mooncat

Hi does anyone here have a copy of the BLU RAY Ghostbusters ? Is it true the the Transfer is rubbish ? as the uk one has had reviews but they say the film is great and im thinking of buying it from what im reading sound is ok and thats about it.Does the USA BLU RAY version have better transfer ? is it worth buying etc ?

clappj

Some opinions here, in the later pages.
http://forum.dvdtalk.com/hd-talk/547...june-16th.html

steebo777

Yes.

RockyMtnBri

It looks like an 80s film - period.

rfduncan

+1 Considering its age, it looks fine. However, I would not pick it up for any more than $10 which is what I paid for it.

kefrank

No. The transfer is very good actually. It's just that the original source has it's limitations, so no transfer is ever going to look like a glossy HDNet production. Given what they had to work with, the Blu-ray looks fantastic.

TylerDurden_73

I agree. If your looking for the look of a film less than ten years old, Ghostbusters is not for you. In the very few grainey scenes that were in the transfer, It didn't look as bad as it could have. Loss of detail in the grain is to be expected. For a twenty-five year old film and the money spent to address all the issues with the transfer, they did an excellent job.

PhantomStranger

It looks nearly as good as Ghostbusters will ever look in 1080p resolution. The only real rough patches are the opening scene and the climatic battle on top of the building, most likely due to a combination of filming and optical effects. Do not expect I, Robot going into a viewing of it though.

LeRoy

I was expecting a better transfer. I don't think much restoration work was done on this title. Still it's probably the best we're going to get for a very long time.

emachine12

The Blu-ray Disc's new transfer was approved by the director of photography Laszlo Kovacs and director IVan Reitman. So it looks exactly as they want it, I expect no less.

Lowry Digital Images did Once Upon A Time in The West for DVD and it still didn't look right despite being digitally restored. Now Martin Scorsese has overseen a new restoration that is closer to the original intented look.

Bottom line, digital restorations that completely remove grain are not the best solution for every film. Yes, Casablanca looks absolutely amazing but now older movies, like Young Frankenstein, that are not restored the same way get remarks that the transfer looks horrible. It does not look like crap or "not BD quality" because the filmmakers wanted it to look like a 1930s Universal horror picture so the imperfections are intended.

kefrank

Actually, SPHE went back and created a new master which was approved by the filmmakers. Sure, it didn't get a Lowry restoration, but it did receive a very decent remastering that looks, as you said, "the best we're going to get for a very long time." The main complaint people seem to have is with the amount of film grain, but that's primarily a complaint with the way the film was shot and not with the remastering or encoding for Blu-ray. Could an expensive restoration house such as Lowry used their advanced tools to further reduce some of the grain without losing fine detail? Maybe, but I really think the difference would have been negligible.

Josh Z

This is just the myth that won't go away. Laszlo Kovacs died in 2007. Do you think Sony's been sitting on this master for 2-3 years? I certainly don't.

The most plausible explanation I've heard is that Kovacs approved the film elements used for the last transfer, but was obviously not present when the Blu-ray was mastered.

It's very clear that the Blu-ray comes from the same master as the 2005 DVD edition, which had its contrast blown out and its colors oversaturated. Sony has attempted to mitigate some of that damage by digitally pulling the levels down. However, the detail that was lost during the initial contrast boost can't be brought back. And oversaturating then desaturating colors won't make them look like they should if they'd been transferred correctly in the first place.

I think the Blu-ray looks awful, and nothing like an 80s movie. The contrast range is still too hot, and the gamma curve is a mess. As a result, the picture is very flat, has serious white clipping, and grain has been overemphasized.

The movie could look significantly better if retransferred properly. The Blu-ray is a missed opportunity.

RobLutter

The transfer is night and day on my setup... 120'' projected at 1080p.

I think what most people don't realize is that: this was a highly special-fx-oriented film from the 80s. Any of the films effects shots that you see are a COPY of a COPY of the film because of the compositing that they used back in the day (blue screen and model shots really).

That and early 80s film stock really sucked.

It's the best the film has ever looked and probably WILL ever look unless sometime in the 2010s or 2020s 4k holographic blu-ray actually makes it out the gate. I don't see them doing another transfer on blu-ray.

Skoobooz

The Blu-ray transfer looks just as it's supposed to.

emachine12

Thanks for the correction.

beebs

Clearly you do think Sony has been sitting on he same master for many years... or did I miss your point?

The rest of what you said makes a lot of sense. These two highlighted parts are contradictory to me.

sauce07

I was expecting the transfer to be horrible and ended up pleasantly surprised. Yes some scenes are a little grainy, but the people who are talking trash are way over reacting.

rfduncan

For the record, this was directed by Ivan Reitman not Harold Ramis. Ramis co-wrote it with Dan Ayckroyd.

Josh Z

Thanks for bothering to read my entire post.

Josh Z

The claim has been made the Laszlo Kovacs specifically approved the Blu-ray master. However, he died two years ago, so he obviously never saw the Blu-ray.

Arguments can be made that he may have approved the 2005 DVD master, and people are extrapolating that to mean that by extension he also would have approved of the Blu-ray.

But, Sony changed the DVD master for this new release. They've pulled down the contrast and color levels in an attempt to compensate for how blown out they were on the DVD. So if Kovacs really did approve of the 2005 DVD, then you cannot extend that to claim that he also approved the Blu-ray, which is different.

Personally, I doubt he approved the 2005 DVD either. I'm sure he may have signed off on the film elements used for that transfer. But I'm skeptical that he was in the room while the transfer techs started fiddling with the contrast and colors. And he certainly wasn't there when the new transfer techs fiddled with them again for the Blu-ray.

Skoobooz

I did. And you're wrong about certain things. But everyone has an opinion.

pro-bassoonist

This gentleman, who happens to have directed the film, thinks otherwise:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8IGfkSeRv4

You could continue now.

Pro-B

Gizmo

Oh gees. Someone just had to say Blu-ray and awful in the same sentence to bring him out of hiding.

My Other Self

I think it's possible Kovacs could have sat in during some of the restoration. I'm not keen on how long remastering a film from original elements take, but the original release for this was in October of last year and it was simply pushed back to coincide with the film's 25th anniversary and the game release.. so this was in the pipeline in 2007, whether or not he had a part in it is up for debate.

AmityBoatTours

As i said in the other ghostbusters thread, i was actually at the ghostbusters bluray premiere that this clip is from. He along with his wife and son Jason stayed and watched the entire film. and afterwards he said it again that it was the best he had seen the film since it first was shown