The Hunchback of Notre Dame Blu-ray?

[Elladorine]

I repeat, EVERY Disney Animated Classic will end up on Blu-ray sooner or later. Or so a little bird told me...

Why are you acting as if that's news? I don't think anyone has doubted that. At all... Ever.

I think the only question now is what quality the releases will be whenever they do get issued.

[Jules]

My thoughts on the old Hunchback DVD. Nothing new to report, but I felt like sharing ...

I was watching parts of my U.S. Hunchback DVD about a week ago, and was rather disappointed with the video presentation. A good deal of you have been complaining about this these last few years, but I always waved those complaints aside, thinking that Hunchback looked good on its debut DVD. Of course, I was coming to this conclusion after having only watched the DVD on an older CRT TV.

On my 1.5 year old LED, on the other hand, the colours are off - with part of the range appearing excessively muted and others excessively saturated. The lineart is also very poorly resolved, and not because the DVD is standard-def. Other traditionally-animated films have well-resolved lineart in standard-def. Finally, what print did they use? It was already rather careless of Disney to not grant the film a direct digital transfer, but did they really have to scan it off such a grainy, battered print? A non-digital transfer could still have looked very good, imo.

The DTS soundtrack is fine. That one gets a thumbs up.

I'm worried that future releases of Hunchback and even the forthcoming Rescuers Down Under blu-ray will fail to present their respective films direct from the digital source. Do Disney need to rerender older films such as these in 4K or were they rendered at those resolutions at the time of release?

[Lnds500]

My thoughts on the old Hunchback DVD. Nothing new to report, but I felt like sharing ...

I was watching parts of my U.S. Hunchback DVD about a week ago, and was rather disappointed with the video presentation. A good deal of you have been complaining about this these last few years, but I always waved those complaints aside, thinking that Hunchback looked good on its debut DVD. Of course, I was coming to this conclusion after having only watched the DVD on an older CRT TV.

On my 1.5 year old LED, on the other hand, the colours are off - with part of the range appearing excessively muted and others excessively saturated. The lineart is also very poorly resolved, and not because the DVD is standard-def. Other traditionally-animated films have well-resolved lineart in standard-def. Finally, what print did they use? It was already rather careless of Disney to not grant the film a direct digital transfer, but did they really have to scan it off such a grainy, battered print? A non-digital transfer could still have looked very good, imo.

The DTS soundtrack is fine. That one gets a thumbs up.

I'm worried that future releases of Hunchback and even the forthcoming Rescuers Down Under blu-ray will fail to present their respective films direct from the digital source. Do Disney need to rerender older films such as these in 4K or were they rendered at those resolutions at the time of release?

There is no way Disney, at this time and age, that would source them from a film print when a pristine digital master is available.

The Rescuers Down Under Blu-ray scenes on YouTube are definitely from a new master, the colours look much better, there is no grain or print damage etc.

Problem is that they would have to re-render the CG models which were used on each film. It's not a lot of work, since none of the two use extensive CG (unlike Treasure Planet). Whether they do that remains to be seen (they didn't for Treasure Planet) but I believe that they will.

[ProfessorRatigan]

^Oh, if they re-rendered the CG-background characters in Hunchback and made them less clunky-looking that would fix the ONLY problem I have with the film! That's an exciting thought. I'm just hoping like hell they don't force it on a single disc with its horrendous sequel and give it ZERO special features. (I really, really want those old Laserdisc features! Seriously, how hard is it for them to just PORT them over?)

[Scarred4life]

Problem is that they would have to re-render the CG models which were used on each film. It's not a lot of work, since none of the two use extensive CG (unlike Treasure Planet). Whether they do that remains to be seen (they didn't for Treasure Planet) but I believe that they will.

If they did this I would cry. From complete joy. I would wait an extra year for them to do the re-release if they fixed this.

[Marce82]

Are you guys kidding me with this?

We all complain when Disney goes back and tampers with their classics, and now you are hoping that they do it? THe clunky people is what Disney was able to do at the time, and it a reflection of the technology of the mid90s.

I hope they dont change a thing on the film.

[Lnds500]

Ehmm, I think we got confused..

I didn't say that they should update the film's visuals, I said they should re-render them so we won't have aliasing problems, pretty much the same thing they used on Toy Story and the rest of the "old" Pixar films

[Marce82]

Thats not what ProfRatigan is saying...

[ajmrowland]

yeah, he said they looked chunky, but honestly, for a film from 1996 that wouldnt be a bad thing by any means.