My favorite Hope comedy, very poorly treated. The PQ ranges from great to unwatchable. The first scene in Featherhead's cabin is unwatchable and this happens several times throughout the movie. Further, the dvd is labeled fullscreen and IMDB puts the AR at 1.37:1. It looks to me like they zoomed it to 1.78:1, that's right... fullscreen for a widescreen set. Is this Sony's first effort after taking over MGM? If so, it SUCKS!!

I was looking into buying it, but now I might hold off

I'm not sure what the discrepancy is, but this what DVDTalk's own review of the disc by film historian Stuart Galbraith IV has to say about the transfer:

"Filmed in three-strip Technicolor, The Princess and the Pirate is presented in its original full frame format and generally looks quite good for its age. For some reason, most of Goldwyn's Technicolor titles have a kind of burnt amber quality that's difficult to describe, but most will be very impressed by the brightness and vividness of the color. Throughout the film there are scattered shots of misaligned matrixes, where the three colors don't match up resulting in something resembling 3-D without the glasses. This seems to happen most frequently during dissolves, and except for a long one-minute example early on (at 23:49), these imperfects aren't too intrusive. The mono sound is acceptable, given the film's age, with optional subtitles in French, English, and Spanish."

DVDTown's review also indicates a 1.33:1 transfer. You sure you've got your hardware set up correctly?

DJ

Oops. Well it was correctly set up and still is. Yet another problem with POS Mitsibushi. Sorry. Regardless of that error, the PQ still sucks.

This is an accurate description of the problem but I saw more instances and found it way more intrusive than the reviewer. Bottom line: If I knew the PQ before purchase I wouldn't own it now... and I really wanted it.

I wonder is these problems with "misaligned matrixes" were present on the first release?

Easy, I can tell you that the "matrix" problem was NOT present on the laserdisc release. I suggest you either call or email MGM on this. Their number is 877-mgm-4you or you can email them from their website at http://www.mgm.com/dvd_faqs.do . The more people we can get to call or write, the greater chance we'll have for getting this fixed.

Thanks. I used the link you provided.

Well, MGM customer service has requested a copy be sent from their warehouse to them for purposes of verifying the problem. They stated that they should be able to verify the problem by sometime next week.

MGM needs to send their technicolor strips over to WB so that WB can digitally align the master for MGM

WB should have taken another crack at aligning the technicolor strips on The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex.

For guidance in the future, here's an easy way to tell whether the picture quality is good or poor BEFORE YOU PURCHASE A DVD: Look at the bottom of the spine on the DVD case. If it says "WB" the quality is good, if it says "MGM" the quality is poor.

I'm very impressed that their customer service would do that! If they do end up fixing the problem, I hope they will either offer to replace the disk at no charge or issue 3D glasses to watch it with.

I received a response from MGM customer service regarding this problem:

"Dear Customer,

Thank you for your inquiry about our title, 'The Princess and the Pirate.'

At this time MGM does not plan on remastering this DVD, as the visual issues lie in the original aging film and not in the DVD itself. We appreciate your comments and have forwarded them to the appropriate department.

Sincerely,

MGM Home Entertainment
Customer Service Department"