FWWM Bluray UK Release 4th June 2012 - Buyer Beware

[rewak]

It was to do with the forum crash, they lost 7 weeks of stuff including forum posts - http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=8895

Amazon UK have currently stopped selling the boxset due to complaints

[JCR]

Sorry for the double post but this needs to be made clear, DO NOT buy this release! Apart from the fact its 1080i and missing the DTS-HD MA audio, it also has audio glitches through the movie. Little warps like a skipping VHS tape. One such instance right at the end of the movie completely ruining the moment. Anyone unfortunate enough to own it can check at 2:06:40, then send your copy back where you got it and get a refund. And apparently (can't check this cause i don't own it) Lost Highway skips at 1:23:46 to about 1:32, and you can only rewind as far back as 1:25 before it freezes. Universal/Indi Vision seriously fucked up here

Thank you, the annoying noise is present on my FWWM blu as well, this one from the boxset. Shall be getting a refund.

[Brad D]

i really cant even believe Lynch lets his film get distributed with such shoddy audio transfers and downright blasphemous video transfers in regards to the original intent.

guess its all about the $$, who cares if the final product is worth it. i think there is great reason for all FWWM fans to be very angry about the film's treatment on home video - we really should all get refunds!

[rewak]

Lynch wasn't involved in this set, unfortunately, if he was you can bet it wouldn't have gone out in the state it is. Let's just hope any further Blu-Ray releases are supervised by Lynch!

Here's the list of places the audio screws up found so far

• 2 audio glitches between 33:00 and 35:00
• 54:35 pitch speed up
• 1:08:11 audio stutter
• 2:06:42 audio stutter

And here's 2 that may or may not occur (some reports say they do, others don't)

• 43:30 pitch speed up
• 1:46:00 audio stutter

There's also reports from some that their copy of Lost Highway doesn't freeze like others do, so there's been a manufacturing/mastering error somewhere for that disc at least. Still doesn't explain the 1080i/50 or the missing DTS HD-MA 5.1 audio.

[underthefan]

Thank you for all this info, rewak. I was gonna buy this UK edition but, thanks to you, I decided not to. I think I will just wait for the Japanese edition.

[rewak]

Just an update on this, Universal have now finally started sending people replacement discs. They've actually gone slightly beyond that and have been sending people who only bought one movie the full boxset release! It seems the audio skips in FWWM and freezing in Lost Highway have been fixed, and both movies plus Wild At Heart now have both DTS 5.1 MA and LPCM 2.0 audio options. However both FWWM and Lost Highway are still stuck at 1080i/50. So it's still a pretty shoddy release, although i think i'm right in saying it's the cheapest way to get FWWM and maybe Lost Highway (Germany has a release that might be a little cheaper). They are region locked though, and even if you have a region free player if you're in NTSC regions FWWM and Lost Highway will be useless to you being 1080i/50. At least they actually did fix the errors (kinda, if you ignore the 1080i/50) and came through with not only a replacement but compensation to boot, but it's still not the best option for any of these movies. If you want the best possible releases (and why wouldn't you?) then you're best looking at other worldwide releases.

[Gabriel]

FWWM looks fabulous and sounds great now. They've evidently used a European broadcast master, hence the 1080i50, but to be honest, so what? Right now it's a really good set, given its available for as little as £14! I'll replace certain films as better ones come out, but, given the complexity of the rights holding of Lynch's movies it's great to have so many available in one place.

I know people get hung up on stuff like 1080p24, indeed some reactions have bordered on hysterical, but it's a really silly attitude when 15 years ago all we had was a shoddy VHS release. For all its faults, this is now a really nice little set with a ton of extras. While, in time, double dipping may be the order of the day, I'm really happy with what I've got!

[rewak]

The reaction for Twin Peaks and Lost Highway comes from the masters used being 24fps, why Universal altered them is a complete mystery, but the fact is they did so you aren't getting the true film speed or the proper master. All other releases of the movies all use the same master and none of them fiddled with the frame rate, this was something Universal did completely independently. Apart from not being the correct speed putting progressive video into interlaced is something that can only degrade the quality, here's some comparisons between progressive (1080p/24) and interlaced (1080i/50) sources




Again, Universal chose to do this, the masters they bought were 1080p/24, they then chose to alter only those two movies. They also say on the back cover the movies are 1080p. No one knows why, and that's the reason people complained. That and the audio skips in TP and freezing disc for LH originally.

