What Have You Bought Recently?

[Pete]

Thats ok.

[Daemonia]

I'd hold off on Night of the Living Dead. The Optimum release looked pretty good, but they screwed up the ratio. The newer release is jsut really bad and doesn't look good at all, apparently. I believe the Wilson Bros reviewed this latter release and they were appalled at the quality of it.

I'm hoping a US company will get it right (I'm hoping Elite will rise again and make the transition to Blu-ray).

[Rob Strange]

Yeah, both discs have flaws - but the Optimum is by far the better option. And I'd go so far as to recommend picking it up. The transfer is slightly cropped (zoomed in) - though not all shots are affected, and a couple actually feature more picture information than the Elite master.

It's a beautiful looking transfer (restored by Don May Jr. who also worked on the HD Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and an absolute revelation compared to the Elite disc.

Also worth noting is the fact that Romero himself approved the Optimum master - the cropping doesn't really harm the compositions (imo) because the full 1.33:1 frame features quite a bit of dead space. Also, the original mono track is included in lossless DTS-MA form, and the included documentary is excellent.

As Daemonia has said, the Network disc is very dodgy, which extremely high contrast and major print damage.

Check out the comparison here between the Optimum blu-ray and the Elite dvd:

caps-a-holic

[Sam]

Originally Posted by Daemonia

I'd hold off on Night of the Living Dead. The Optimum release looked pretty good, but they screwed up the ratio. The newer release is jsut really bad and doesn't look good at all, apparently. I believe the Wilson Bros reviewed this latter release and they were appalled at the quality of it.

I'm hoping a US company will get it right (I'm hoping Elite will rise again and make the transition to Blu-ray).

Cheers Daemonia, don't think I'll bother in that case!! Looks like we'll be swamped with substandard versions of NOTLD, just like we were on DVD At least Arrow are giving us decent versions of Day and Dawn...

[Daemonia]

Rob Strange seems to think the Optimum disc is actually worth picking up, so that might be an option. I'm only going on reports that I've read online that the ratio is all screwed up.

I'm still going to wait for an inevitable US Blu-ray release.

[Rob Strange]

Hopefully a brand new master will be created for the eventual US release. Optimum sourced the materials from The Weinstein Company and Genuis Entertainment, so if a disc is announced, and it's from these guys, then I suspect the same transfer will be used.

It's a shame that the Optimum is a bit cropped, cos the image looks loverly.

[Daemonia]

It's pretty cheap too, so I might give it a go on your recommendation, Rob. Thanks!

[Rob Strange]

Hopefully you'll find the cropping bearable.

[Daemonia]

To be honest, if I didn't know about it, I probably wouldn't have noticed it!

[The Reaper Man@Cult Labs]

I own the Optimum disc,but haven't had a chance to watch it yet.