OT: New benchmark in DVD quality. . .

AFSDMS wrote on 1/22/2004, 7:22 AM
Actually, this is a new (to me) LOW standard in DVD quality. For the holidays I got a DVD with four "Digitally Restored" episodes of a show called "Topper" from Critic's Choice video. Here is a link to the actual video: http://www.ccvideo.com/item.cfm?itemid=CCD001019

OK, it was only $10 but the MPEG encoding artifacts are so horrible as to be humorous. I haven't checked out the bitrate but I would guess the four 24 minute shows probably only take up 5% of available capacity :-)

The quality of the original B&W film was quite good as was the transfer. But the compression makes it look like a video conference image where the frame updates are few and far between. Whatever the compression settiings were it is distractingly evident that the background of a scene will not be updated for long periods of time. This is more noticable since the film grain is evident in the part that is updated, but the grain in the backgrounds freezes. SInce some characters had fairly 'big hair' in the early 1950s there is a strange artifact where an MCU of an actor locks the background and the hair so when the persons facial features move or the face turns it almost looks like the person is wearing a wig and the head is spinning so fast the wig stays stationary! The overall feeling when watching the video is similar to the old "Clutch Cargo" shows where moving lips were superimposed over a still drawing.

I was only able to watch one of the episodes. It really is difficult to watch because it really messes with your eyes and brain. The sound also just drops out every now and then. Not because of splices or anything on the sound track, it sounds like someone pulled the patch cable or bumped a loose connection.

I called CC Video and they said "We haven't had any complaints" (Im biting my tongue here :-) but were nice enough to offer a refund for the price plus the return shipping. I told them I had loved the show and hoped they would release a higher quality version, but that isn't in the plans. Maybe they will just put a sticker on the box to cover "Digitally Restored" with "Digitally Demolished?"

I think I will keep the DVD under the premise "If you can be nothing else in life, you can always be a good example of a bad example."

Happy New Year!

Comments

Jay Gladwell wrote on 1/22/2004, 7:30 AM
"If you can be nothing else in life, you can always be a good example of a bad example."

That's seems to be the norm today, doesn't it?

J--
AFSDMS wrote on 1/22/2004, 7:57 AM
"That's seems to be the norm today, doesn't it?"

Gee, I guess you figured out the 'subtle theme' to my message :-) Seems our materialistic society is interested in quantity and cheap price. Quality will probably be removed from our lexicon out of disuse.

IMHO, some of the goods coming in from China are amazingly disguised crap. I made the mistake of buying two pieces of electronic hardware from Behringer. Made in their "ISO 9000" facilities in China. A rack mount compressor failed after 4 months and had to be repaired. This was fixed mounted equipment, not stuff taken on the road. I also bought a 12-input Behringer mixer for backup. After the second unit arrived DOA Behringer US acknowledged a batch of defective units and sent a replacement from their office. That unit worked out of the box, but when I next needed to use it (five months later) one of the output channels was dead. It had been stored in the box, only used once! Again, back to Behringer for repair. Any company can have problems, but Behringer's bragging about ISO 9000 seems pure marketing hype. So, I've been a sucker before, but have sworn off the Behringer line for my own sanity. Stuff looks pretty on the outside and the pricing is beyond competitive, but QA and reliability aren't worth the savings, IMHO.

BTW, have you ever perused "The Portable Curmudgeon" A Christmas gift many years ago that I pick up again and again. Quotes by famous, and infamous, curmudgeons sorted by topic. A great yuk, or for me, an indispensible reference work :-)

Cheers!
RichMacDonald wrote on 1/22/2004, 8:01 AM
ISO 9000: "We do our sh*tty procedures consistently".
wcoxe1 wrote on 1/22/2004, 10:36 AM
Speaking of S*****, JVC is really pulling a good one on me. Their combo VHS + Mini-DV VCR, the "Professional" SR-VS10U, failed after more than a year of ownership, so it is out of warranty, but with only about 200 hours use, if that. So, I bit the bullet, spent $24.00 to ship it to them for an "Extimate." Only AFTER it arrived there did they demand payment in advance amounting to $200 per hour just to LOOK at it. They also demanded in advance $40.00 to ship it back to me even before they looked at it. Nothing mentioned about it failing after so little use.

