corycouger

How is the picture and sound quality?

purplechoe

have you tried doing a search?

OREOSpeedwagon

obviously not, or he wouldn't have asked the question.

Iron_Giant

Great movie and the video/sound is great, one of my favorites.

Here is a link at DVDfile.com that has a review:
http://www.dvdfile.com/software/revi..._3/benhur.html

obscurelabel

Hasn't there been some talk that this would be re-done soon? I can't find any sources so maybe I'm imagining it. From what I understand the 2.76:1 aspect ratio of the DVD isn't correct, the movie was intended to be projected at close to the original Cinemascope ratio of about 2.5:1 ... I thought I had read that this was being corrected in a new release.

Red Dog

I think the video and audio is very good.

the big train

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=1643

danganet

Fry's has it in today's paper for $9.99 until Tuesday 6/15

Grabastic

i don't like the fact that it's a flipper. you would think with a title like this they could have gone that extra step and made it a two disk. other than that, it is a pretty good release.

eau

It is a DVD-18! It's not a flipper having the need to flip the disc in the middle of the movie like a DVD-10.

Of course, WB could have made it a 2-disc DVD-9, but it came out before WB decided to do 2-Disc SE series.

Grabastic

i have a changer, which i bought so i wouldn't have to switch discs. flippers nullify that expenditure. anyway, screw it. flippers are a subject that's been talked to death. nothing new to add to that discussion.

baracine

You're imagining this. Once you factor in overscanning (and even without it) the DVD is far from showing a 2.76:1 ratio. It's somewhere between 2.25 and 2.50. The laserdisc was a guaranteed (windowboxed) 2.75 and, what with the lower resolution of laserdisc compared to DVD, it is now well nigh unwatchable.

Ben-Hur played in both a Camera 65 2.75:1 ratio (the widest ever except for Cinerama) and a more modest CinemaScope 2.25:1 ratio in theatres not equipped with an ultra-wide-screen. If you want the OAR, you would have to go with the 2.75:1 ratio, which means renting a widescreen cinema, because otherwise the main character's face only uses 3.2 pixels at that rate on most TV sets during the great chariot race.

Mike Lowrey

So which aspect ratio is the current release? 2.70:1 or something less? And what does a 2.70:1 ratio look like on a 4:3 monitor?

baracine

I just popped it in my home theatre. I have a widescreen TV but if I adjust it for 4:3 and the DVD player for progressive scanning (which compensates in 4:3 for overscanning), the ratio is 2.69. That's the maximum you would see on a computer monitor.

If I play it regularly in widescreen, the ratio is now only 2.48 with overscanning.

Quote from the "Widescreen Museum" website:
While it was possible to use the entire 2.76:1 image on the theatre screen, as a matter of practice the ratio was kept at about 2.5:1 so that theatres weren't required to install new wider screens or curtail the height of those already installed. Initial 35mm anamorphic prints [i.e. CinemaScope versions] were matted to yield a 2.5:1 aspect ratio with Magoptical soundtracks. So despite the total 2.76:1 aspect ratio, critical information was kept within an area of 2.35 to 2.5:1.

Also see the "Letterbox Lunacy" chapter on this site, about the Ben-Hur laserdisc's courageous but misguided 2.75 ratio: www.widecreenmuseum.com/widescreen/lbx2.htm

To answer your question, 2.76 on an ordinary TV looks like a tiny ribbon of light and shadows across a wide expanse of black screen. And it's only marginally better on a widescreen TV.