mrwilson

Anyone have this disc? Is the Picture Quality better than the fake anamorphic one on the R0 HK disc?

kvltboy

The picture quality on the Korean 2-disc set looks quite good to me. The DTS track sounds great too! Haven't seen the Universe disc, so i can't compare the two. Also can't say as to whether it's "really" anamorphic or not, as i don't have a widescreen TV. The one problem i have found is that the "special feature" version of the movie, with the extra scenes added in, ONLY has Korean subtitles available.

Also, despite what the packaging says, it is not region coded.

tinlunlau

ha! i have to press the soccer logo to see the added scenes. i think i'm going to have to resort to buying the VCD version of this. (the vcd is extended version)

pwong5

I just got this version and have a question about it. The case and reviews have said the movie is 1:85, but when I play it, it looks 4:3 (like the screen is just centered on the film).

Do you need a widescreen tv to watch it in 1:85?

mrwilson

Make sure your player is set to 4:3 LB or Letterbox and not 4:3 P/S pan & scan.


Is the Korean the extended version? Anyone know the running time of the VCD?

pwong5

Thanks mrwilson.

My Panasonic RV-31 doesn't seem to have an option to select between full, lb, or 16x9, but fortunately my region-free Daewoo 5700 does.

Another cheer for region free players!

MrBob

I've played it on my panisonic RV 31 (which is a great older player) and I didn't have to mess with the settings to get it to play right. However on my region free Apex, I have to dick with it to get the proper ratio.

dleedlee

Are you sure? I thought that was standard. Did you look under Video or Display in the Setup menu?

pwong5

Hey, you guys were right. Stupid remote (or stupid me for not reading the manual) doesn't have a SETUP button. It uses the ACTION button instead to get to the menus.

I still need my region free to watch the IVL/Celestial discs since it seems the service disc for the RV-31 is a pain to get.

Thanks again everybody.

Jay G.

As far as I've read about the Korean DVD, the image quality is the same, and it's probably the exact same transfer.

As far as the HK DVD being "fake" anamorphic, I don't know what that's about. The HK DVD is really anamorphic, however it's an interlaced transfer instead of progressive.

mrwilson

The HK version looks like a letterboxed transfer that was zoomed to 16:9. I think the Korean version looks a lot better.

Jay G.

I'm not sure what "looks like" has to do with whether or not something is truely an anamorphic transfer. Just because it's not the best transfer doesn't make it fake. The HK DVD is obviously made from a different master than the VCD, so why couldn't it have been made from an anamorphic one? Also, most of the HK DVDs at the time were being released in non-anamorphic letterboxed transfers, so there wasn't any market incentive for them to "fake" an anamorphic transfer.

The quality issues with the HK DVD transfer probably have to do more with it being one of the first HK DVDs to have an anamorphic transfer.

However, it's good to know that the Korean DVD may contain a better transfer. Is it possible for you to post some comparative screenshots between the HK and Korean DVDs?

Josh Z

There is no such thing as an "interlaced transfer" or "progressive transfer". All DVD video is stored in interlaced format and must be deinterlaced for progressive playback, either by the DVD player or the display. The disc may have incorrect flagging for how to reconstruct the progressive frames, but if you weren't using a flag-reading DVD player this wouldn't be a problem. Any decent cadence-based deinterlacer chip will play back the movie fine.

Jay G.

It's true that all DVD video is stored in interlace format. However, for NTSC video, there are two ways of storing the video, either in 24 fps "film" format or 30 fps "video" format.

If the video is stored as 24 fps, it's actually 48 fields per second, with each field representing half a frame. Every two fields combine to form one frame of film.

If the video is stored as 30 fps, it's 60 fields per second. If this is a transfer from film, some of those fields are repeated fields. Thus every two fields do not add up to form one complete frame of film.

Of the two options, the 24 fps "film" format is prefered as the player can just combine the two fields and output a progressive frame, instead of having to bother with removing repeated frames a film encoded in 30 fps "video" format would have.

I have read other people refer to 24 fps "film" as "progressive," while films encoded in 30 fps "video" format were refered to as "interlaced." For example, here is this misleading excerpt from the DVD FAQ:
I see now that refering to these two formats as "progressive" or "interlaced" is in error. As such, I will amend my previous statement:

HK DVD is really anamorphic, however it's an 30 fps "video" transfer instead of a 24 fps "film" one.

mrwilson

...and if you had a good cadence reading player it still wouldn't matter.

Josh Z

Again, this is completely irrelevant if you use a cadence-based DVD player, which will be able to recontruct the proper frames regardless of how the disc is flagged. Only flag-reading DVD players have a problem with this.

85-90% of all DVDs have some measure of bad flagging. It's pointless to complain about it, when you really just shouldn't be using a flag-reading player to begin with.

Here is a nice long article that explains the technical details:

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volum...e-10-2000.html