Daytripper

I'm having an extremely difficult time getting anyone to respond to my e-mails about my defective copy of "The Red Violin" (with the subtitles problem). I've written four e-mails to the the studio that released it (Lion's Gate) and three to the store I bought it from (DeepDiscountDVD). All unanswered. Did anyone else here get a defected copy too? And if so, were you able to get it replaced? Please let me know how.

Cosmic Bus

The problem is, I don't believe Lions Gate has even acknowledged this disc as being "defective."

I went with the Universal release and am very happy with it (proper subtitles + DTS = yay!); if I were you, I'd try to unload the Lions Gate version and pick up the previous release instead. It's dirt cheap online...

Daytripper

Thanks for the info. So basically I'm stuck with this. By unloading, you mean selling this to someone else? I'd have to let them know about the problem ahead of time. Who would want it? Screw Lion's Gate for not only sending this out to the masses without testing. But not responding to those who got this lemon. I actually wanted the Universal release. At the time, don't know if it still shows it, but on DeepdiscountDVD's website, it showed the cover for the Universal edition, and not Lion's Gate. Grrrr!

Peep

What's the problem?

Daytripper

Taken from DVDTalk's review. And oh btw, you can't turn the subtitles off on my copy:


The other problem is the subtitles: in a nutshell, Lions Gate messed them up in a big way. As I noted in the main body of the review, all of the characters speak in their own languages, which adds tremendously to the ambiance of the film. Consequently, we need subtitles for the many scenes in Italian, German, French, and Chinese. The earlier release had burned-in English subtitles for all the non-English dialogue; the new release has removed these and substituted player-generated, optional subtitles. All well and good... except that the player-generated English subtitles appear for all the dialogue... including the English. Needless to say, this is very annoying, as it forces the viewer either to suffer English subtitles for English dialogue, or constantly reach for the remote to turn the subtitles on and off. Additionally, the English subtitles are partially in the closed-captioned style, so we get things like (Anna humming) and (heartbeats and heavy breathing) appearing on the screen along with the actual dialogue. It seems to me that the subtitles problem is something that could be, and absolutely should be, corrected by Lions Gate, so I encourage viewers to contact the studio about this problem.

On its own merits, the image of The Red Violin would get four stars; the three and a half stars I've given it here takes into consideration the subtitle problem.

Peep

Ouch! Thanks.