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I'm just waiting for the Blu set to go down in price. It can't be that long until it (and The Sacrifice) get down to a reasonable price.

doc mccoy wrote:this'll be the last time that I rely solely on Beaver for region coding info; they've made this mistake before with Marwencol. Even if the checkdiscs supplied are different from the finished product, they should at least verify what the region coding is supposed to be. How many sales are being lost due to bad information?

They also cocked up the region coding of the BFI's Winstanley by relying on a checkdisc that had been accidentally set to Region B instead of the region-free final release. And they had no excuse, since the Beaver is well aware of this forum's BFI Region Guide, which thus far has been 100% reliable (as it should be, since the information is sourced directly from the people responsible for physically creating the discs).

And since there was a discrepancy, questions should have been asked - just as I always double-check with a distributor in case I'm sent a checkdisc instead of a final version (Peerpee can certainly confirm this!).

I just wanted to post that The Scent of Green Papaya is an outstanding disc, I watched it last night and was completely blown away.

Yeah, I don't know what happened, but I have been really happy with the quality of every single blu-ray I've bought from Kino. They're still not a company I love the way I do MoC or Criterion, but they're definitely not the company that used to shit things out without seeming to care about quality one way or the other. Even their covers have started to look better (if, in the case of The Sacrifice, a little bit derivative.)

Do we know whether the Sacrifice blu will be region-locked?

Any word on whether there will be a fourth collection of avant garde films? Its been two years since the last, which is generally the amount of time between sets.

Beaver on The Sacrifice Blu-ray.

WOW. That looks astounding. Instant pre-order.

incredible.

or maybe every previous SD release is just abysmal stacked against.

Yeah, that's how the film should look, especially colourwise. Even the SFI was too bright (or contrasty) in some places.

aox wrote:incredible.

or maybe every previous SD release is just abysmal stacked against.

or both!

Although DVDbeaver says The Sacrifice is Region-A locked, I checked my disc and both discs are region free.

My purchase of The Sacrifice just netted me a digital download of Scarlet Street. Thanks, Kino.

The reviews are in on the Sacrifice BD, and they are mediocre:

Bluray.com
Beaver

but it definently looks like an improvement over the SD releases.

aox wrote:The reviews are in on the Sacrifice BD, and they are mediocre:

Bluray.com
Beaver

but it definently looks like an improvement over the SD releases.

Mediocre? Perhaps you're reading a bit too fast?

I've seen it first-hand myself and I can say without hyperbole it looks a billion times better than Kino's old DVD.

How do you get "mediocre" from phrases like "very impressive," "a revelation," "extremely more detailed," and "may swoon at the image quality"? Yes, you can see some edge enhancement...if you zoom in so much on the image that everything looks like a pixelated mess. But that doesn't cancel everything else out!

Der Spieler wrote:Mediocre? Perhaps you're reading a bit too fast?

I think he meant the edge enhancement. All things considered, edge enhancement cannot be a good thing in a transfer.

I suppose if I shoved my face against the TV screen while watching it I'd have to downgrade my above comment from a billion times to maybe only ten times.

andyli wrote:All things considered, edge enhancement cannot be a good thing in a transfer.

As I understand it, edge enhancement is used in most hi-def transfers. It's not a question of if it's used, but whether its use is distracting. If you have to zoom as much as DVD Beaver did to see it, then you're likely not going to catch it watching the movie like a regular person.

I noticed the edge-enhancement quite easily when I watched it, but it only applies to a couple of daylight exteriors. And according to Kino on Facebook, they didn't add any, the ringing was inherent to the source (a bit like Criterion's Walkabout I guess)

The DNR is a shame, if that is DNR.... the grain isn't really visible often which is kinda disappointing for a Blu-ray; so i'll probably double dip on the Artificial Eye if it looks any better. But yes, all things considered, this still looks great;

Personally speaking, I took a chance and pre-ordered this sight unseen, figuring that it had to be better than any of the DVDs (I have the old AE release). And having watched it last week, I can say that I don't regret my purchase at all.

Unfortunately, there are edge enhancement halos and may be part of the print used!

From the Beaver review...what does "may be part of the print used" mean? That this was edge enhanced and reprinted on 35mm? Sounds unlikely. Maybe they mean part of the HD video they were provided? I look forward to watching this, the captures look amazing.

Isn't the AE dvd available for comparison, or is that still outstanding?

I noticed the edge enhancement at times, too, for example in the lines of the tree's branches and trunk against the sky. I notice this kind of EE/haloing effect all too frequently in general (possibly because I'm projecting the image so large) even though I've done my best to make sure that none of the settings on my player (Sharp BD-HP24) are doing this to enhance "sharpness."

I noticed two other brief flaws. The first was jerkiness in motion as we see close-ups of the map as it's being carried around, such as around 36 minutes in. Secondly, in the first shot of Little Man's bed it looked like the parts of the bed were floating around slightly as if not attached. I've seen this kind of floating effect on really poor tranfers on PD DVDs but never before with a BD. It was very brief, and it could not be seen at all in the nearly identical shot of the bed later in the film. It's always possible my shitty player is contributing to one or more of these things, but I wondered if anyone else had seen anything similar.

How large are you projecting the image?