Thursday, December 3, 2009

BD impressions: Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

3:28 PM / BD Impressions / Comments18 Comments

BD Impressions
Blu-ray

I have a story to share with you. The other night, we decided to celebrate Christmas early and belatedly toast the dearly departed John Hughes by popping in the BD release of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. It's all good fun even if definitely an inferior product to the original... although, given the extent to which its script is little more than a photocopy of that of the original, that's actually quite surprising... But I digress, so anyway, here's my story. In the scene towards the end of the film when Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern are being set upon by Brenda Fricker's flock of pigeons, my brother and I both clearly heard Pesci screaming "Fucking pigeons!" Well, actually my brother heard it first and then I heard it when he played it back to me. We rewound it several times to confirm what we'd heard, checking both the original 2.0 surround mix and the 5.1 remix. I've seen this film so many times I know every line by heart (which, in a two-hour movie, is both impressive and disturbing), and I've never noticed that before. Anyway, it got me thinking about the crazy evangelical Christian groups that were harassing Disney at around the time of this film's release over animated priests with erections in The Little Mermaid and Aladdin supposedly telling everyone to take off their clothes (and so on), when all along "the most foul of the foul words" (to quote our dear friends at the Childcare Action Project) was present in this seemingly harmless tale of festive cheer. Given all the stories about Pesci struggling not to curse like a sailor during the making of the original Home Alone I'm not surprised he would say something like that. What does surprise me is that it somehow made its way into the final mix of a PG-rated family comedy.

Image quality: Oh boy, Universal would be proud. This looks a lot like one of their HD DVD catalogue releases, albeit with the grain structure more intact. It really isn't a very attractive disc at all, one that looks harsh and unpleasant with little in the way of fine definition. Image quality fluctuates quite a bit, with some showing a lot of thick, noise-like grain and others looking pretty soft and waxy. The poor definition is, as per usual, particularly noticeable in wide shots, as is the harsh ringing around high contrast edges. Those who own either DVD release (the non-anamorphic NTSC version or the anamorphic PAL version) will probably want to upgrade because, when all said and done, there is a tangible overall improvement in quality, and the overly blue look of the PAL DVD (I haven't seen the NTSC one) is no longer an issue. Still, I'd recommend waiting for a price drop. Given the below-average image quality and complete lack of extras, the price Fox is charging for this release is nothing short of extortionate. 5/10

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
studio: 20th Century Fox; country: USA; region code: A; codec: AVC;
file size: 20.5 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 24.48 Mbit/sec

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York Home Alone 2: Lost in New York Home Alone 2: Lost in New York Home Alone 2: Lost in New York Home Alone 2: Lost in New York Home Alone 2: Lost in New York Home Alone 2: Lost in New York Home Alone 2: Lost in New York Home Alone 2: Lost in New York Home Alone 2: Lost in New York Home Alone 2: Lost in New York Home Alone 2: Lost in New York Home Alone 2: Lost in New York Home Alone 2: Lost in New York Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

 
18 Comments

1. FoxyMulder said:

I see the edge enhancement in some of those shots and it looks to me like the grain has been sharpened along with everything else ( in those shots )

I actually have been dismayed by the number of releases i have rented recently with edge enhancement on medium to long distance camera shots. I think they are under orders to add it as closeups don't seem to contain it or don't in the recent films i have watched.

A disturbing thought entered my mind and i started to wonder if they are sharpening films at the digital intermediate stage as some films such as Taken clearly show edge enhancement.

All the great reviews online about Taken being reference quality and someone even nominated it for that thread i used to have at AVS and yet very few of them mention edge enhancement on medium and long distance shots.

Don't get me wrong Taken isn't a bad release and would have been excellent but for the edge enhancement. It just makes me wonder why in 2009 sharpening is still applied to releases and unfortunately it's something i am extremely sensitive to and notice almost instantly.

(Posted on Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 9:24 PM)

2. paku said:

Looks like the same people who did Fargo got their hands on this one.

(Posted on Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 9:40 PM)

3. Kram Sacul said:

It would've looked somewhat passable if it wasn't for the sharpening filter. A shame.

(Posted on Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 10:48 PM)

4. ucupa said:

I agree with Foxymulder :

"It just makes me wonder why in 2009 sharpening is still applied to releases and unfortunately it's something i am extremely sensitive to and notice almost instantly."

(Posted on Friday, December 4, 2009 at 7:30 PM)

5. Kram Sacul said:

The EE was most likely applied many years ago when the transfer was made.

