Beauty and the Beast: Diamond Edition (October 5th!)

[Lorddh]

Tomorrow (Tuesday, Oct. 5) Best Buy has a 'Doorbuster Sale" on the Blu-ray release of "Beauty and the Beast". The 3-disc combo pack is scheduled for sale at $24.99, but if you get there between 10 a.m. and noon you can get it for $21.99. The single disc Blu-ray is regularly sale priced at $21.99 and you can get it for $19.99 between 10 a.m. and 12 noon. Don't miss it!!!

Um, dude, tomorrow is the 28th of September. Though it would be superb if this deal happens to be true!!!

[MutantEnemy]

Tomorrow (Tuesday, Oct. 5) Best Buy has a 'Doorbuster Sale" on the Blu-ray release of "Beauty and the Beast". The 3-disc combo pack is scheduled for sale at $24.99, but if you get there between 10 a.m. and noon you can get it for $21.99. The single disc Blu-ray is regularly sale priced at $21.99 and you can get it for $19.99 between 10 a.m. and 12 noon. Don't miss it!!!

Um, dude, tomorrow is the 28th of September. Though it would be superb if this deal happens to be true!!!

This can't be real. There is no single disc version of "Beauty and the Beast" and this is the same deal as the Iron Man deal...so I'm calling BS.

[Lorddh]

Um, dude, tomorrow is the 28th of September. Though it would be superb if this deal happens to be true!!!

This can't be real. There is no single disc version of "Beauty and the Beast" and this is the same deal as the Iron Man deal...so I'm calling BS.

Exactly. Poor guy was very confuse!!! Anyway, I'm hoping they'll have this sale for Beauty and the Beast.

[AwallaceUNC]

I'm working on my review of the Diamond Edition as quickly as I can. Diamond Editions are pretty much the most demanding titles for a reviewer, especially here at UD/DVDizzy, where we devote the amount of time it takes to fully evaluate every nook and cranny of each disc.

There's much to be said about the coloration, A/V, bonus features, etc. I can't wait to get the review up and will finish just as soon as I can! Of course, we'll have A/B screencaps comparing the Platinum DVD to the Diamond DVD.

Get ready for a long review.

-Aaron

[jpanimation]

It's a caps film, cleaning up dirt and such doesn't change the colors. it sounds like they just needed to clean up line work from the original scan. The colors are all digital though, there is no such restoration done for that. unless, did they use any real paintings for backgrounds? still, the bulk of the paint was digital.

Most (if not all) of the backgrounds were hand painted and then scanned in (excluding computer generated backgrounds of course).

Look at this image in full resolution:
http://www.mouseinfo.com/gallery/files/ ... iginal.jpg

Just look at all the artifacts and splats. I know it's hard to see with the low resolution, but if you check your Platinum Edition DVD, that debris is still there. By contrast, if you watch the HD clip of this sequence of YouTube from the new Diamond Edition, you will notice the background is now spotless.

Even though I don't agree with the color alterations, I have to admire the effort that was put into this presentation.

I'm working on my review of the Diamond Edition as quickly as I can. Diamond Editions are pretty much the most demanding titles for a reviewer, especially here at UD/DVDizzy, where we devote the amount of time it takes to fully evaluate every nook and cranny of each disc.

There's much to be said about the coloration, A/V, bonus features, etc. I can't wait to get the review up and will finish just as soon as I can! Of course, we'll have A/B screencaps comparing the Platinum DVD to the Diamond DVD.

Get ready for a long review.

-Aaron

I look forward to it. Getting through those supplements is sure to be exhausting but when you claim to 'fully evaluate every nook and cranny,' do you seriously play the games too?

[Escapay]

I look forward to it. Getting through those supplements is sure to be exhausting but when you claim to 'fully evaluate every nook and cranny,' do you seriously play the games too?

One of the best thing about UD reviews is that they actually check out and review the games and activities, no matter how silly or awesome the games are. Few review sites bother to check out the games, most often will write them off in a sentence along the lines of "And for the kids, there's a game called (insert title)" or "They also have a kiddie game called (insert), but I didn't bother with it".

Also, checking out the games allows the UD reviewers to write some fun or snarky lines in reviews...

From Alice in Wonderland: Masterpiece Edition
Although rather bizarre, the show isn't quite as terrifying as others have claimed.

From Aladdin: Platinum Edition
It's very simple, and I don't think your wish really gets granted, but I may wake up tomorrow and find otherwise.

From Cinderella III: A Twist in Time
If you dare to play this game in the first place, prepare to resist the urge to pull out the disc and snap it cleanly in half by the time it's done.

