Warner Brothers Archive Collection (DVDs only)

[fdm]

Last order, a few months back's sale, I had to return the case and dvd-r for the ones I wanted replaced. One was a pretty scratched up disc, maybe if they see enough of them returned they might figure out why that happens sometimes. Have noticed that most of their more recently burnt discs don't really look all that great, lots of smudges or little scratches on a number of their play sides, but they typically play okay on the Oppo (can't return all of them, else what's the point, but did return a few). Didn't use to be the rule rather than the exception, but I suspect their manufacturing facilities could use a cleaning and/or maintenance crew coming in every once in a while.

Anyway, I'll probably be ordering the two Forbidden Hollywood sets at some point sooner rather than later. Been holding off on getting any more archive titles until I get through the (thankfully down to a) few I've yet to get to.

[buskeat]

I got them in the mail today. They're pressed all right. Only watched "Lawyer Man" so far and it looks good.

[Max von Mayerling]

Yep. I received mine today - pressed.

[vsski]

Thought I'd post this for the entertainment value - although I'm not sure if I should laugh or cry over the ineptitude of Warner's customer service.
I send them an e-mail explaining the situation with the pressed discs of the Forbidden Hollywood sets and clearly asked since the website never showed anything but MOD for these discs, if or how they can tell whether what's available is still pressed or already MOD. While I would have expected to get a we don't know or have no information type answer (which is what I was told on the phone), here is the e-mail I got:

"Thank you for contacting WBShop.com. If you view the item detail it will tell you about the product."

[vsski]

For those that haven't seen this yet, the Digital Bits just posted this as part of their wrap up from Comic Con where WB's George Feltenstein talked about WB's upcoming plans:

Warner is in the initial stages of investigating the possibility of BD-R MOD releases in high-def, although many obstacles remain as the current BD-R spec isn't universally supported.

So much for hoping that when the Archives expand to BD that it would be pressed BDs insteads of BD-Rs.

[Max von Mayerling]

The notion of a BD-R barely makes any sense. Premium treatment with a throwaway tinge. I would think they'd be better off following the Twilight Time model and just producing a limited pressing.

[captveg]

The notion of a BD-R barely makes any sense. Premium treatment with a throwaway tinge. I would think they'd be better off following the Twilight Time model and just producing a limited pressing.

My guess is that this is how they eventually go. The AACS issue on PS3's for BD-R is a major hurdle to overcome. I doubt they'd want to do as many as 3000 copies, though. Probably more like 100-500, then order another batch if those sell out.

There's also the issue of BD-Rs being FAR more susceptible to scratches because they lack the "hard coating" of pressed BDs. The information on BD/BD-Rs is far closer to the surface of the disc than DVD/DVD-Rs.

[fdm]

When I went to buy a few blank BD-Rs a couple years back, seems like many amazon reviews of them mentioned that they didn't even seem to last a year before going bad. (Haven't really done much with the ones I bought, so couldn't confirm or deny.)

[headacheboy]

I finally got both sets of Forbidden Hollywood and they are indeed pressed discs. Warner Archives actually made pressed DVDs! They can make it if they try!

[triodelover]

Has anyone actually watched either Forbidden Hollywood set yet? I received both today and just sat down to watch Lawyer Man. Every single one of these has been reformatted for 16:9 displays. The back of the keep case says "Full Screen 1.37:1 Aspect Ratio". It's not correctable by resetting the display to 4:3 because it crops the stretched image exactly as you would expect it to. I can go into the settings menu of the Momitsu and changer the display type to "16:9 pillarbox" and that works. But if your player doesn't have that capability, I'm not sure there's another workaround. Just though everyone would like to be forewarned.

[JPJ]

No english subtitles on Forbidden Hollywood vol. 4 & 5? Audio is not perfect on pre-codes and there's usually fast moving dialogue, so someone whose first language is not
english would need those subs.

