CED VideoDisc and Player Discussion

[Midwinter]

I wasn't sure if anyone else on the board has done this. I recently started watching a CED movie and then checking out the same movie on a moderm format such as Blu-Ray, digital streaming, DVD, etc...

I did it with Bonnie and Clyde most recently (since I had never seen the film in any format). I watched the CED copy first and then streamed an HD copy from Netflix.

I will have to say that my CED copy looked pretty nice (watched on a 42 inch Sony LCD). I did notice that on the Netflix HD version (watched on a 65 inch Mitsubishi DLP) it was a much darker transfer. I think the CED version was probably closer to the original print in brightness because the Netflix transfer had shadows on faces that were completely black - which is not very common.

Just curious if anyone else does this on a regular basis and what their findings are. I obviously know that an HD transfer will almost 100% of the time look far better than the CED version, but sometimes my findings are surprising.
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My SJT400 keeps me warm MIDWINTER when the OSD board overheats!

Trying my wife's patience one purchase at a time.

[Rixrex]

The CED copy would have been closer to the original in regards to the brightness and contrast. I remember seeing Bonnie and Clyde in the movie theater when it first came out and it was not a shadowy or dark movie. In fact, there were rarely any noirish types of movies in regards to shadow during that period.

Films then had plenty of light and made sure everything was being seen clearly and in full range of color, unlike today where keeping things in shadow or dark without detail against a light background seems the norm. At the time of Bonnie and Clyde, the showing of clearly visible violence was common, as in The Wild Bunch and other films.

Bonnie and Clyde was nominated for best picture that year, but did not win. Does anyone remember what Warren Beatty said in jest the next day? I'll wait and see if anyone does before putting it down.

[Beetlescott]

The thing I find mostly on the CED vs DVD is the use of Pan and Scan. On the DVD version you can see both of the characters talking, while on the CED, it seems to bounce from one to the other. I'm a Trekkie and I bought all the first 10 movies that was the directors cut. After a few years of getting used to that, then pop in the CED which is the theatrical version. Take Star Trek The Motion Picture, on the CED version SPOCK DOESN'T CRY!!! We get frame after frame of our heros gawking at the monitor, supposedly shocked at what this adversary was capable of. But touching scene where Spock has tears running down his face was left on the cutting room floor!!!! So to go back and watch this version is pretty interesting.
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[Rixrex]

There is a difference between P&S (Pan & Scan) and cropped films, though the terms tend to be used interchangably.

The common 35mm film stock aspect ratio was called Academy Ratio of 1.37, and it had been that ratio for decades. The advent of TV (1.33 ratio) pushed the film studios and theaters to try different things to keep their audience in the theaters and away from TV, one of which was to present films in a "widescreen" format. The easiest and cheapest way to present a film in widescreen format was to simply use a projector with a "matted" aperature (and different lens) to block the top and bottom of the 1.37 aspect ratio and make it appear to be widescreen to the audience, in a format of 1.66, 1.78 or 1.85 typically.

These films actually had more image on the film stock that was just not being shown to the audience, and the film camera operator, or cinematographer, would see a marking in his camera showing the "safe area" that the audiences would not see. So sometimes a boom mike or such would wander into view, but not into the actual "widescreen" marked area. These 35mm films would not be subject to Pan & Scan treatment because it wasn't really all that necessary. They were already close enough to TV aspect ratio to just put them on as is with cropping, usually transfered to 16mm stock first. These are the ones that are called cropped and they don't lose a large amount of image when done right. These are the majority of films on CED

The other widescreen fromats did actually do something else to make the aspect ratio greater than 2.0, such as using an anamorphic lens, running 35mm film sideways, using 70mm film, etc. A film of a ratio of 2.35 or 2.55 would need P&S treatment in cases where focus tended to be all on one side or the other of the screen, or quickly shifting from one side to another. These are the films that suffer most from this formatting treatment, losing much of the image consequently, and giving you the effect of jumping around the image area, etc. These are mostly the epic films and big studio productions.

[Midwinter]

Isn't it still common practice for the camera to pick up more on film than the widescreen image we receive? I'm just thinking of some botched home video releases of Back to the Future and Pirates of the Caribbean - where the home video image was different than what was released in theaters because of incorrect cropping when mastered.
_________________
My SJT400 keeps me warm MIDWINTER when the OSD board overheats!

Trying my wife's patience one purchase at a time.

[Rixrex]

It's normal to have less image on your TV screen due to the TV set's own matting of the image. This was more common on the older 4:3 sets where up to 10 percent of the image edge was lost between the masatering and the eventual viewing on the screen. Widescreen sets are a bit better at this, but there's still a little image loss in the edge masking.