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Starz/Anchor Bay on Blu-ray... disappointing
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Anchor Bay's library of movies is a pretty big win for the Blu-ray Disc format. They have goodies like Halloween, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and Evil Dead (that's a lot of dead). Their video transfer of "Halloween" has been the recipient of some criticism for having colour timing issues, but that's not really my biggest concern.
Out of the three titles I got a look at today (Halloween, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead), "Halloween" is probably the best of the bunch - I don't think there's any rampant problems with this disc. It's not incredibly detailed, but I won't hold that against it because for all I know, that could be down to how it was shot (any "Halloween" experts want to fill me in?). "Dawn of the Dead", though, has been goosed with the Temporal Noise Reduction stick. Also rare for a live action film, I spotted what looks like Dirt and Scratch Removal artefacts (the kind of processing that buggers up cartoons).
In this grab, it looks like Dirt and Scratch Removal has mistaken the shimmering reflections in the water for scratches on the film, and tried to remove them. The result is a strange garbling (time code 00:34:39). I actually thought this was an MPEG decoder error at first, but it's not.
I've only seen that happen once though, so it could be worse. The film grain reduction is much more distracting. The whole film looks plastic and slowed-down, and there's the usual smearing problems associated with this type of NR which gives fine moving textures a sort of "splodgy paint"/"sponge cake" look.
It's good to see that smaller labels are releasing HD movies. But from the quick look I've had at these discs, Starz have a lot to learn about the mythical art known as "knowing when to leave video alone".
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...and yet some are still deeming these as a revelation. Please.