zipflint

Well,
This should be an easy question for you folks. I've done some digging and from what I gather, the Columbia TriStar release of Miracles is pretty much the best one out there. Decent transfer, Cantonese soundtrack with removeable english subs. Uncut too, I believe. Am I correct in assuming that this is indeed the one to get?

again, thanks in advance for having patience with a newbie,
zipflint

Trigger

Here's an interesting comparison...

http://www.peteramartin.com/dvdhk/reviews/miracles.htm

You may want to just get whichever one is cheaper, although the Region 1 version is Anamorphic and perhaps is just slightly better than the Mega Star release which is also excellent.

zipflint

Interesting, indeed.
I'll probably go with the Columbia release, since they're both uncut and this review sounds fairly positive, on the whole. Plus, I can just pick it up fairly cheap at a local Best Buy. Nothin' beats instant gratification.

zipflint
btw,
loved OUATIC I.
Watched it for the first time tonite,
and it'll definately be getting many
subsequent spins.

Yellow Hammer

I have both, and there are some very slight tradeoffs.

Columbia is anamorphic and sound is in DD 2.0
Megastar has more subtitle options in other languages such as Chinese, and other extras info and sound is in DD 5.1

Either one is fine IMO.

You'll probably find that surprisingly the Megastar one is more expensive than the Columbia one. I was fortunate enough to snag the Megastar one when Yesasia had it mispriced for $9.99 US a few months ago. You may want to check Yesasia to see if the price got reversed back or not (most likely it did).

elengineer

While we are on the subject of Miracles...

If someone out there has seen both the Columbia/Tristar and HKL versions of Miracles could you please give me a mini-comparison?

I am much more interested interested in the sound quality over the picture.

I own the C/T version and was wondering how much better the sound was done for the HKL disc. Especially the score and Anita Mui's musical number.

Thx in advance.

Matt Stevens

DO NOT go with the Columbia version of MIRACLES. It may look OK on a small TV, but on my 36" Wega, the difference between it and the Media Asia version are astounding. Remember, Columbia took the Media Asia non-anamorphic transfer and squeezed it to a fake 16x9. That means you player will not downconvert that fake 16x9 to a non-16x9 letterbox with 1/3 LESS resolution than the Media Asia version (DVDfile's review even showed this in screen caps. The Media Asia disc was clearly better).

The Columbia disc is not worth it. And also be advised that MIRACLES was released with most copies having the last half of the soundtrack out of synch and Columbia never recalled it! The Media Asia version is better.

That being said, last night I watched the HONG KONG LEGENDS version and it is so vastly superior to the Media Asia disc, my building a HTPC has once again been justified. I am now using an old P3 450mhz with 256mb of Ram, an Asus 12x DVD drive and the ATI RADEON VE video card. Picture quality on my first try was very good, with no frame stutter and a 100% perfect PAL to NTSC conversion. THE HOLY GRAIL for less than $400!

The picture is a bit washed out and soft, but ATI players can be adjusted for this and I will tweak it over the next few days.

I can now enjoy all of my HKL discs on my 36" SOny Wega and can finally take a baseball bat to that hunk of **** APEX deck.

p1forest

I have a question if anyone can answer.

I have the Megastar version, and the last time I watched it, it was with my gf and her family, all chinese. At MANY points in the movie, the whole group was laughing hysterically, while I was confused, mainly because the subtitles were not very accurate and didn't translate the humor. Of course, once they explained what was REALLY said, it was funny.

Does anyone know if the Columbia version has more accurate subtitles? That may be a reason for me to pick up a second version if I could get it relatively cheap.

Matt Stevens

The subtitles are not much different. Just spelling and grammer corrected.

Hendrik

.
..."grammer"... ?

. . . . . .

Furious

Miracles was actually silently recalled. However, Columbia had given no reason for the recall (at least to retailers in Canada), mentioning nothing about the known soundtrack defect. The new disc was silently slipped into the market not unlike the lame duck efforts of Universal with the Jurassic park DTS discs. Columbia has gone completely down the drain with many of their recent HK releases. I for one am tired of their ridiculously poor fake anamorphic transfers. They obviously have not been sucessful in properly negotiating the rights to proper source materials, and their efforts to deceive the public with this sort of nonsense stink, period.

Matt Stevens

Furious, you said it. I am FURIOUS with Columbia!

And yes, I know grammar is grammar, but I love to spell it "grammEr" for irony.