(Posted on Saturday, December 5, 2009 at 4:52 AM)

6. FoxyMulder said:

Well Krtam thats probably true of this film but what about more recent films like Quantum of Solace, Taken or The Midnight Meat Train ( which i have watched recently )

No excuse for sharpening any recent release.

(Posted on Saturday, December 5, 2009 at 3:32 PM)

7. Author Profile Page Michael said:

There's no edge enhancement in Quantum of Solace. What there is is some extremely mild ringing brought about either as a result of extremely mild filtering or the downconversion process from the 4K master. I haven't seen Taken or Midnight Meat Train.

(Posted on Saturday, December 5, 2009 at 6:14 PM)

8. FoxyMulder said:

You may call it mild but it sticks out like a sore thumb to me. I also have to question how you can say it's part of a down conversion process or mild filtering. This film has bags of detail and i do not believe it was filtered. I also believe if it was due to down conversion the whole film would surely have the issue but the problem is with some but not all medium to long distance camera shots. To me that suggests someone has sharpened it.

Check out around the 37 minute mark in the plane and the two passengers seated to the left and you will see edge enhancement on the head and neck and knee's of the sitting passengers.

There are a number of scenes throughout the film where mild edge enhancement is visible when someone is wearing dark clothes or a dark suit and you will see light halo's around them. It's not nearly as obvious as Taken or The Midnight Meat Train but it's there.

I'm willing to listen though and understand why you think it's not edge enhancement.

I mean to ask how do you know it's not edge enhancement and more to the point the onscreen look of ringing is often identical to edge enhancement so whether it's ringing brought about by a down conversion or not it's still there and it resembles edge enhancement and it's ugly as **** and really it just should not be there.

(Posted on Sunday, December 6, 2009 at 8:34 AM)

9. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Is this the shot you're referring to? I don't see anything that looks like edge enhancement. I can see a slight halo to the right of the actor's leg, but I'm inclined to believe this was caused by the camera lens rather than digital manipulation. Absolutely nothing in this shot, or the rest of the film, looks sharpened, and I'm inclined to believe that if edge enhancement had been applied, it would be uniformally affecting all high contrast edges, not just a leg here and a shoulder there. As for saying it has bags of detail, how do you quantify that? So many factors can affect detail - film stock, focus, camera lens, etc. etc. - before you even consider filtering.

As for the difference between edge enhancement and filtering, it's admittedly not always possible to be 100% sure when it's one and not the other, particularly when the application is mild, but broadly speaking edge enhancement tends to look like a white outline around contrasty edges, whereas the ringing caused by filtering is usually more of a soft "ridge" (for example, around the text, tree and letterboxing in this shot from Flame & Citron). The filtering in Quantum of Solace (if that's what it is) is so ridiculously light that it barely registers outside of a couple of shots. The Siena location type was virtually the only time I was aware of it when watching it, but going back through the disc with a fine tooth-comb I noticed other instances, such as the railings in this shot or the text in the opening credits.

I'm going to have to rent Taken and Midnight Meat Train to see this edge enhancement, because so far I've yet to see it in any of the screenshots I've seen from either of these movies.

(Posted on Sunday, December 6, 2009 at 10:45 AM)

10. FoxyMulder said:

I am not sure if thats the shot but if it's around the 37 minute mark then you are close to the shot i refer to. I don't really see anything i would get annoyed at in that particular shot of yours so it must be another shot on the plane which got my attention.

I am aware of the factors that can affect detail and i took all of that into consieration when i said it had "bags of detail"

I did calibrate my system using the disc i got with my Oppo player which is the spears and munsil disc and did further testing with AVIA.

It's possible and i am not ruling it out that my settings need looked at again as the image you supplied above has nothing that sticks out as bad to me but when i viewed the film i thought that scene in the plane had one scene with terrible halo's.

Now the thing is this. If my system settings are wrong and it is adding halo's around things then i should see halo's in every movie i watch. I do not.

I recently watched Hellboy II and Wolverine and had no issues with those transfers and saw no halo's and indeed just watched The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor and once again saw no issues with halo's.

Indeed of films watched over the last few months i saw no issues with edge enhancement/ringing on the above and Ghost, The Wizard Of Oz, Friday The 13th ( Remake ) Changeling, Outlander or Tropic Thunder.

Yet i did see issues with Taken, Midnight Meat Train, Quantum Of Solace, Eastern promises and Eagle Eye.

