Well, I'm across the ditch in New Zealand and working in a rental/sale store for the past five years. We get asked if we have Blu-ray maybe twice a month at the most, and sell one or two a month. Its a non-event here, although some of the other shops swear they rent them constantly. I call bullshit.John Edmond wrote:Curious as to what the penetration is like for Australia which isn't suffering from an austerity drive - it does seem like everyone has one sometimes.
Criterion Blu-ray
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- Joined: Wed Apr 06, 2011 4:25 am
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
- Matt
- Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:58 pm
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
I remember when it was the fad to color the inside ring of your CDs with a Sharpie to make them sound "warmer." The record store I worked in had markers for sale by the register to take advantage of this.Ishmael wrote:Yup, I remember when CDs first came out, I often heard people say that the sound was too clean or too cold.Drucker wrote:I wonder if some people hated CDs when they came out for this reason (obviously CDs didn't sound great, really, until relatively recently...but still...)
- flyonthewall2983
- Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2005 3:31 pm
- Location: Indiana
- Contact:
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
Did it work?
- triodelover
- Joined: Sat Jan 27, 2007 2:11 pm
- Location: The hills of East Tennessee
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
Depended on how susceptible you were to the power of suggestion.flyonthewall2983 wrote:Did it work?
There were (and are) a host of issues with digital and the best analog set-ups will still sound more like the real thing, but the fundamental problem was always the sampling and bit rates. If you go back to issues of The Journal of the Audio Engineering Society from the late '70s and early '80s, you'll find a plethora of articles criticizing the 44k/16 standard the industry settled on at the time. The rate was insufficient to guarantee that overtones and ambient effects would be accurately reproduced. But the industry didn't care. The labels had been under a constant barrage of criticism as the pressing quality of LPS had been in a steady decline since the end of the '60s - lower quality vinyl, thinner pressing, poor QA/QC. The record companies saw the CD as the way out around these issues and didn't care that engineers kept telling them that the sampling rate was too low and would lead to error propagation in the algorithms used to interpolate between data points. High quality sound reproduction was the province of a few aficionados with high end systems while the majority of their customer base listening on cheap stereos were complaining about warps and all the ticks and pops. And so we got "perfect sound forever."
- jindianajonz
- Jindiana Jonz Abrams
- Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2011 8:11 pm
DVD better than Blu Ray?
Just out of curiosity, which Criterion titles have DVD versions that are superior in certain ways to the Blu-ray version?
Off the top of my head, I know we have:
Double Life of Veronique (DVD has an extra essay in the booklet)
Man Who Fell to Earth (DVD comes with novel)
Last Emperor (TV version and some essays in booklet only available in the 4 disc set)
I'm pretty sure there are other Blu-rays that have trimmed down booklets, but I can't think of them off the top of my head.
Off the top of my head, I know we have:
Double Life of Veronique (DVD has an extra essay in the booklet)
Man Who Fell to Earth (DVD comes with novel)
Last Emperor (TV version and some essays in booklet only available in the 4 disc set)
I'm pretty sure there are other Blu-rays that have trimmed down booklets, but I can't think of them off the top of my head.
- The Narrator Returns
- Joined: Tue Nov 15, 2011 6:35 pm
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
Fanny and Alexander's Blu-Ray was missing the director introductions. And I suppose you could count the new DVD edition of Howards End, considering the problems present on the Blu-Ray.
- swo17
- Bloodthirsty Butcher
- Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
- Location: SLC, UT
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
All of the Blu-rays lose the DVD menu screen, which is occasionally a bit of a shame.
- The Narrator Returns
- Joined: Tue Nov 15, 2011 6:35 pm
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
The loss of the Rushmore menus made me particularly sad.
- rspaight
- Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2012 10:18 am
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
The BD of Monterey Pop is missing the vintage Jann Wenner "Rolling Stone" article, if we're being that picky.
- EddieLarkin
- Joined: Sat Sep 08, 2012 10:25 am
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
Donald Richie's "biographical sketches" are missing from the BD Kagemusha booklet.
The original "Beauty and the Beast" story by Mme. Beaumont is missing from the BD booklet
The original "Beauty and the Beast" story by Mme. Beaumont is missing from the BD booklet
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- Joined: Fri Jan 22, 2010 11:50 pm
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
I'd say the PQ quality on the Children of Paradise DVD is superior to the waxy DNR'd Blu-ray.
- captveg
- Joined: Wed Sep 02, 2009 7:28 pm
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
By my count, when including the the announced titles through January '13, we're at 1/3rd of the DVD collection also being on Blu-ray (as Spine #'s go, 229/644). That averages to 4.5 releases a month (50 months since the first BDs in 12/08).
Not bad in ~4 years of BD releases. 86/229 of the BDs are upgrades released after the DVD counterpart.
Not bad in ~4 years of BD releases. 86/229 of the BDs are upgrades released after the DVD counterpart.
- swo17
- Bloodthirsty Butcher
- Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
- Location: SLC, UT
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
It's maybe a more helpful measure if you only count spines that didn't initially get Blu-ray releases (i.e. everything before 450, and about 50 titles between 450 and 534). That way, out of about 500 spines that could at some point have been upgraded, I count 80 so far that have been (about 16%, or 20 a year). At that rate, that's still 21 more years before they could upgrade everything.captveg wrote:By my count, when including the the announced titles through January '13, we're at 1/3rd of the DVD collection also being on Blu-ray (as Spine #'s go, 229/644).
- captveg
- Joined: Wed Sep 02, 2009 7:28 pm
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
Here's the breakdown:swo17 wrote:It's maybe a more helpful measure if you only count spines that didn't initially get Blu-ray releases (i.e. everything before 450, and about 50 titles between 450 and 534). That way, out of about 500 spines that could at some point have been upgraded, I count 80 so far that have been (about 16%, or 20 a year). At that rate, that's still 21 more years before they could upgrade everything.captveg wrote:By my count, when including the the announced titles through January '13, we're at 1/3rd of the DVD collection also being on Blu-ray (as Spine #'s go, 229/644).