Things that expensive shouldn't die after so little use. It was one of the early ones and cost one heck of a lot, even though we didn't use it all that much because of peculiarities in the way it ran. And, it certainly should not cost THAT much just to LOOK at it.

And why do they charge $40.00 IN ADVANCE to return it to me, when I can ship it for $24.00? Good Grief, Charlie Brown, can you say GOUGING?

No more JVC for me.
hugoharris wrote on 1/22/2004, 10:50 AM
My daughter's "Caillou Christmas" DVD was just produced this year, and is full of artifacting and pixelation, especially with fade/crossfade transitions. The sound is quite good though.

Kevin.
jsteehl wrote on 1/22/2004, 12:10 PM
Was seriously considering that model. What did you replace it with?
farss wrote on 1/22/2004, 12:29 PM
One thing about DVDs to be careful of. The quality of the player can also have an effect on how it looks. I've a DVD that on most players looks aweful, all with in spec and mastered on some very expensive gear.
That said though I could tell you some absolute horror stories about how some of the budget priced DVDs are authored,
I can tell you that on one budget priced "Greatest Hits of ....", some of the tracks were taken from a freinds very worn out vinyl copy.
Matt_Iserman wrote on 1/23/2004, 12:24 AM
Just a reminder, many credit cards offer a warranty-doubling program. If you bought the deck with plastic, you very well may be able to get the repairs paid for by the credit card company.
riredale wrote on 1/23/2004, 10:35 AM
Regarding DVD authoring "quality"--

Went to the library in December and borrowed a copy of "A Christmas Story" (remember Ralphie, who was told he would 'Shoot his eye out'?). Turns out whoever made the DVD used a really horrible master--the wow in the music at the beginning would make anyone cringe, and there were subtle "waves" of defocussing moving upwards throughout the entire video. Ouch.

Then, last week, I borrowed a copy of "The Magnificent Seven." Excellent copy of the wide-screen master, except for one little thing--they set the audio level about 20db too low. Someone must have given the "Dialog normalization" knob a tweak in the wrong direction. The movie is practically unplayable in our various DVD players, simply because the volume knob has to be turned all the way up to get any reasonable audio level, and then, of course, one has to remember to quickly turn the volume back down upon completion.

Being a tinkerer at heart, I'm inclined to rip the DVD, extract the audio, pull it back to wav format, re-encode it using a more rational dialog normalization level, and re-author the disk just to prove it can be done. Maybe when I have some spare time...
AFSDMS wrote on 1/23/2004, 12:09 PM
I didn't even make it to mentioning the A&E DVDs of the Miss Marple Mysteries. It appears that they didn't master from the original film but from the original video transfer. In each of the four DVDs in the set there is a part where it appears the tracking on the tape playing back went off so you get a bunch of color banding (like with quad tape) in the middle of the screen. There are also occasional areas where the video just freezes for 1/2 to 1 second. Does the same thing on different players too. That was a fairly costloy set, no bargain basement there. They have sent a replacement set to see if it gets any better. If not they will refund.

That reminds me, we also had a "Jeeves and Wooster" (P. G. Wodehouse) set from A&E. The flutter in the audio was bad enough in some sections to drive you nuts. Need to talk to them about that!

But A&E/Acorn isn't all bad. We got the "Nero Wolfe" series and the DVD set is excellent. Top notch, at least on the first two DVDs we have viewed.

Life goes on. . .
vitalforces wrote on 1/23/2004, 12:13 PM
To wmunn: Wow--Clutch Cargo. (I was but a boy.) He lives on in those silly Conan O'Brien TV bits.
Jay Gladwell wrote on 1/23/2004, 12:45 PM
"The Portable Curmudgeon"--sounds like my kind'a book!

J--