MovieChat Forums > Dracula 3D (2013) Discussion > How does the DVD end up looking better t...

How does the DVD end up looking better than the Blu-ray?

posted 10 years ago by ontheroadagain85
8 replies | jump to latest

I have the Blu and my TV is properly calibrated, mind you, and I get these horribly annoying "strobe" effects in many of the scenes, such as when the girl is walking home through the woods after sleeping with the married man, when Jonathan has his first ride through the forest with the wolves, etc. The image "flickers" for lack of a better word. I've tinkered with the settings and nothing gets rid of this flickering effect. Then I asked to see my friend's DVD of the film and I played it on my TV with the exact same settings and it has none of these issues. The picture is also a lot brighter, which helps in actually SEEING things sometimes. On my Blu, some scenes are very dark and it's hard to make out anything. The black horses the girls use to take into town when Mina arrives can now be seen in detail, whereas on my Blu they're solid black and they suffer horrible black crush.

I'm starting to consider returning the Blu and getting the DVD. I wonder if something happened during the mastering process. But that light flickering, jutter, strobe or whatever you wanna call it is seriously distracting and it doesn't seem to affect the DVD. One of the few cases I've seen where the DVD is actually better.

[–] guigui-paul 10 years ago

Are you talking about the US Blu Ray?
I own the italian Blu Ray but i can't comment on the picture quality because i haven't seen the film again on BR (i saw it twice on the big screen, though..)
The opening titles on the US Blu Ray are said to be different from the italian blu ray (opening titles on the italian BR is a shot of a village street, with opening titles "pop up" in 3D, and blue lightning in the bakcground)

http://www.myspace.com/guillaumep
http://darioargentofr.blogspot.com/

[–] ontheroadagain85 10 years ago

Yes, the U.S. Blu-ray. I didn't know the Italian one was different. Interesting. It's annoying how the Blu-ray obviously has more detail in the picture, but it's ruined by these strobe effects. It isn't like the entire picture does it, sometimes it will just be the leaves on the trees, grass, a wall, etc. but you see many instances of shimmering. It's very irritating and I know it has nothing to do with my settings because I calibrate TVs on my own and I know everything is correct. It's obviously something to do with the encoding they used or something. The shimmering effect is so annoying, I actually returned the Blu for the DVD since it doesn't suffer from these issues. I'm a perfectionist with it comes to my Argento collection, so I just wasn't having that.

[–] symbioticfunction 10 years ago

Could always import the Italian region friendly blu-ray...it's regions A, B & C.

Blu-ray collection: http://www.blu-ray.com/community/collection.php?u=78799

[–] ontheroadagain85 10 years ago

That's probably what I'll end up doing. I just spent $49 to get the Koch release of Four Flies on Grey Velvet on Blu, so I may as well. I wish I didn't have an Argento obession. My wallet would be fatter.

[–] symbioticfunction 10 years ago

Koch 4 Flies looks very good...

Edit: The colours are rich and it's a significant improvement over the UK Shameless bd.

Blu-ray collection: http://www.blu-ray.com/community/collection.php?u=78799

[–] Alex_de_Large_18 10 years ago

I own the Koch Blu-ray and it looks and sounds excellent. But I didn't really care for the movie. I've only seen it once though. The twist was great and saved the movie. Maybe it's a grower and I'll learn to appreciate it with time and subsequent viewings.

[–] ontheroadagain85 10 years ago

It was indeed a great transfer--perhaps the best Blu-ray I've seen of Argento's work pre-1990s right next to WildSide's Suspiria Blu-ray. I was really disappointed with both US releases of Bird and the one for Cat. Arrow in the UK mastered Bird from the original negative but the color timing was tweaked by the cinematographer. But it doesn't appear the US Blu-ray utilized the original negative. The picture is a little noisy and there isn't much fine detail. Despite the color issues on all of the Suspiria Blu-rays, the level of detail is amazing and the print looks so clean. At least on the WildSide disc I own.

As for the merits of Four Flies, I think it's the weakest of his animal trilogy but I felt I still had to own it anyway. Maybe we'll both learn to appreciate it. But I can't re-watch it over and over like his other films.

[–] CountVladDracula 10 years ago

This is not the first time I have seen this happen.

The older DVD for Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) has better picture than the new special edition DVD or Blue Ray. The new master print is grainy and dark (But not as bad as the new two disc DVD of the 2004 Hallmark mini-series of Frankenstein. That's an awful transfer. Stick with the American single disc DVD).

And the 1958 Dracula (Horror of Dracula to us Americans) has a strange blue tint in it's new BluRay that does not exist on the older Warner DVD.

What's happening here could be the result of the still experimental process of putting the ordinary Bluray on the same disc as the bluRay 3D transfer. The player could be flickering at certain scenes because it's trying to read both formats. I don't know. I'm not well versed with Blu Ray 3D. I only have a regular Blu Ray Player and decided not to bother with the Blu Ray format. I bought it on regular DVD as that way it will play on anything.