Well, it can play DVDs so I have a new DVD-player if needed", then I tested out my Hobbit-Blu-ray I bought because the Collectors-Gift-Box only came with Bluray, and I was blown away by the picture quality. I then switched to my DVD, and experiencing that difference, my opinion was set: I'd never go back to DVD anymore

So in the end, I totally get you - if you don't see the difference, there is no reason to switch. Most companies only want to make money anways, and there is a lot of Blu-rays out there, which are just blown-up DVD versions. Shame on them. But there's also a lot of really great work done, and that probably for the last time (I don't see 4K getting anywhere near BD market share, so no one will re-scan and restore films another time, and 8K... I don't see that manifest itself any time soon. I try to cheap out as often as possible, but for these companies putting in the work I have a lot of respect and like to support them, for the work they put in.

(*) And to be quite honest, here again, this is a simplification which is why I used the (not scientifically correct) 90% and mostly. Take the analog film for example. Each image is captured in analog, i.e. we get continuous colors and continuous shapes and lines all the way. But, what about the shots themselves? We get 24fps, i.e. a discretization of time, as in reality each second has more than just 24 milliseconds. Which is why fast movement will look blurry on film. And anybody arguing objectively that HFR is better than our standard 24fps I cannot - objectively - disagree with. Subjectively, however... .

Uuuh. Nice choice. I have to confess: I've got them all 😜
I can also recommend following of the Wicked movies/editions (unfortunately I haven't seen all of them yet, and also I really like all of them, so I'll concentrate on four of them I really love from both - packaging as well as movie, besides those you already mentioned) - in no special order:

• The Brood - absolutely great MB package with spot gloss varnish that is only visible in the right angle of light, and a great classic movie; greatly done.
• Crimen Ferpecto - I absolutely love this movie; it's so strange, but totally funny - something really different to all the other movies; and in addition to that I like the rather different booklet design they chose for this movie; in cover A you also get the cover artworks for B and C inside the booklet, which are also really great, you have a collage of pictures, explaining the different characters and instead of the DVD you get the soundtrack on CD.
• Hammer House of Horror - Artwork of the edition is great, inside not many pictures and all of them movie screenshots which is a bit sad, but the shots are really well chosen, which is lovely. And it's the stop using inappropriate languageing end of a legacy - Hammer's final production, a 13 episodes horror series. And no one else except UK did a release - and UKs release is a simple Amaray. So hurray for this release - and to be honest here: I didn't even know about this series until this release. Quality of the episodes varies but there are some real gems to enjoy. Love it!
• Scanners Trilogy - The first and until now only padded mediabook by Wicked Vision - and I don't really like those, but for this one it fit's quite well; and I love it for three reasons: First, you get all three movies, and as a completionist I love this - especially if the quality of the sequels isn't too good - then I always want to have them for completion's sake, but don't want to buy them for qualities sake, and always feel bad about this. Second, it also features the soundtrack, which is a really nice bonus, and third the booklet has a lot of poster artworks, which I love.

Same here with the cover. Cover A is the official movie poster and thus rather well known (to me); Cover B looks great but is a bit mono-colored again, though I like the bluish ghost-ish art in the middle. And thus cover C it is for me. I also really like the motive - the dark stairs leading down, the candles, the rose dress against the greenish black and the hands creeping out of the dark - its so gothic-horror-esque, has a nice atmosphere to it (if that makes any sense?).