I've heard that the HKL disc of police story (and some others) has some framing issues that really need a player such as the Malata one (that has the x/y scaling feature) to play in it's correct format so that you can see the whole picture. I have an X-Box, but since the X-Box has no such feature, is it worth getting Police Story (which seems to be Region 0)?

I did a HUGE review over at www.loveandbullets.com/policestory.htm

Read and decide for yourself.

Damn, that's a dissapointment. Do you think that it will look bad on the X-Box because of a lack of x/y scaling?

I wish I knew. Most people don't notice it, but I do (I'm anal).

Well you hadn't noticed it at first since your early opinions were mostly positive. It is somewhat disturbing once I saw some of the pics but I hope HKL doesn't make a habit of this. I still think they provide the best representation of Hong Kong films in the entire market.

I knew about it before I even got the disc, but forgot all about it as I got so into watching the dvd, looking for print flaws, etc. I felt like a real ding-dong when I remembered that there was word of the framing being strange.

Is this a problem with ALL HKL DVDs?

yup, that's what i thought too. man, matt stevens is a ding-dong for forgetting...

just kidding

i hear some good things about HKL dvds but at the same time, things like the framing issues that you describe make me say they're not that great. i mean, i have pal/multiregional dvd players, but i'm hesistant forking over the money for non-perfect dvds - i'd rather have the cheap hk versions if available.

i'd love to have all the bruce lee films - but PAL? i'd really prefer an NTSC version. i got that limited super special edition of Fists of Fury and i thought it was pretty decent.

ps cornfed, get a room heheh... i guess it doesn't really make sense here, but i'm gonna get ya!

The HKL Bruce Lee DVDs blow the American NTSC version away. There is no contest. I spent much time comparing them and HKL wins, hands down.

HKL's problematic discs are POLICE STORY 1 & 2, and MAGNIFICENT BUTCHER. They all have framing issues. The Malata solves the POLICE STORY problem.

No company is perfect. Anchor Bay sure has screwed up a number of releases. It happens.

oops, sorry, although i have that bruce lee collections (all dubs ), i meant that i got the HK version of it- the one that came w/ little nunchuckus - big black box DTS version.

i've been thinking about getting the HK version of Way of the Dragon also.

I just got Purple Storm in the mail today, and I finished watching it an hour ago. The picture quality isn't perfect, but I'd say that it is just a little bit worse than the recent release of Shiri in R1. The blacks were a bit too light and it had an overall cheap feeling. But during the daytime scenes it looked great. But it's probably just the fault of cheaper HK film quality. Good film.

The picture quality was just a notch above the picture quality of the Gen-X Cops HK DVD. Do you think the problem was with the X-Box, or does it look like that on European DVDs as well?

Did you get the 3" LMF vcd with it also? I thought that was cool.

Even though I said this quite clearly in the other thread, I'll say it here.

There are NO aspect ratio problems when viewing PAL DVDs on a X-Box. It uses a completely different way to convert the picture than those stand-alone players.

1.85 will look like 1.85, 2:25 will look lik 2.35.

was that a typo then?

It also came with a cool poster with some metallic foil lettering. There are a few incarnations of this box set being sold.

The x-y scaling on the Malata fortunately solves a lot of problems with HKL DVDs and other in respects to overscan and framing.

Ack. Yup, that's a typo.

So Police Story looks absolutely perfect on an X-Box and doesn't have any of those framing issues?

No, POLICE STORY is squished by about 10%. It was a mistake that made made during the transfer process.

Damn. How bad does it look? Anyone know where I can find some comparison pics?

My review at LoveandBullets.com has some screen shots, but they are quite small. Many do not notice the squishing at all. It's a little less of a problem if your player is set to downconvert anamorphic to 4X3 widescreen.

no, i did not... just the mini-nunchuckus (which i can use to knock out mini-bad guys ).

all this talk about HKL so i broke down and ordered 3:
Fists of Fury
Way of the Dragon
Armour of God

i hope they are good and i can compare them to my other copies. my copy of armour of god sucks eggs big time...