Amazon.de

One of my favourite Terry Gilliam movies. Hopefully it's OAR, unlike the Maple / Lion's Gate DVD.

All the DVD releases of the film so far have been from the same altered 1.78:1 HD master that the film producers distributed. Even for the UK DVD, which Gilliam personally supervised, it turns out he was working with the same altered master, under the assumption that it was a full open-matte image of the original film frame instead of an image that had been cropped horizontally somewhat.

http://www.smart.co.uk/dreams/tidecrop.htm

Here's hoping the film's producers have actually made a proper HD master for it by this time.

I'll definitely hold off until I get some detailed reviews (re: aspect ratio). But it's GREAT to hear that this is hitting HD DVD.

They also have Silent Hill up for pre-order. From which the image quality may be better than the Blu-Ray.

very interesting article. It's good that even Gilliam isn't impressed...

Someone who speaks German should try to contact the company releasing the HD DVD and see what AR they are using.

Threadcrap removed.

I believe there was a 2.35:1 DVD out there somewhere, but that apparently isn't correct either.

FWIW the DVD is listed here for October 8, and 2.35:1.

Let's hope that the HD DVD is 2.35 as well! Who's brave enough to pre-order...?

The UK DVD was matted by Gilliam down to about 2.10:1, but that was a matting from the altered 1.78:1 image, instead of the original 1.78:1 film frame. The link in my previous post shows comparison shots from all the known images, including the UK DVD.

So while it's heartening to see that the German DVD is announced as being a 2.35:1 image, let's hope it's the correct 2.35:1 image.

Hi,

I rented the german DVD today, EAT THIS




1. DE 2. US

You can order it also at amazon.de like the link in the first post...

But mention one thing, the german has a very evil copy-protect system named "X-Protect" which also influences normal Standalone-players, some CAN'T handle it!! Because of that I think the HD-DVD will be better (because it won't have X-Protect like the DVD) for customers with the right equipment, but too bad for normal DVD users like me...

Media is CSS protected!
Video Standard: PAL
Media is locked to region(s): 2!

Found & removed ProtectDVD-Video protection!
Found & removed bogus title set!
UDF filesystem patched!
Autorun not found on Video DVD.
Found & removed 1 bad sector protections!

mind you amazon.de's shipping to the US takes a million-kagillion months to make it to us US folk.

Hopefully XploitedCinema will carry it.

Send Tony an email. He'll likely get it in.

Really? I ordered at least over 20 DVDs from amazon.com, shipping takes about 6-10 days at all... Why should amazon.de be slower

The german postal service DHL is very fast, also international

Concorde always uses the same master for their DVD and high definition, they brought out many WMV-HD DVDs, you can expect the same OAR at the german HD-DVD. They even told me in august they would use the same master for DVD and HD-DVD after I'd sent them the Tidecrop Link:

http://www.smart.co.uk/dreams/tidecrop.htm

They didn't told me the OAR in august, I asked a second time but got no response, but glad I'm be able to test it now with the rental DVD.

You can see here the specs of the HD-DVD:

http://www.cinefacts.de/hd_dvd/db/details.php?id=39037

It will have ALL the extras of the US DVD, only the commentary of the natali documentary is missing, but all of the rest including the documentary is there!!

Just got done watching the Concorde HD DVD. A solid 4/5 for PQ IMO.

It had a very natural look - no EE or other processing I could detect. Some wide shots are not razor sharp but I suspect this is in the source.

Maybe it was the little humorous Gilliam intro before the film or having lower expectations, but I enjoyed the film more than I expected to. The girl (who was 10 at the time of filming) was fantastic.

I still wouldn't feel comfortable recommending a blind buy on a film like this, but if you're a big fan of Gilliam or know you like the film already, I think the HD DVD is well worth the $.

Can you confirm that it's the proper aspect ratio, based on this page?
http://www.smart.co.uk/dreams/tidecrop.htm

I didn't measure it so I can't say what the exact ratio is. It certainly looked closer to 2.35 than 2.10.

I will say framing never seemed like a problem. I can't image watching this film at 1.78 though - the composition would be wrecked.

Also, I don't know if this indicates Gilliam approved this edition, but there is an intro before the film where Gilliam explains what he was trying to do with the film, and admits many people won't like it. I don't know if this was on any previous versions.

Yeah that intro was on the American release too. I don't think Gilliam was even aware of the framing issue. I'll order this one.

EDIT: I just ordered this, plus Reservoir Dogs and Death At A Funeral. My second order from Xploited - fast service when I ordered The Prestige and The Graduate last year.

Jay G.,

From the link you provided, is the shot labeled Cinema Tideland 2.35:1 the one that's considered correct?

If so, I'll try and find that shot and take a pic of my display.

Yeah, that's the correct shot. It occurs at time 00:16:08 on my DVD.

Cool - thanks for the time code. I'll try to get a snapshot of this posted tomorrow.

Deutsche Post is the German postal service. DHL is Germany's FedEx/UPS.