I recently bought the Hitchcock Masterpiece Collection, and as I sit here watching 'Family Plot,' I can't get over how bad the transfer is. It is almost unwatchably grainy. Does anyone else have this problem with the 'Family Plot' DVD in this collection, or is it just me?
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I recently bought FAMILY PLOT separately with new remaster and it seems fine to me.
Ditto... I have the same box set and the grainyness was the first thing i noticed once i put it in. Could be a worse situation, might as well have one of his 'worst' movies make a poor transfer than one of his 'best' ones
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It seems the reports are from the box set edition and not the single disc re-issue. Perhaps the Collector's Set included a bad pressing./
I suspect the grain is in the original negative. It was the style of the times to shoot in lower light levels and put up with the grain resulting from a slightly under-exposed negative to get more realistic-looking lighting.
shareIt occurs to me that I've only ever heard 'DVD people' complain about film grain. 'Film people' tend to have a soft spot for the natural shimmer of chemical emusion and complain about video's lack of it. Having seen most movies on muddy VHS, personally I was thrilled when I switched to DVDs and got to see the grain of the original film and horrified at the thought of DVD publishers digitally removing it.
shareI'm not sure about the dvd, but the movie quality on Encore is awsome. You'd think the movie on dvd would have a better quality picture than on tv.
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The Masterpiece Collection DVD's have their problems. They are fairly good transfers depending how old the film is. Family Plot looked pretty good to me, one of the best in the Collection. But if you look at transfers like "Star Wars", "2001" and "THX 1138", you just wonder why Hitch movies can't get truly outstanding transfers like those did.
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Slow your roll there, hard-charger, and climb off of that high horse you're sitting on. I started this post because the DVD transfer of the film seemed unbelievably grainy. I have no problem watching old movies on film, and I understand that older films can have a grainy quality to them. The quality of this DVD, however, was close to unwatchable at parts. I was simply asking the question to see if I had received a bad DVD, not to get an elitist post from someone who needs to put other people down for asking simple questions.
shareOne should compare pictures from movie and documentary on the same disc. The difference is huge.
shareThe openign seance scene is VERY grainy but it subsides some after
shareIt's definitely worse at the beginning. I've uploaded some full sized screen captures from the recent HDNet broadcast of the film to Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/davepattern/tags/familyplot/
-- "One should compare pictures from movie and documentary on the same disc. The difference is huge." --
That's typical of pretty much every disc in the set. And annoyingly, so. The moment you look at any one of the included documentaries, the picture quality therein is noticeably sharper and often with a different screen ratio.
Granted that most of the transfers are fine, some really good and in most cases more that adaquete, but to see this on the documentaries leaves a lot of questions i.e. if and when Universal get round to re-releasing these films, will the quality be up to par. Or, will we have to wait on Blu-Ray/HD DVD releases -- the latter, I think, being Universal. Still, I don't think I want to shell out on a Hitchcock collection of this size on DVD when the discs I have are fine -- The Birds, Vertigo, Psycho and other faves I'll double-dip for immediately, but the others will do for now.
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