From Disney Princess Enchanted Tales: Follow Your Dreams
In the first game, "Aurora Dress Up", it is apparent that Aurora lacks fashion sense.
...
Unfortunately, you aren't allowed to pick anything that is not fit to be worn by a princess of the Disney variety, greatly lessening the fun aspect of the game.
...
Is there any room for silliness in the Disney Princess realm? I guess not.

From The Jungle Book: Platinum Edition
Kaa-Zen-Tration is the stuff of migraines and epileptic seizures as viewers are supposed to choose which of three sets of eyes match Kaa's hypnotic pair.

From Sleeping Beauty: Platinum Edition
I may not be the intended audience, but is this really how anyone should learn English?

From Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: Diamond Edition
For those curious to know, this reviewer is most closely associated with Belle, which seems an apt enough result.



albert

[UmbrellaFish]

I'm working on my review of the Diamond Edition as quickly as I can. Diamond Editions are pretty much the most demanding titles for a reviewer, especially here at UD/DVDizzy, where we devote the amount of time it takes to fully evaluate every nook and cranny of each disc.

There's much to be said about the coloration, A/V, bonus features, etc. I can't wait to get the review up and will finish just as soon as I can! Of course, we'll have A/B screencaps comparing the Platinum DVD to the Diamond DVD.

Get ready for a long review.

-Aaron

Very excited!

[DarthPrime]

This can't be real. There is no single disc version of "Beauty and the Beast" and this is the same deal as the Iron Man deal...so I'm calling BS.

Exactly. Poor guy was very confuse!!! Anyway, I'm hoping they'll have this sale for Beauty and the Beast.

Its $24.99 according to next weeks Best Buy ad (Blu-ray or DVD packaging).

[2099net]

I would guess that the "clean up" they mention isn't faults on the transfer, but faults on the original source, before it was scanned into CAPS. However, I doubt this was done for the Blu-ray - more likely done for the original IMAX release where the other "enhancements" were made and the Human Again sequence inserted. Once the IMAX release was created, they really shouldn't have to do more "restoration".

I mean, nothing would show up faults more than screening the film on an IMAX screen!

So once again, I feel the restoration notes given by Disney are nothing but marketing with very little basis in reality. I really doubt any alterations to the art were done for the Blu-ray release - there comes a time when its impossible to actually do anything meaningful to the image. However, I don't doubt that colour-timings will once again have been altered.

What people don't understand is, colour-timing is more than just pressing a button - its a skill in itself and while digital-to-digital transfers perhaps don't have that many variables, digital-to-analogue does. People are trained in colour timing and, a decade or so back, the process involved knowing about photochemical reactions more so than twiddling knobs. And even then, identical film stock from different batches could alter the end result - not dramatically, but no result was guaranteed (unlike today with digital processes).

But there's something important to remember about BatB, it is, in places, a much darker film than other CAPS releases.

Now consider this, how many times have you watched a horror film or thriller on your TV and struggled to make out what's going on in the dark? A good recent example of this is Aliens Vs Predator Requiem - its almost impossible to make out what's going on in some of those dark scenes. But those senes would have been much clearer when viewed at the cinema. While the DVD/Blu-ray has received many complaints about the unviewability of those scenes, I can't recall any cinema reviews for the movie mentioning it being hard to see what's going on. And its not sitting in a darkened room either - get the room as dark as you can, and it's still hard to see the action in AVPR.

I suspect the main reason for this is because theatre screens are almost the total opposite of TV screens.

TV works on direct light, projection screens work on reflected light. The two are physically totally different.

Different methods have different registers - post people accept TVs have issues with blacks - it's very rare that you'll get a pure black on either a CRT or LCD TV - mainly because by working by sending out light, its hard to get an absence of light. Conversely, its hard to get a pure brilliant white on a theatre screen because the light is reflected. A lot of "white" isn't actually "white", but pale blue (think of various cartoons character's eyes) on older films for this reason. These days however, by covering the screen with small reflective glass beads, its easier to get white-light reflected.

Now, I'm not arguing that the colours of BatB had changed - to do so is somewhat redundant. However, I still maintain that they altered on the Platinum DVD according to the filmmakers desire - who knows, perhaps they thought areas of the film were too dark on the previous releases and optimised the film for how they wanted it to be seen when screened at home on modern viewing equipment.

To my mind, the reasons aren't really important, if the original filmmakers did make that decision, then its OK by me.

