Pocahontas
Region 1 USA (Walt Disney Home Entertainment) vs
Region 2 UK (Walt Disney Home Entertainment) vs
Region 2 UK Old (Walt Disney Home Video)
R1 10th Anniversary Edition (USA) / R2 2-Disc Special Edition (UK) / R2 Original (UK)
- All screen grabs are shown at 720x576. This means that the R2 2-Disc Special Edition (UK) screen shots haven't been resized in any way.
- The R1 10th Anniversary Edition, being from America, was in NTSC so was originally 720x480. These pictures have been stretched up to PAL resolution in Photoshop to make for an easier comparison.
- The R2 Original was PAL but non-anamorphic, so these pictures have also been stretched up to aid comparison.
- These pictures are all presented unsqueezed as they are stored on the disc, so obviously things will look much too thin.
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Image 1
Region 1 | Region 2 New | Region 2 Old
Surprisingly, the NTSC version holds the most detail here. Look carefully at the small details such as the trees on the hills - what's clearly distinguishable on the Region 1 10th Anniversary edition is smudged together on the British version. The Original R2 version is an amazing example of just how variable the telecine process is. Unlike the two new versions, the original is transferred from a film print rather than directly from the original computer data. Although I'm a fan of the filmic, contrasty look, there's just too much lost detail due to the cack-handed video transfer.
Image 2
Region 1 | Region 2 New | Region 2 Old
This is a difficult scene to compress. Pocahontas runs through the trees at high speed chasing after the ship. On the new British DVD, this scene is noticeably blurred in comparison to the ones before and after it. It appears that whoever authored the UK disc blurred this scene to give the MPEG-2 encoder an easier job, so that visible blocking was reduced. Look at the fine details on the tree on the left of the frame on the Region 1 version, and see how much detail has been lost by over-filtering on the Region 2 PAL version, which technically speaking SHOULD look better. Take a look at the old R2 version and pay special attention to the creases at the bottom of her clothes - there's so much DVNR, overcompression and other image mangling that the fine details are being warped away.
Image 3
Region 1 | Region 2 New | Region 2 Old
This static shot doesn't vary too differently between the versions, except for the old PAL version which of course looks terrible as usual. Notice however though that the new R2 version is filtered more and there is more visible haloing.
Image 4
Region 1 | Region 2 New | Region 2 Old
As above.
Image 5
Region 1 | Region 2 New | Region 2 Old
These fine details show how the new Region 2 PAL version is a wasted opportunity. The PAL format's superior resolution could have been used to bring more detail, but overfiltering has put a stop to that.
Image 6
Region 1 | Region 2 New | Region 2 Old
MORE detail present in the UK version here.
Image 7
Region 1 | Region 2 New | Region 2 Old
The new R2 actually looks very slightly more detailed here, which is interesting. Take a look at how completely goosed the colours on the old version are, though! Red becomes pink.
Image 8
Region 1 | Region 2 New | Region 2 Old
Conclusion
The American R1 10th Anniversary Edition is the one to go for. While the new UK version does have some scenes that are mildly more detailed, these are in the minority, and the obvious softening to aid compression is extremely obtrusive. Not only that, but as a film filled with some pretty nice music, the NTSC version is the way to hear it running at the correct speed. The speed-up on the PAL versions makes the pace feel slightly wrong.
The original Region 2 version of course, is one you shouldn't touch with a barge pole. The video transfer is a bad joke. There's been a lot of telecine wobble on the transfer, which the mastering team seem to have tried to correct using a stabilizing filter. Sadly this doesn't work properly, and little bits of the image such as background details still jitter around distractingly. Also, there's some completely bizarre and probably unnecessary noise reduction that causes tiny little stray pixels to jitter everywhere. You can also see the terrible compression artefacts in the examples on this page. Finally, the old version is non-anamorphic. Don't buy it, OK?
