I think it is a travesty that this non-anamorphic dvd got the coveted "DVD Talk Collector Series" award. If it is released in 2005, and isn't enhanced, then it should not be given this distinction. Anyone else with me on this one? Can the reviewer (Holly E. Ordway) change her rating?
Randy Miller III
11-14-05, 10:31 AM
Holly (and Holly alone) should responsible for her judgement of the disc, but it's pretty surprising that <i>any</i> mainstream release would suffer this kind of oversight. If Holly chimes in here, I'd love to hear if the packaging states if the film is enhanced or not. If it is, that should be sufficient enough for Warner to initiate a recall (wishful thinking, right?).
Filmmaker
11-14-05, 01:08 PM
Has Warner EVER released an non-anamorphic DVD? Come on, people...
milo bloom
11-14-05, 01:54 PM
Has Warner EVER released an non-anamorphic DVD? Come on, people...
2001, 2010, Ladyhawke come to mind. I'm sure there's more.
Filmmaker
11-14-05, 02:23 PM
Fine (though 2010 doesn't count, since they're just using the MGM disc), I'll rephrase. Has Warners released a non-anamorphic DVD in the last 6 years?
Adam Tyner
11-14-05, 02:32 PM
FWIW, DVD Town (http://www.dvdtown.com/review/polarexpressthetwo-discwidescr/15988/3242/) and DVD Movie Guide (http://dvdmg.com/polarexpress.shtml) (the latter, for my money, is the most reliable DVD site on the web) both list it as being in anamorphic widescreen. I don't have the DVD, so I can't confirm. The packaging does list it as being 'enhanced for widescreen TVs'.
BTW, if you want to start a thread about a review, please click on the 'Start a Discussion' link in the review itself. That interface will automatically e-mail the reviewer a link to your post. Just starting a thread like this means the reviewer might not ever see it.
matome
11-14-05, 03:15 PM
BTW, if you want to start a thread about a review, please click on the 'Start a Discussion' link in the review itself. That interface will automatically e-mail the reviewer a link to your post. Just starting a thread like this means the reviewer might not ever see it.
I didn't know that. Cool.
Shannon Nutt
11-14-05, 03:46 PM
The DVD Town review states the following:
The engineers have retained most of the movie's 2.35:1 screen dimensions in an anamorphic transfer that stretches to a ratio about 2.18:l across my screen.
So I'm wondering if the picture looks a little stretched and led Holly to believe she was looking at a stretched non-anamorphic transfer rather than an anamorphic one?
Giles
11-14-05, 05:43 PM
and then there's the Aspect ratio for the IMAX 3D print that is 1.44 to 1
milo bloom
11-14-05, 06:22 PM
DVDTown has this bizarre thing about measuring aspect ratios, by measuring the actual ratio on their display, without taking into account overscan and such.
It's more likely Holly had a glitch with her player or display that's making her believe it's non-anamorphic. Or, this just occurred to me, she could have gotten a review copy from the studio that wasn't mastered right.
Adam Tyner
11-14-05, 06:53 PM
DVDTown has this bizarre thing about measuring aspect ratios, by measuring the actual ratio on their display, without taking into account overscan and such.Even stranger, the writer knows what overscan is and referenced it in one of his reviews. I can think of no logical reason whatsoever why he does those measurements.
Holly E. Ordway
11-14-05, 08:18 PM
Thank you to everyone who brought this to my attention! The mystery is solved (details below) - short answer: Polar Express IS anamorphic. I will be correcting the review momentarily.
Longer story:
I do in fact know what anamorphic transfers look like :) and am not clueless about them. What I watched last night did in fact look completely like a non-anamorphic transfer, which baffled me to no end, but... studios do weird stuff sometimes, and as I didn't have the DVD case, just the disc, I couldn't even check if it was listed as being anamorphic or not.
As it turns out, this is what happened: My husband just bought a DVD recorder and has been playing with it, recording some 4:3 stuff onto disc. Well, it turns out that the DVD recorder is the same brand as the player, and when he changed the settings on the recorder, it also changed the settings on the player at the same time, without anybody knowing about it. So, that evening, when I sat down to watch Polar Express, the player treated it like a 4:3 image instead of the 16:9 image that it really is.
A little detective work turned this up, the settings were changed back to normal, and voila! The Polar Express is anamorphic after all!
So there you go. Moral of the story: technical glitches happen to everyone, even reviewers, and we reviewers are very glad when things get called to our attention so glitches can be fixed.
Josh Z
11-14-05, 11:20 PM
Moral of the story: technical glitches happen to everyone, even reviewers, and we reviewers are very glad when things get called to our attention so glitches can be fixed.
Holly, the real moral of the story is: Don't let your clueless spouse touch your precious electronic toys! I know I don't.
Buy: