Tombstone Vista Series -- GARBAGE!
 

I watched Tombstone Vista Series tonight on my fairly new set-up (ISF'd Sony KP-57WS520 and Panasonic XP30) and I can't believe what a piece of garbage they put on disc. The transfer is digital looking, poor and very inconsistent -- tons of edge enhancement -- part of the movie looks out of focus from being so soft with little detail. I can't believe they put a piece of crap out there like this on such a good movie. In addition, the extras were about as weak as they come. All in all, the 5.1 track was the only positive thing about this DVD. I hope we aren't going to see this same transfer in 1080 with the eventual HD release!

I have a feeling the majority of picture issues are due to the compression and not from the transfer itself. The DVDTalk review of this mentions too much edge enhancement, but states that the picture itself is clean and solid.

-screwy-

Yeah, the edge enhancement is unfortunately high on this one, but it's still a very good transfer regardless. Now if you want a garbage transfer, pick up the first R1 release of Tombstone.

I call it Tombstone: Forcefield Edition. It's amazing anyone got killed in that film, what with their deflectors on full power.

rotfl

Edge Enhancement is NOT a result of compression. Aside from the edge enhancement, it is a very nice transfer, and I personally liked the extras. Edge enhancement does not bother me nearly as much as it seems to bother a lot of people in here. Of course, I would prefer it wasn't there, but it doesn't ruin my viewing experience. And I'm watching on a 55" RPTV. That is not to start arguments with anyone. I'm just saying there are other things that bother me much worse than edge enhancement.

I agree...I don't get why edge enhancement bothers so many people so much. I have a Sony Flatscreen with that Velocity Modulation thing which automatically puts edge enhancement in to create a sharper picture.

What bothers me most is digital artifacts in skies or crawling digital grain in background scenes much like the first season of 24. There's nothing more distracting than that.

Edge enhancement only bothers me once someone points it out. Then I fixate on it, and end up having to throw the disc away.

Excuse me now while I go delete Tombstone Vista Series from my DVD Profiler.

luckily i have never seen edge enhancement. im sure its there, but im not looking for it because i will fixate on it too like the previous poster.

SPECKS on the other hand kill me. i hated them on laserdisc and still hate them now. my eyes are constantly darting after the specs. i dont even know if this is the right term and i dont know what causes it. im referring to the white spots that pop up on the picture, especially visible in dark movies, which are most of my movies. they dont exist on HBO or movies on tv, or even VHS, so i dont think its from source material. so what causes these damn things? is it the digital process?

White specks are scratches on the film negative itself and black specks are on the developed film.

what exactly edge enhancement?

What exactly edge enhancement in Tombstone? Or what exactly <b>is</b> edge enhancement? If it's the latter and you don't know yet, you're probably better off not knowing. If the former, Tombstone does indeed show some annoying EE at times... But overall, I find it a pretty decent transfer, IIRC.

Tombstone has the worst edge enhancement of any DVD I've ever seen. It's so bad the edge halos have their own halos!

Here you go:

http://www.videophile.info/Guide_EE/Page_01.htm

Even if this had no EE, it would still be a bad transfer. It's very "video" and digital looking, excessive compression artifacts, and about half of the film is soft andlacking detail; while the other half of the film is decently ok in this regard. Overall, it's very erratic.

On my old set-up (Sony KP-61V80 and Panasonic RV80) I thought this DVD looked good. However, on my new set-up, I see how poor it is and why so many people complained about it when it first came out. One of the downfalls of getting a higher end system is you start to see more flaws on poor quality material. On the other hand, you can start appreciating high quality material better (Return of the Kind Extended, Attack of the Clones, etc.).

David, are you talking about the Vista Series Collection or the old one? If you're talking about the newer one, people complained about it when it first came out ONLY because of the edge enhancement. I truly have no idea what it is you think you're looking at. Excessive compression artifacts? Hardly.

I'm talking about the new one. Yes, too many artifacts are there in some scenes..not a ton of them, but too many still.

On contrast, regarding Westerns in the early to mid 90's, I just watched the SE version of Unforgiven (Eastwood). Very nice, filmlike, and clean...The way Tombstome should have looked.

Well, you're not the only one here with a calibrated 16X9, a lot of us have them. As I posted earlier, apart from the EE - which everyone seems to agree is there - the transfer didn't seem that bad. But, I haven't spun it in a year or so, I could definitely be wrong. I'll check it again at some point in the near future to see if I can see any of the other problems that you've described in this thread.

Damn, and here I was hoping that Garbage was finally coming to DVD.....

http://web.ukonline.co.uk/keith.dumb...on/garbage.jpg

Damn vague thread titles!

I didn't know I made that claim.

Didn't say ya did... (although, before your edit, your post did say on a "good well calibrated display" or something similar - implying, perhaps, that on a standard def 4X3 Tombstone is not as problematic? - something I would tend to agree with) :p ;) I think my point was meant to be that some (or at least I) of us that have the Tombstone Vista don't recall that it looked like garbage on our (my) display(s)... Minus the EE out the wazoo that is. But, like I say, I haven't spun it a long time... You got me curious now! :)

No prob. I just wanted to make the point I wasn't watching this thing on a 20" Zenith with an Apex DVD player. No offense to anyone who has such a set-up. ;)

This is the primary reason I totally dumped my VCR and VHS collection when I got my Sony Flatscreen 3 years ago. VHS, even S-VHS looked like shit on the flatscreen. (I had a S-VHS VCR at the time, well still do...it's hooked up to the other TV as just a player.)

It's a shame that flatscreens can't do progressive scan. I'm still stuck in interlace hell until prices on 42" plasmas get down to under $1000.

David's right. Even aside from the edge enhancement problem, the transfer does look very video-ish and has quite poor detail (most of which is obliterated by the e.e.).

It does have nice strong colors, though. That's about the only thing THX got right.

Oh didn't realize that this was a troll post to brag about our TVs. rotfl.

Looks pretty good on my 61" Sony...certainly better than the old version.