The only thing,besides visual resolution,is providing room for 6-track stereo sound. So where is that soundtrack! Hopefully it is not destroyed to the point of having just the mono prints only. Please, I'm on the "Restoration" side of this argument. Try to find the original sound elements, and send it to the "Blu-Ray" discs in the future.
shareWe need a blu-ray hi-def restoration of this great film. :)
share"The Long Ships" had a mono soundtrack.
The first film with a Dolby Stereo 70 mm Six Track was "Logan's Run", a dozen years later in 1976.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Stereo#Dolby_Stereo_70_mm_Six_Track
There was stereo sound in the cinema before Dolby! All 70mm films had six track magnetic stereo sound tracks, that's what the extra 5mm was for (the negative is 65mm) All early CinemaScope films had four track magnetic stereo sound. By magnetic, of course, I mean the magnetic sound "strips" added to the release print as opposed to the conventional optical sound track.
share70mm 6-track sound = 6 MONO-tracks assigned to designated speakers. It was labeled sterophonic sound,
but the channels were not stereo-sound. Hence, no stereo-sound until 1976.
Please read up on stereophonic sound before posting such rubbish.
shareIn 70mm presentation with 6 individual magnetic soundtrack, the combined mono-tracks could be paired with stereo-offsets to create stereo sound. After Dolby-Stereo was introduced in the mid-70's, you could have left-and-right side track-pairs on a single-channel. The possibility for stereo sound delivery on a single playback-channel has come to define "stereo".
shareI agree it was odd, but 70mm or not, this one was probably mono only. Even the stereo version of the Colpix soundtrack album of the score was rechanneled stereo. According to the Film Score Monthly CD reissue, it was probably recorded in Yugoslavia in mono (film was a U.S./British/Yugoslav co-production).