[Matt]

Has anyone actually watched either Forbidden Hollywood set yet? Every single one of these has been reformatted for 16:9 displays.

You've got to be kidding. Have you tried a different player or your computer's optical drive? I can't imagine Warner Archive would eff up on such a colossal scale.

[triodelover]

Has anyone actually watched either Forbidden Hollywood set yet? Every single one of these has been reformatted for 16:9 displays.

You've got to be kidding. Have you tried a different player or your computer's optical drive? I can't imagine Warner Archive would eff up on such a colossal scale.

The night before we watched MoC's BD of Ruggles. The player reproduced the correct AR with no display adjustment (default setting is 16:9), as it has for every BD in the collection. The computer-based system (which has since disappeared due to a Lion/XP incompatibility and an upgrade to the latest version of the Mini w/o an optical drive) also had no problems with varying ARs. I should add that approximately 75% of the collection (around 1200 titles) are Academy ratio or less (1.2:1, etc). This is the very first time I've experienced this. Sure, I can adjust the display or the player/software to force the full display, but everything previously has always come up in the AR specified.

ADDENDUM: Just tried it in the iMac with VLC. On that machine, it starts in 1.37:1 without modification. That's truly peculiar. So I went back and tried again with the Momitsu and the Panny plasma. Same result as before. Plugged in the Ruggles BD and it opened in the correct ratio. But...I then plugged in the RugglesDVD and it came up stretched for 16:9. I've never seen that before with SD DVDs. So it apparently is some sort of issue with the Momitsu BDP-799 and DVDs but not BDs. The Momitsu offers 4 choices for the display AR: 16:9, 16:9 pillarboxed, 4:3 P&S and 4:3 letterboxed. I've just started using this as my main player after the Mini upgrade and I just realized that this is the first time I've used it to play a DVD. Up until now, it's always been BDs - two nights ago the Gaumont BD of French Cancan played flawlessly. It appears that for SD DVDs, one needs to set the desired AR before playback. Sorry to alarm anyone.

[Matt]

Well, it's no consolation to you and other Momitsu BDP-799 owners, but I'm happy to hear it's not an issue with all players.

[SternDiet]

Has anyone actually watched either Forbidden Hollywood set yet? Every single one of these has been reformatted for 16:9 displays.

You've got to be kidding. Have you tried a different player or your computer's optical drive? I can't imagine Warner Archive would eff up on such a colossal scale.

The night before we watched MoC's BD of Ruggles. The player reproduced the correct AR with no display adjustment (default setting is 16:9), as it has for every BD in the collection. The computer-based system (which has since disappeared due to a Lion/XP incompatibility and an upgrade to the latest version of the Mini w/o an optical drive) also had no problems with varying ARs. I should add that approximately 75% of the collection (around 1200 titles) are Academy ratio or less (1.2:1, etc). This is the very first time I've experienced this. Sure, I can adjust the display or the player/software to force the full display, but everything previously has always come up in the AR specified.

ADDENDUM: Just tried it in the iMac with VLC. On that machine, it starts in 1.37:1 without modification. That's truly peculiar. So I went back and tried again with the Momitsu and the Panny plasma. Same result as before. Plugged in the Ruggles BD and it opened in the correct ratio. But...I then plugged in the RugglesDVD and it came up stretched for 16:9. I've never seen that before with SD DVDs. So it apparently is some sort of issue with the Momitsu BDP-799 and DVDs but not BDs. The Momitsu offers 4 choices for the display AR: 16:9, 16:9 pillarboxed, 4:3 P&S and 4:3 letterboxed. I've just started using this as my main player after the Mini upgrade and I just realized that this is the first time I've used it to play a DVD. Up until now, it's always been BDs - two nights ago the Gaumont BD of French Cancan played flawlessly. It appears that for SD DVDs, one needs to set the desired AR before playback. Sorry to alarm anyone.