Books get second editions, sometimes with mistakes or content corrected/deleted/revised. Is anyone here desperate to have a first printing of The Hobbit or Frankenstein* for example? Or Famous painters have been known to paint over their older brushstrokes. Artists remix or cover their own songs, as well as umpteen artists covering other people's songs.

It's not as Disney Duster said earlier "Art be damned". Art need evolution to progress - be it in the form of new works, or existing works revisited by the creators.

While I can accept that people may be disappointed not to have the version that they "grew-up with", for whatever reason, we are not in a position to demand that version, and never should be IMO.

* I know these are two older examples, but I know more about literature from those periods than I do about modern literature, but I'm sure it still happens today for the odd title.

[dvdjunkie]

Okay, I got my calendar messed up. That's what I get for being so excited about this Disney release. Sorry for all the hassle, but at least you know where I will be getting my copy of "Beauty and the Beast" next week.

[KubrickFan]

HERE is how we know they are messing with the colors:

The Platinum DVD had different colors from this new Blu-ray. End of discussion. They changed the colors.

The new Godfather edition is different from the older version too, was that changed too? No, the colors were finally restored to what they were supposed to be.

[rodis]

The colors are all digital though, there is no such restoration done for that. unless, did they use any real paintings for backgrounds? still, the bulk of the paint was digital.

The backgrounds are CLEARLY hand-painted.

After they were hand-painted, they were scanned into a computer to composite with the CHARACTERS who were PAINTED digitally.

[Mr. Yagoobian]

No, they already had a source that was not a film print or anything suffering from the things you mentioned - the original CAPS source would have the original colors, they would just have to use that for the straight to DVD bonus features.

A direct digital transfer? (The kind of thing that wasn't possible for the '92 releases, that they did for the very first time with the DVD release of A Bug's Life?) Why would they do that for the special features and NOT do it for the feature presentation, then? Can you answer that without a variation on the "because they wanted to screw us" theme?

I'll stand by comments about the production timeline and workflow. It's not like BatB is the only Disney film fow which I've seen either previews or feature clips in bonus materials that look like the last release instead of the new feature presentation they're promoting with which they're bundled.


For lawd's sake. For the '92 release, direct digital transfer wasn't even an OPTION. The content had to go from high-res digital imagery to film, through some manner of importation that fit the NTSC standard, sacrificing resolution and color fidelity to wind up on target media that was incapable of perfectly representing what was thrown on it anyway---and every step of the way executed through processes now at least twenty years old, monitored by humans capable of error on displays now twenty years behind the state of the art. If, through technical limitations or deficiency or mistaken/misguided human effort to correct for those limitations and deficiencies, there exists a release Most Likely to Have Screwed the Color Timing Pooch, it's what hit the shelves in 1992. I wouldn't be surprised if the BS rationalization for marketing the Diamond as "restored" would be that they're doing nothing more than <i>undoing</i> previous "corrective" work.

I saw the film in theatres back '91. I was even old enough to vote. And I don't remember <i>exactly</i> how it looked either, but it sure wasn't as flat, drab, and muddy as the VHS I got the next year.

[Escapay]

It's not as Disney Duster said earlier "Art be damned". Art need evolution to progress - be it in the form of new works, or existing works revisited by the creators.

In his defense, he was simply expanding on a (now-deleted) line in one of my posts that said "colors be damned," and basically accusing me of damning the entirety of the artwork simply because unlike the color warriors, I don't consider the colors my highest priority in my enjoyment of the film.

While I can accept that people may be disappointed not to have the version that they "grew-up with", for whatever reason, we are not in a position to demand that version, and never should be IMO.

Agreed.

albert

[tcclives23]

<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/3eRWM8tKph8?fs ... ram><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/3eRWM8tKph8?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>

[ajmrowland]

^the reflection was a sore-thumb.

Otherwise, it's pretty good.

[PatrickvD]

I don't mind this transfer nearly as much as the PE. It's not authentic, but much easier on the eyes.

[Atlantica]

I'm terribly sorry if this has been posted, but all I could see from the last few pages are the eternal questions on the films colouring, but I saw this today: The alternate DVD cover for R2

http://www.play.com/DVD/DVD/4-/16222268 ... oduct.html

And a new facebook video on casting the voices :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iVKskFkGC0

[ajmrowland]

The cover was posted somewhere in the old topic, but it's nice to be reminded of it.

[buffalobill]

I know the preorder posters at Wal Mart advertise Tangled movie cash with B&TB but does anyone know if it is a WM exclusive or if all of the blu ray combo packs will have a Tangled ticket? I just preordered it at Best Buy with the free Ironpack but would like a free ticket too.