but i was surprised how good and settle it was, it doesnt take your eye off the main picture just adds egtra effect to it.
Really, I think I would prefer to watch it without those color effects. But since I'm only planning on buying the DVD - that's no matter. The DVD is actually 4:3 ratio, right? (And not pillarboxed widescreen with the "automatically pan-and-scan" flag? That was my one big fear as far as authoring is concerned)
As for the Blu-Ray, it would have been nice to have that an an *option*. Like, either black pillarboxes or fancy ones. But that's just typically Disney - ramming stuff down people's throats without giving them an option. (Yay ripping the Blu-Ray, changing the sides to black, then re-burning it? Hopefully I'll get a BD burner soon...)
The colors look a lot more vivid and Technicolorish in this new release. The 2002 one looked like someone's hand slipped while adjusting the brightness and contrast.
Of course it did, it's Lowry Digital!
Yes but you do need a Marky lens to see that, because it's again all subjective personal opinion backed up with vague facts and meaningless suggestions. You don't have a clue what the OTV is because you've only ever seen analog sources that were poorly made at the time and have worn out over time. You were not there in 1940, or when the film was first photographed. The individuals who restore these films have far more credibility than you do because of their training and experience. I'd like to see you walk up to a car mechanic and say you can do a better job fixing a car than he or she can because you've seen what it looks like fixed. You did not spend the last god knows how many months working on this project to present the film in a way that tries to be a close as anything to what might have been shown all those years ago.
The people who restored it weren't there in 1940 either. And the case with Lowry Digital is that they'll do whatever they're told to do. Look at Star Wars vs. Indiana Jones - both done by the same company, but completely different styles. George Lucas told Lowry to make his films look as new as possible, and they do. Spielberg told them to make the films look exactly the way they did in theaters, and they did that as well. And I'm willing to bet it wouldn't be beneath Disney to tell Lowry (or whatever company restored it - likely them though) to make it look as new as possible. After all, nobody wants an old-looking Blu-Ray, do they?!
I'm not saying anybody's right or wrong, as I have no idea what it "should" look like either. Unlike Beauty and the Beast, the original masters have faded over the years and all the releases up to now have been low quality and worn out. I'm not defending Disney, but I'm not complaining about them either.
Original negatives don't fade.
While the black and white negatives might not fade, they more than likely deteriorate. There were some pretty good documentaries on the subject on the DVDs of Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz - showing some of the scratches, dust, etc. that lodged itself in the film after all these years, and how they fixed it. (And unlike Lowry, they actually did a *good* job of restoring)
But unlike Wall-E this one doesn't have the 'lock' on the blu case
That's a good thing. Those locking cases piss me off - All they're good for is breaking off. And with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray it makes hard to even use, honestly. For DVD I can break them off... but meh. Thank God Disney stopped the locking cases.
Lighthousemike, I have a request too. Do you have another DVD player (even if it's not upscaling) you could hook up to that HDTV? I know with Sleeping Beauty there was controversy over the fact that the Blu-Ray and DVD had slightly different colors. I'm curious if this is true for Pinocchio as well.
So possibly, could you put the DVD and Blu-Ray both on the same frame and see how different they look? I'm sure there will be a slight difference due to connections (HDMI vs. whatever) or the fact that the PS3 has different color configurations for Blu-Ray (on my PS3 I have "super white" enabled and Full RGB spectrum)... but if they look similar chances are they aren't as different as the Sleeping Beauty release was.
And just an afterthought of my own... I completely get what Marky is saying. Though I'm more irked at Beauty and the Beast than this one. I do think Disney is trying to make their films look as new as humanly possible (partly because of the high definition format, nobody will praise it if it looks really old)... which kinda detracts from the film. However, it's not like I'll avoid watching it entirely. It's just nice to have the original look as well (and at least with Pinocchio, there WAS a release on DVD - the Gold Classics version.)