If my system is calibrated wrongly i would expect to see issues on all of them not just a select few.

Can you think of any reason why this would be as surely if my settings are wrong and my projector or Blu Ray player is adding halo's due to the sharpness control being set wrongly then i would see the issue with all discs and not just a select few.

(Posted on Sunday, December 6, 2009 at 12:43 PM)

11. FoxyMulder said:

Incidentally please don't mind my typo's and can you say what you thought of Die Another Day regarding edge enhancement ?

(Posted on Sunday, December 6, 2009 at 12:45 PM)

12. Dirk Diggler said:

With regards to the little swear creeping through, I recently received Spaceballs on US BD and never realized that Rick Moranis said 'fuck'. The full line given, is "Fuck. Even in the future nothing works!" Having seen the UK version for the past 20 years, this was quite a shock to me. The US disc is still rated PG as well, which is even funnier.

(Posted on Sunday, December 6, 2009 at 7:15 PM)

13. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Foxy:

I've taken another look at Die Another Day, and while the ringing is certainly an issue, I certainly wouldn't describe it as the worst I've ever seen. I also see a lot of positives in this transfer, from its natural film grain to the impressive detail in close-ups and long shots. It's not going to win any awards, but I've seen plenty of film-sourced titles that look infinitely worse than this, including the odd day-and-date release (Brokeback Mountain and American Gangster, among others).

I would certainly encourage you to look into the possibility of your setup introducing some sort of ringing or accentuating what's already there. If memory serves me correctly, you mentioned seeing ringing around the letterbox bars on the Australian release of The Descent, which I am 100% convinced is not there on the disc. I haven't seen it when viewing the disc on my computer or on any of the various displays and players I've looked at it in. That alone would be enough to make me wonder whether something is being added at some stage in your display chain.

Of the other films you've mentioned that you had issues with, the only other one I've seen is Eastern Promises. I don't believe it was edge enhanced. I used to suspect that, like a number of 1.85:1 Universal titles from the same period (Mr. Bean's Holiday and Children of Men are two others), it was low pass filtered (their 2.35:1 titles from the same period all seem to be unaffected, oddly enough), but I'm now more inclined to believe that the film simply looks this way. I find it hard to believe it was edge enhanced if for no other reason than because I doubt anything that had been artificially sharpened would have such a smooth, relatively soft look. That said, can I just check that the version you're watching is the US release from Universal? I haven't seen the UK version from Pathé.

(Posted on Monday, December 7, 2009 at 11:19 AM)

14. David Mackenzie said:

Foxymulder: you're using one of the Panasonic LCD projectors, right?
I've not spent a lot of time with one of those, but it's possible that the lens is adding some sort of ringing at certain times. My old VPL-VW60's did.

In any case, I wouldn't QC any transfers on a projector myself (at least not a consumer-level one) because of the lenses. I always say, projectors are for enjoying films, monitors are for scrutinising them.

(Posted on Monday, December 7, 2009 at 1:53 PM)

15. FoxyMulder said:

The version of Eastern Promises is the UK rental one and not the North American release.

Definately looked to have edge enhancement in medium and long distance shots but it wasn't bad. Very watchable and looked like film apart from some edge enhancement.

Regarding The Descent. I'll have to check the disc again because it could have been the American one which i sold shortly after buying the Australian one.

I agree the film grain and the overall film look on Die Another Day is a positive but the edge enhancement is bad ( in my opinion ) I can't live with it and i really would give it very low marks because it has more edge enhancement than i am used to seeing on Blu Ray. Now bear in mind i do tend to avoid the releases such as Gladiator which get a bad rep thus my comparision is to older Bond movies in my collection.

The reason i would rule out my projector is because i really spen about four hours with the calibration disc fine tuning it so that edges were not being enhanced. The disc as well as AVIA can allow you to carefully check all that.

I remember seeing some edge enhancement on 24: Season 7 on the daylight scenes when Jack Bauer and his friends are wearing dark outfits and against the light background you could see the halo's and i stopped the disc in the Oppo and just switched to the Playstation 3 and re-checked and sure enough the halo's were there.

The problem i have with the theory about the projector introducing halo's and edge enhancement is that i do not see the issue with many discs. I see it on some and i listed them above but then i watch some films and see absolutely none.

You have Goldfinger ? Watch the scene where Pussy Galore is standing to the right of the screen as her flying girls return to the ground. There is a halo around her body. Indeed during the second half of Goldfinger i felt there was a number of scenes with edge enhancement.