Spines 1-449
85 have been upgraded.
55 DVD-only titles are OOP and unlikely to ever get re-issued (I did not include the BRD Trilogy in this count as it will eventually be re-issued)
So, 85/394 eligible titles are upgraded.
Spines 450-534 (534, L’enfance nue, last DVD-only release)
Of these 85:
32 were released on BD day-and-date with the DVD
1 has been subsequently upgraded (485, The Last Days of Disco)
52 remain DVD only
So, that's 447 (394+52+1) that were originally DVD only that are currently in print, with 86 having been upgraded.
86/447 = 19.2%
361 remain, though it is unlikely some will ever be upgraded.
- denti alligator
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:36 pm
- Location: "born in heaven, raised in hell"
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
I've been surprised by which titles that already exist in HD masters have not yet been upgraded to Blu. Is this purely a sales question?
Where's ...
L'avventura and L'Eclisse
The Dreyer box set
The Vanishing
Red Beard (please!)
Hiroshima mon amour
Fassbinders
Eyes without a Face
Bergman trilogy
and my most wanted:
A Canterbury Tale
Spirit of the Beehive
Where's ...
L'avventura and L'Eclisse
The Dreyer box set
The Vanishing
Red Beard (please!)
Hiroshima mon amour
Fassbinders
Eyes without a Face
Bergman trilogy
and my most wanted:
A Canterbury Tale
Spirit of the Beehive
- Drucker
- Your Future our Drucker
- Joined: Wed May 18, 2011 9:37 am
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
and La Strada!
- MichaelB
- Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
- Location: Worthing
- Contact:
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
Spirit of the Beehive is out on Blu-ray in Spain, with English subtitles.
The bad news is that it's definitely Region B (I've just checked).
The bad news is that it's definitely Region B (I've just checked).
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- Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2011 11:12 am
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
I've been sorely tempted by the Spanish releases of Spirit of the Beehive and El Sur but I believe neither have extras, is that correct?
- MichaelB
- Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
- Location: Worthing
- Contact:
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
Aside from trailers for other releases on the same label, that's right. But I picked up both for less than £20 including delivery from Amazon.es the other week.Calvin wrote:I've been sorely tempted by the Spanish releases of Spirit of the Beehive and El Sur but I believe neither have extras, is that correct?
- triodelover
- Joined: Sat Jan 27, 2007 2:11 pm
- Location: The hills of East Tennessee
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
How are the transfers? Like Calvin, I've been tempted because they are inexpensive.MichaelB wrote:Aside from trailers for other releases on the same label, that's right. But I picked up both for less than £20 including delivery from Amazon.es the other week.Calvin wrote:I've been sorely tempted by the Spanish releases of Spirit of the Beehive and El Sur but I believe neither have extras, is that correct?
- Gregory
- Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:07 pm
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
I recently sent a Mulvaney e-mail to ask if this was indeed going to become available again. The reply was that it was OOP because they lost the rights...captveg wrote:55 DVD-only titles are OOP and unlikely to ever get re-issued (I did not include the BRD Trilogy in this count as it will eventually be re-issued)
If we should ever recover the rights to any of our out-of-print titles, we will happily rerelease them. However, to the best of my knowledge, at this time we have no plans to rerelease any of our out-of-print titles.
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- Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2011 12:06 am
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
I believe that if you take the time to browse through Criterion's Hulu offerings you'll find many more than that available. Unfortunately they've made that much more difficult to parse online.I've been surprised by which titles that already exist in HD masters have not yet been upgraded to Blu. Is this purely a sales question?
- bainbridgezu
- Joined: Tue Jan 18, 2011 10:54 pm
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
This was Mulvaney's reply to me right after the set was taken out-of-print:Gregory wrote:I recently sent a Mulvaney e-mail to ask if this was indeed going to become available again. The reply was that it was OOP because they lost the rights...captveg wrote:55 DVD-only titles are OOP and unlikely to ever get re-issued (I did not include the BRD Trilogy in this count as it will eventually be re-issued)If we should ever recover the rights to any of our out-of-print titles, we will happily rerelease them. However, to the best of my knowledge, at this time we have no plans to rerelease any of our out-of-print titles.
Both Veronika Voss and Marriage of Maria Braun were recently added to Criterion's Hulu channel, while Lola (along with the other two) has been shown with Janus logos since the original releases were discontinued. There has been a change in rights (due to Wellspring's dissolution), but it's safe to say that these films will be reappearing.Mulvaney wrote:Thank you for your email and question.
There will be a new release in the future of Fassbinder's BRD Trilogy, but we unsure when it will be available.
Please let me know if you have any further questions or concerns, and thank you for supporting Criterion!
Best,
Jon Mulvaney
- denti alligator
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:36 pm
- Location: "born in heaven, raised in hell"
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
Is El Sur Blu, too? I mighty jump for those. Though isn't it inevitable that Spirit will be released by CC in Blu?MichaelB wrote:Aside from trailers for other releases on the same label, that's right. But I picked up both for less than £20 including delivery from Amazon.es the other week.Calvin wrote:I've been sorely tempted by the Spanish releases of Spirit of the Beehive and El Sur but I believe neither have extras, is that correct?
- swo17
- Bloodthirsty Butcher
- Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
- Location: SLC, UT
Re: Criterion Blu-ray
Probably. They also have rights to El Sur (currently streaming on their Hulu channel), if you're patient enough to wait.denti alligator wrote:Though isn't it inevitable that Spirit will be released by CC in Blu?