Let me explain. My 69-year old dad has been talking about a film called "The Waltz King" for quite some time. Internet searches, for some reason, failed to prove the existence of this film that my father claims to have watched about 50 years ago, and would like to see again, out of nostalgia. Then, suddenly, I saw this film listed on Kerwin Mathews' filmography on the "7th Voyage of Sinbad" DVD, which I watched recently.
After some research, I found out that this "Waltz King" film was actually a Disney television production that aired in the 1960s, and is available on a Disney Generations DVD.
"Yay!", I thought.
So I bought the (manufactured-on-demand) DVD off Amazon.com, and it came in the post today. I inserted it in the DVD player ... and was not impressed at all. While I cannot expect Disney to grant such a title any restoration work, I wonder, was there only one print available for "The Waltz King"? In any case, it's dirty, it's scratched, it's soft, and the colours are muted (except for pink ... actually most of the image is pink, which I think is proof of a faded print).
Oh, and the encode seems to have been carried out by an amateur. Not only are there visible compression artefacts (this on a disc that contains nothing but a 90-minute film), but the frame rate seems to be screwed up too. Camera pans yield a messy, juddery image, which looks WORSE than the usual 24p judder you get on Blu-rays. The dancing couples look like they were filmed at 12fps rather than 24.
Anyway, I paid $18 for this piece of shit* ($25 when you factor in shipping and handling). I want my money back.
But can I get it back? Amazon says you can return items if they are still in their original sealed state. Well, shoot, you have the break the seal and play a DVD to see if it is any good!* I wouldn't be complaining if this release was priced at a competitive $3.