Now regarding the early Bond movies i am sure i have read and indeed i am sure Robert A Harris the film restoration expert mentioned the original negatives being in such bad shape they had to add "fake" grain in once they had completed the restoration ( first 3 films only )

He said the grain structure in From Russia With Love which i think is the best Bond movie made well anyways he said the grain structure was from a later vintage as in from the late sixties and not 1963.

I do find it hard to say whether it's ringing caused by downconversion or edge enhancement added to a movie but i am learning and continue to learn and i am trying to write reviews for my own site and no doubt some of the views in those reviews will not be shared by you but it's expressing what i am seeing.

Now if the projector is adding any issues i can not understand why it wouldn't add them on all releases. I am getting a full HD 22 inch monitor soon though and may check very carefully to see if the issues show up on that and try and find out for sure if it's the projector adding an issue or whether it's really there or perhaps it's there but more of an issue on my LCD projector than on some others.

Not ruling anything out yet but like i say you would think all releases would be a problem if the projector is adding anything into the mix and yet i have been finding some releases are ear perfect to my eyes.

(Posted on Monday, December 7, 2009 at 6:00 PM)

16. FoxyMulder said:

Optical keyboards playing havoc with fast typing.

for ear read near and for spen read spent.

Apologies folks.

(Posted on Monday, December 7, 2009 at 6:03 PM)

17. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Foxymulder:

I've added the UK Eastern Promises BD to my rental list. I almost picked up a copy the other day at Borders for eight quid, but in the end I decided to hold out and rent it to see how it looks. I don't particularly want to shell out for something that, by the sounds of it, may actually look inferior to my HD DVD copy.

As for The Descent - Australian, American, British, I don't see any ringing whatsoever around the letterboxing in any of them.

I don't have Goldfinger, I'm afraid, although once I've worked my way through the six films in the UK Bond BD set I bought recently, I'll probably start filling in the gaps in my collection which whichever other ones are currently available on BD. Not sure I'd stoop to paying money for The World is Not Enough, though, at least not as a separate release. Now, if it came packaged with some more worthwhile films, on the other hand...

(Posted on Sunday, December 13, 2009 at 1:43 PM)

18. FoxyMulder said:

I did test Die Another Day on a new full HD 22 inch monitor and i still saw edge enhancement but it wasn't as severe looking as when i viewed using my projector and 104inch screen.

I think though thats because the 22inch is so small and thus the problem is smaller.

As for The Descent. Now that i think more about it with my Panasonic projector i do tend to see small lines at the letterbox bars on a number of Blu Ray releases ( if not all ) but i simply use the feature which allows me to shift the pixels a few bits up or down and that means i don't see it anymore. I don't think on my projector thats the same as what you may be seeing though as i have seen this on some fantastic looking releases which you yourself have rated highly.

It's probably not a ringing issue or anything else because i have seen it on some releases which i have saw absolutely no edge enhancement that is visible to my eye.

The thing is i had no issues which stuck out as far as edge enhancement goes at my present settings with some films you reviewed such as Braveheart or Ghostbusters or Star Trek, The Silence Of The Lambs or Indeed North By Northwest.

Thus if i do see it on Die Another Day, Eastern Promises, Eagle Eye or Taken then i have to think it's there although i will say it might be ringing and not edge enhancement.

For the record though it's possible that even minor instances of edge enhancement or ringing just annoy me more thus i tend to pick up on it and get upset by it more.

For my own site i would give the above films the following score.

Die Another Day 6.5/10
Eastern Promises 8/10
Taken 8/10
Eagle Eye 8/10
Quantum Of Solace 8.5/10

So as you can see only Die Another Day really bothered me a lot and the others i still thought were really good image quality but just slightly let down by slight instances of edge enhancement or ringing.

Just my opinion though and i do intend to take yet another look at projector settings just to make sure nothing is being added. The sharpness test on the Spears and Munsil disc is good for testing that as is the AVIA one albeit at a lower resolution.

I will also test carefully by bringing up a scene from Die Another Day and lowering sharpness carefully to see if the issues i see disappear or remain.

Further down the line though i would like to pick up a 3D enabled projector for the new format coming next year. I'd love to see Avatar in 3D in the home but a proper 3D format that doesn't ruin colours or cause ghosting effects all over the place.

(Posted on Sunday, December 13, 2009 at 6:40 PM)

 
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