Buy:digiboy
03-14-05, 07:20 PM
Missing, from 1982, with Cissy Spacek and Jack Lemmon is on Universal's dastardlly Studio Selections series. It's obvious that with this line Universal is just grabbing whatever is available to put on DVD with little or no effort. If there's a widecreen anamorphic transfer ready to go, sure they'll use it, and if not...well whatever.
In the case of Missing it is a widescreen anamorphic DVD but the image quality is poor and it looks like probably a very old transfer for laserdisc or pay TV. Worse is the audio. It's mono and it's pretty obvious that the film has a lot ofl dubbed in dialog. That's fine, many films are done this way. The problem is that "better" quality DVD audio going thru a decent sound system actually magnifies the dubbing effect. The dubbed sound varies in level and tone from scene to scene. The difference would probably be less noticeable in a theatrical presentation. On my sound system the variations in audio quality stand out and are a distraction. I found the solution was to turn off the sound system and use the internal speakers on my Sony set. Of course some of the sound effects are diminished, but most of them are cheesy to begin with. The inferiority of the TV's sound system actually works to reduce the effects of the movie's audio problem so it's less noticeable.
In the case of Missing it is a widescreen anamorphic DVD but the image quality is poor and it looks like probably a very old transfer for laserdisc or pay TV. Worse is the audio. It's mono and it's pretty obvious that the film has a lot ofl dubbed in dialog. That's fine, many films are done this way. The problem is that "better" quality DVD audio going thru a decent sound system actually magnifies the dubbing effect. The dubbed sound varies in level and tone from scene to scene. The difference would probably be less noticeable in a theatrical presentation. On my sound system the variations in audio quality stand out and are a distraction. I found the solution was to turn off the sound system and use the internal speakers on my Sony set. Of course some of the sound effects are diminished, but most of them are cheesy to begin with. The inferiority of the TV's sound system actually works to reduce the effects of the movie's audio problem so it's less noticeable.