Re: Worst DVD Transfer
 

The Mythbuster season sets from Discovery are pretty bad, anytime there's a lot of movement there's a lot of pixelation in the image.

Re: Worst DVD Transfer
 

"The Blob", 50s, Steve McQueen.

Worst famous movie video quality I have seen.

Re: Worst DVD Transfer
 

The World Video Ashes of Time probably has this in the bag: a 1.85:1 image cropped both sides to 4:3 and then cropped again on the bottom to, uh, 1.85:1. About half of the original image was thereby eliminated -- worse than even a pan-and-scan job on a 2.39:1 film, and here the picture was cropped on three sides instead of just two (with no attempt to reframe the image accordingly). The picture quality was roughly at VHS level if not worse, since it was clearly sourced from a (terrible) non-anamorphic 1.85:1 master and half the resolution was thrown out via cropping. Awful, artifact-riddled encoding was the icing on the cake. Most of the stuff mentioned in this thread is reference quality by comparison.

Re: Worst DVD Transfer
 

Seriously? That's from Criterion and is on my DVD wishlist. Or is there a pre-Criterion version you're talking about?

Re: Worst DVD Transfer
 

Supposedly that is the only release of the '50's version (amazon will usually show OOP versions). I have it from a BOGO Criterion sale but haven't watched it yet.

DVDBeaver gives it a 4.5 of 5 stars and DigitallyObessed rates it an "A" on video quality, so I'm not sure what he is talking about.

From DigitallyObessed:

"Criterion's transfer is in a word, breathtaking. The colors are almost preternaturally vivid and gorgeous, without being oversaturated...A very beautiful transfer."

Re: Worst DVD Transfer
 

Yup, this is what I was going to mention. There's never been a worse DVD than this one and I doubt there ever will be.

Re: Worst DVD Transfer
 

The Last Boyscout. Just awful!