poor quality Blu-ray transfer of Thunderball

JWPepper

I saw Thunderball last week for the first time on blu-ray. I thought the video quality was not that good. It seems that Lowry's restoration version of the film hasn't been used. The following forumpost (on the rival Bondforum) has some screengrabs where you clearly see the differences between the excellent UE dvd and the Blu-ray with lots of hairs, scratches and other dirt. Anyone else noticed it?

http://www.ajb007.co.uk/topic/35471/poor-quality-blu-ray-transfer-of-thunderball/

BTW, It's the first time I noticed Felix Leiter was watching Bond and Domino by the poolscene. Just before the dialogue: "what sharp little eyes you've got. - Wait 'til you get to my teeth"

Ed83

For me, the bluray is a drastic improvement over the DVD versions. I have watched all the films on bluray many many times and I do understand what you are referring to in a way. I think some of these issues are due to the quality of the film itself. It's almost if some scenes are filmed on lower quality material or something. Almost every older Bond film suffers from this in a small amount of scenes, but for me it is still worth upgrading to Bluray.

JWPepper

Ed83 wrote: »

For me, the bluray is a drastic improvement over the DVD versions. I have watched all the films on bluray many many times and I do understand what you are referring to in a way. I think some of these issues are due to the quality of the film itself. It's almost if some scenes are filmed on lower quality material or something. Almost every older Bond film suffers from this in a small amount of scenes, but for me it is still worth upgrading to Bluray.

True, Blu-ray is a huge improvement over the dvd's especially the early films. They look great except for Thunderball.
I don't think the quality is bad, but I could have been much better! and I don't think it has anything to do with the printquality.

Take a look a this screenshot from the blu-ray :
http://postimg.org/image/2rozev138/
(dirt on the rightside of the frame.)

And that compare it to Lowry's restauration on the UE dvd:
http://postimg.org/image/2rp4dh2kk/
There is no dirt! They managed to remove the dirt. Also the color is more realistic, where the blu-ray is a bit too colorful.
The sharpness of the image on the blu-ray is 10 times better.

ThighsOfXenia

I thought Thunderball's blu-ray quality was excellent, particularly the crispness and clarity of the underwater sequences. For a film in 1965 it doesn't get much (any) better than that.

The early Bond films (1-4 particularly) have some of the best transfers I've ever seen considering how old they are. No complaints rom me.

boldfinger

I watched the TB blu ray only two times so far, and I must have been so overwhelmed by the picture quality that I didn´t notice any dirt, or at least I can´t remember being bothered.

From what I saw of the UE (not sure if TB was among it), I didn´t like that it looked much bleaker than the SE. The blu ray on the other hand is pure delight.

Oh, by the way, shouldn´t we be posting this stuff in the James-Bond-on-Blu-Ray thread?

zb007

I am confused by this as most of the films look fantastic on blu-ray and screen caps on other sites prove it

for example

http://www.caps-a-holic.com/hd_vergleiche/multi_comparison.php?disc1=621&disc2=827&cap1=6325&cap2=8132&art=full&image=6&hd_multiID=977&action=1&lossless=#vergleich

move your mouse over the screen to see the difference between blu-ray and dvd

fire_and_ice

Got the Bond50 Bluray box set, thought Thunderball looked stunning at times for a film of that age.

001

The vulcan scenes looked average besides that the film looks great.

boldfinger

001 wrote: »

The vulcan scenes looked average besides that the film looks great.

Not on my my blu ray.