Brian

I just received the American President today from Reel. This is my thoughts on the disk. While it might be lacking in the extras department, the transfer of the movie is fantastic. It is presented in 1:2.35 and the pictures is clean and bright.

The sound is presented in DD, and from the moment you start the movie, it is overwhelming. It has been a while since I heard a DVD with sound so magnificent.

Do yourself a favor and purchase this movie. If not for the quality, just for the pure enjoyment of a good movie.

kahuna

Brian,

Even though I haven't received my dvd yet I am a little surprised about your view of the picture quality of An American President dvd. I have read a couple of other dvd reviews of An American President so far and everyone says the picture quality is not that great. I hope you are correct.

1. The Digital Bits Review.

2. Digital Eyes Review.

Kahuna

sherm42

No offense, but the transfer is terrible. It's too sharp causing shimmering throughout the entire film. I know VHS has its own problems, but so can DVD. The extra resolution that DVD has causes the picture on this disc to look pretty bad. It's not as bad as Highlander, but it's certainly not up to par with most Warner product. Still, I enjoyed the film and for what I paid, I'm not too dissapointed.

Eli

ditto for me. The transfer wasn't so bad as to be distracting, but there were a number of places where shirts were in motion, and Annettte Benning's eyes were ALWAYS sparking, and I'm not sure that was the director's original intent.
Still, I enjoyed the movie, and in the original poster's defense, aside from shimmer, the movie does look really good.

Brian

I understand where some of you are coming, but I think the reviews that had links to them are overly critical. The master they used is a D1. The same thing that laserdiscs and vhs are produced off of.. Let me ask you this?

If you ran Warner Bros.. and be honest now? and you were able to get a clone of the D1 that Columbia Tristar might have.. Why would you go through the process of remastering the master? You are going digital to digital. There is not more remastering..

I think it looks good.. Not every movie that comes out on DVD is going to have the visuals such as the Fifth Element, or the sound quality as The Mask of Zoro.

I think the disk looks good, and for the price of $7.86 that I paid for the disk.. It looks and sounds fantastic.. Of course I would never spend more than that. :-)

Mystery

Loved the movie. Hated the transfer. Even though it isn't anamorphic, it demonstrates what's wrong with anamorphic downconversion (which is, according to digitalbits, what they did). That's what a typical anamorphic picture looks like when my Toshiba 2109 converts it to 4:3 letterbox. Yuck.