I also had a Momitsu and I think it's pretty standard for these machines to play BD in the correct aspect ratio, but not SD. But as I seem to remember, there is a setting which automatically chooses the correct AR, but I forgot what it was - it's been a while. But it should be there.

[swo17]

Aren't a lot of BDs for 4:3 films encoded with a 16:9 image that has built-in black bars on the sides? That way a player is forced to play the image correctly.

[triodelover]

I also had a Momitsu and I think it's pretty standard for these machines to play BD in the correct aspect ratio, but not SD. But as I seem to remember, there is a setting which automatically chooses the correct AR, but I forgot what it was - it's been a while. But it should be there.

Thanks. I'll take a look and see if I can find that. It's not that big a deal to change the setting (and then change it back), it's just that you have to remember to do it - which you usually do when a 1932 film comes up stretched to hell and back for 16:9.

Aren't a lot of BDs for 4:3 films encoded with a 16:9 image that has built-in black bars on the sides? That way a player is forced to play the image correctly.

If that's true (and it makes sense), that explains a bit. Does the same hold true for ratios larger than 16:9 to force correct letterboxing?

[TMDaines]

Aren't a lot of BDs for 4:3 films encoded with a 16:9 image that has built-in black bars on the sides? That way a player is forced to play the image correctly.

All are. There's no such thing as a 1080p 4:3 image on a BD, I think.

Edit: Typo

[Roger Ryan]

Right, with Blu-ray you're always watching an anamorphic 16:9 image regardless of the film's aspect ratio. The black bars on the side for 1.37:1 fare is simply part of the image. This is not true of DVDs which (almost always?) present 1.37:1 images as non-anamorphic 4:3 full frame.

My HD television is old enough that I always have to manually switch between 16:9 standard and 4:3 on the television itself. That DVD and Blu-ray players, in concert with newer TVs, do this automatically is nice, but I've been astounded at how many times people end up watching something stretched, squashed or what-have-you in the 21st century due to technical ignorance or disinterest.

[TMDaines]

(Some if not all of the) Sky HD boxes in the UK are the worst for this. There's no way to set them so that they output 4:3 channels in their correct ratio through an HDMI cable. 4:3 is automatically stretched to 16:9 so you have to manually squish it back using your TV settings if you want to watch stuff properly, which of course means the menus are squished too. There's hundreds of threads about this online but Sky seemingly can't or won't do anything about it.

[vsski]

Received my Forbidden Hollywood Sets 4 & 5 today, and they are pressed discs (I ordered about 4 days after they started shipping).

My Oppo didn't have any problems with playing the discs automatically in the correct 4:3 aspect ratio, so what is reported here is definitely player dependent.

So far I have watched Jewel Robbery and Lawyer Man and since I have no previous experience with Warner Archive titles, all I can say is that the quality is definitely not on par with the previous Forbidden Hollywood sets. Lots of dirt, scratches and other blemishes show that no clean-up or restoration was done on these titles. Picture also doesn't show the same contrast and is softer than the previous sets. On Lawyer Man is also a clearly noticeable sound glitch (actors lips moving but no sound at all). Although none of this is so distracting that it prevents enjoyment of the actual movies (at least not for me). As reported no subtitles and I agree that for some non-native English speakers this at times will pose a challenge. From what I'm reading elsewhere about Archive titles all of this seems consistent with this line.

While it's nice to finally have pressed discs from Warner Archives, unless you are a real fan of the pre-code films the price/value is more than questionable (and boy I'm glad I've never bought one of the DVD-Rs, as I would really be kicking myself then).

[swo17]

Born to Be Archived

[JakeB]

Born to Be Archived

It is out on pressed disc in the UK. Not sure what the quality is like though.

[swo17]

Yes. I haven't seen the UK disc but have heard it could be improved upon. Though Warner is advertising this as being "newly remastered." I watched the film recently on TCM (the same transfer you'll get here?) and it looked fine to me.

[knives]

It exists in R2 for anyone searching.