This wonderful article came up on Den of Geek today that highlights a very real problem with Studios and their attitude towards Blu-Ray.
When the HD formats were announced, many accused the industry of trumping up a new format simply to cash in on existing stocks by re-releasing them in 'High Definition' (which some today still can't really see the difference) Of course, many of us 'videophiles' jumped to HD's defense citing the enormous potential of the new format. True to that citation, we have seen some astounding releases such as the absolutely gorgeous '2001: Space Odyssey', the wonderfully-restored 'Snow White' from Disney and the 1st-class treatment given to the director's cut of 'Dark City.'
Sadly, however, this is quickly showing to be a novelty in catalogue releases. I personally have been 'had' on a few including 'The Crow', 'Blood Diamond' and most recently, the Blu-Ray début of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Having put some blind faith both in Peter Jackson and New Line cinema, I bought this off of Amazon blind without reading a review of the transfer. After all, it was such a big release it could ONLY get the best, right? Well, the very next day, I happened to catch a public showing of 'The Fellowship of the Ring' on BluRay in HMV and couldn't believe my eyes! I called to one of the staff ('Dan' was his name, I believe) and asked 'Is that the BluRay version?' -to which he replied, 'Yeah, looks pretty amazing, doesn't it?'
After quietly flunking Dan on his video assessment skills, I pulled out my Blackberry and dialled in HiDefDigest.com (their review is linked here) only to see my fears justified. The video transfer of my most beloved anticipation of the entire format release schedule was a dud! For those of you who haven't seen it, the lack of detail and fuzziness in places is so awful that people would be justified in saying that BluRay is no better than DVD. Knowing full well that this trilogy will have been ordered as 'The Choice Trilogy' for Home Cinema fans to show off their equipment, I pray that those who did know enough to keep this on the back shelf if they are still trying to convince that sceptical relative or spouse of their neighbour that BluRay is the 'bee's knees'. On this occasion, they couldn't be further from the truth.
The real danger here is that people will be demo'ing the Lord of the Rings trilogy in a bid to see what BluRay can do and they will be harming confidence in the format by doing so. Honestly speaking, I am that much of a video quality freak that I'll hold onto the trilogy if only for the slightly better results on 'The Two Towers' and 'The Return of the King', but it is a bitter-sweet at best; all in all, I feel ripped off. Worse than that though, there are undoubtedly potential BluRay owners looking at this transfer and saying 'My DVD looks just as good' and writing off the format entirely.
Even more distressing, this is not the first time as Den of Geek has kindly pointed out. Studios are cranking out the catalogue titles as quick as they can press the discs. From a greedy, profit-whoring monster point-of-view, I can see the point. If you're only tossing an average of £3-£5 ($8 U.S.) for older films on DVD, studios are obviously wanting to recoup some lost profit by exploiting the new novelty. However, Sony and the entire BD association should be sitting down together and drafting a 'code of conduct' or 'quality assurance policy' to prevent greedy studios from shovelling poorly-transferred films onto BluRay. Studios who wish to release a catalogue title would then have to prove 'demonstrable effort' to the association; to show that care and quality was applied to a release's transfer, offering a marked improvement over previous transfers on both audio and video quality to a level worthy of the format. This needs to be done sooner rather than later - and I hope Sony will take the lead with their own catalogue releases.
Despite what studios want to believe, people buy equipment (and formats) to enjoy the films that they love, and more often than not, the 'list of favourite films' is rooted firmly in the back-catalogue, not in recent releases. If someone was to ask me - honestly - if having BluRay was worth the money, knowing that this person would pursue older titles, my answer would be 'not really, not yet...' That sucks that I have to say that! ...but it's true. Studios are flat-out torpedoing BluRay by crapping on their back catalogues with mediocre transfers. It worked with DVD because DVD was a novelty in being digital, small (compared to VHS) and offering relative access and extra content. ...but none of these things are novelties any-more; DVD owns them and will keep them. BluRay has only its visual and audio quality to ride on; ignore this too often and BluRay will lose consumer confidence altogether.
Next time I spend good money on a catalogue release, I'll be sure to wait for the review first. Never again.
For those of you who haven't bought Lord of the Rings on BluRay yet - my advice would be to save your pennies and see if those fat asses in New Line Cinema can get their finger out and do something appropriate for the Extended Edition due out later this year/early 2011.
The Angry Rabbit.
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