It seems like every review I read for a new movie dvd, the video is spotless and great. Are there any new movies that dont have good transfers?

Yes, and they should be too. A new film that is released in theaters (or even direct to video) is known to go to DVD soon. So they save a near perfect print of it, do an awesome transfer of it since the technology is pretty much perfected, and away they go. There is no reason why each and every new DVD should not have a good transfer. Just my $0.02.

Despite every other review I've read saying the contrary, I didn't think Paramount's recent release of "Twisted" had a very good DVD transfer.

But the above poster is right - there's no reason why recent theatrical films shouldn't have a great transfer on DVD...but many still have poor ones.

ofcourse not : only high budget and classis films tend to get great transfers first time round. the latter less so... in foreign countries (i.e japan) a good transfer first time round is 99% certain. if you buy HK movies its less likely you will get a good trasnfer : dvd is a format afterall and doesnt mean everyone releasing onto it can afford or is capable or doing a good dvd : particulalry low budget but still commercially viable films will get a dvd transfer even if the print(s) available are damaged.

Mirimax seems to be the ones that I have noticed to be less than par.

Gangs of New York, Cold Mountain are edge enhancent/filtered messes and both Kill Bill volumes are severly lacking in detail.

Both Warner and Fox new releases look almost high def to me.

It's not just the transfer, it's also the compression. "Dog Soldiers" is one that comes to mind. Being a newer movie, it should've been perfect on DVD. Instead, it was really badly compressed -- you could see the big, blocky pixellations in the sky background, for example, throughout the film. (By the way, I don't know if I'm using the right terminology for any of this, but just describing how it looked...)

I thought Big Fish and Girl With A Pearl Earring looked particularly bad... and the cynic in me decided that Big Fish was on purpose, so the eventual Superbit release would look so much better. (Come to think of it, Artisan also has a habit of upgrading titles often... I might be on to something here!)

The negatives and interpositives used to source DVDs are new and well kept so the quality for newer films is better. Older films have older source material, which sometimes results in poor DVD transfers.

I haven't read any DVD specific reviews for Owning Mahowny; but I thought it should have looked much better. I could barely read the credits.

24th Day was the worst transfer I've ever seen. Obscure little movie, but it was made in 2003 and is 16x9 but the DVD looked like it was made from a bad VHS tape.

i thought that was just me who had though that about miramax transfers.

new line has the best tranfers..and yea i thought the same about the miramax

A lot also depends on what DVD player you are useing,i have seen many people complain about transfers that look great to me,there are many DVD players out there that have severe macro blocking problems and fail blacker then black tests and a host of various other issues,so when you see people complain of blockiness in the sky or lack of detail often it has nothing to do with the DVD itself it is the player they are playing it on