new dvd...
has anyone seen the new alpha dvd release of this film? im just curious to know if its the uncut euro version unlike something weird's dvd...
shareIt is uncut, but it is a bootleg off the Sinister Cinema release. So, if you want optimum picture quality spend the extra bucks and get the Sinister dvd-r or vhs.
shareWhile it sucks that Alpha apparently lifts some of its content from competitors, I have to sound a warning about Sinister Cinema. In the last year, I've purchased 17 DVD-Rs from them, and now that I'm getting around to watching them, I've found that 4 or 5 of them don't play properly. That's nearly a 30 per cent defect rate. While I believe that I can send them back for replacement, doing so is a drag and I'm probably not going to be compensated for return shipping (not to mention my time).
Alpha releases, OTOH, are real, factory-pressed DVDs that, unlike DVD-Rs, won't degrade over time, and they're considerably less expensive than Sinister Cinema releases. I've never had any trouble with the Alpha titles I own.
I no longer trust the DVD-R format for prerecorded movies and find Sinister Cinema's prices to be too high, even at their $10-a-movie sale prices. At $10 a movie, I should be getting a real DVD, not some amateur-produced DVD-R that has a 30 per cent chance of not playing properly right out of the box. I understand why small companies like Sinister Cinema have embraced the DVD-R format, but from the consumer's point of view, DVD-R is not a good deal.
Maybe the picture/sound quality is better on Sinister Cinema releases, but only marginally so, since Sinister Cinema are using an obsolete system for their transfers (the Elmo Transvideo 16G, which was respected in the 80s but is considered low-end by modern standards). Honestly, none of these grey market/public domain releases are going to be high-quality transfers, so worrying about this seems a bit like arguing about which brand of malt liquor tastes the most like champagne. It's not like Sinister Cinema releases are Criterion-quality.
Another thing that bugs me about Sinister Cinema DVD-Rs is that, whether it's done deliberately or not, they're more difficult than average to make safety copies of. If it's done deliberately, I find it irresponsible since if ever there was a medium for which making backup copies was justified, DVD-R would be it. The dyes used in DVD-Rs degrade over time.
From now on, I'll only be ordering titles from Sinister Cinema if they aren't available on DVD elsewhere, and even then, I'll probably stick to ordering them on VHS format, which I'll transfer to DVD-R myself.
Here's what one film transfer service has to say about the Elmo Transvideo:
"I'll also mention here a notoriously low quality transfer system that many companies use because it's easy to operate and comes as a self-contained unit. It's called an Elmo Transvideo. What this is is an Elmo projector (Elmo projectors are in fact very high quality) with a small single chip video camera built into approximately where the lens used to be. These are old technology and haven't been manufactured since the late 80's. The concept was good but the video camera is horribly out of date. Transfers from these are muddy and lack any kind of reasonable color fidelity. Ask and make sure that the provider that you are considering is not using one of these units to transfer your film. A lot of companies still are so be careful."
http://www.filmrescue.com/gentransinfo.html share
While I still have reservations about movies sold on DVD-R, I'm happy to announce that:
1. Sinister Cinema were really good about replacing the DVD-Rs I had problems with. You can order from this company with confidence; they stand behind their products. They've also been having sales lately where they charge less than $10 a disc.
2. I found that by digging out my old (circa 2004) Sony DVD player, I was able to play all of the DVD-Rs without any glitches. My even older Sharp player could play most of the DVD-Rs without glitches. It mostly seems to be this newer Samsung DVD recorder that I bought a couple of years ago and the drives in my computers that have difficulty with these discs.
I suspect these DVD-Rs would play reliably in all drives if the masters were being prepared on a computer (as they are with commercial movie DVDs) instead of being created on consumer standalone DVD recorders. I think consumer DVD recorders must be using a kludge of some sort to create the menu system which can cause problems with some players.
I know small outfits like Sinister Cinema can't afford to get 500 copies of a movie pressed on DVD when the title is only likely to sell two dozen copies, but what they could do is have their top sellers factory-pressed, and then perhaps put some of the money earned from those sales into pressing some of the less popular titles. At least, that's what I would do if I was running such a business. Just throwing the idea out there.
Having the movies factory-pressed instead of selling them on DVD-R would probably result in more sales, especially from movie rental places and retail outlets who are reluctant to deal with the DVD-R format.