[Gabriel]

The reaction for Twin Peaks and Lost Highway comes from the masters used being 24fps, why Universal altered them is a complete mystery, but the fact is they did so you aren't getting the true film speed or the proper master.

It will be a proper master, albeit a broadcast master.

All other releases of the movies all use the same master and none of them fiddled with the frame rate, this was something Universal did completely independently.

You don't just change the frame rate, duration and interlacing willy-nilly. Most likely, a 1080p24 master was requested, but a European broadcast master was sent by mistake. It should have been spotted, but it's not quite the world-ending disaster some people make it out to be. Certainly, what you see on the Blu-ray is what you'd see if you decided to watch an HDTV broadcast, only the Blu-ray has a much better bitrate. In fact, when I checked, the Blu-ray was averaging well over 30mbps.

Apart from not being the correct speed putting progressive video into interlaced is something that can only degrade the quality, here's some comparisons between progressive (1080p/24) and interlaced (1080i/50) sources

Ok, this is where I have to step in with a bit of on-the job knowledge (please don't take this as anything patronising because I'd hate to think that, but equally I don't want to seem like I'm shooting my mouth off wildly!) I'm a video editor, so I deal with different formats every day (in fact, I edited the UK Horror channel's Twin Peaks launch trailer a couple of years back, bizarrely enough!)

A 1080p transfer on your average home TV set up is virtually indistinguishable from 1080i. Really, seriously. Put it on your average 32-40 inch TV, it's usually impossible to tell unless it's a really shoddy encode (which FWWM version 2 definitely isn't) or you're looking too hard at the info display that flashes on at the top of the screen when the disc starts up!



Now, these kind of screen grabs are thrown all over the web by increasingly hysterical types to show the perceived poor quality of a transfer. The fact is, a lot of these artefacts are invisible to 99.9 per cent of viewers, because they're watching a moving picture. But while a progressive image is created in one pass, an interlaced one is created in two, which is generally imperceptible to the human eye, but will show up in freeze frame. Don't get me wrong, progressive is better for film, but an interlaced transfer isn't always the catastrophe some people make out. Indeed, many people own 'HD Ready' TVs which only pump out 1080i or 720p anyway. HD Ready sets (as opposed to HD Ready 1080p ones) will give you a 1080i60 image from a 24p disc, which the deinterlacer in the TV will then handle.



The (what appear to be) heavily zoomed images above show really bad 'combing.' A normal, half decent TV has a proper deinterlacer as part of its design, so the above simply shouldn't happen. I see this sort of thing on progressive broadcast monitors in edit suites that are dealing with interlaced material. But if a home system is putting out an image like this, either the settings are wrong on the TV or Blu-ray player or you have a duff disc. Again, though, what sort of average person studies freeze frames when they're supposed to be watching a film?!

Again, Universal chose to do this, the masters they bought were 1080p/24, they then chose to alter only those two movies. They also say on the back cover the movies are 1080p. No one knows why, and that's the reason people complained. That and the audio skips in TP and freezing disc for LH originally.

As I said above, they licenced someone else's copy, rather than did their own telecine transfer from negatives or interpositives. While they ordered a 1080p24, they were most probably supplied with 1080i50 broadcast master (I wouldn't be surprised if it was a 1080i50 HDCam tape) in error and didn't notice, which is bad. Or course they might have stuck it in a deck set to 1080i50 by mistake . . . And I notice the speed up and pitch difference because it's something my job has made me aware of.

But I still say that it's a very good quality vanilla disc with a high bitrate and I wouldn't have any qualms at all about recommending it to anyone who wants to leave their DVD behind! Indeed, I'd recommend that, at this stage, the news story about the set get a thorough update or a new story be posted and that the title of this thread be changed to simply 'FWWM Bluray UK Release 4th June 2012.'

[sonicstomp]

Got my replacement for TPFWWM - in the form of the complete box set. Very happy to see the DTS HD MA version of the film...looks like Lost Highway got the treatment too. I also have the dutch copy of the Lost Highway blu ray - this claims to be 1080p so I am guessing this is a superior version to the 1080/50 on the Universal transfer?

[rewak]

It's the superior encode yeah, they both use the same source for transfer but the Dutch one keeps it at its native frame rate so whether you notice the effect that has or not it's still considered superior.

[sonicstomp]

It's the superior encode yeah, they both use the same source for transfer but the Dutch one keeps it at its native frame rate so whether you notice the effect that has or not it's still considered superior.

Thanks

[Mastershake]

Sorry if in the wrong thread - is it true that the deleted scenes were never released because of Lynch? Someone here I think, posted that he said that he has to renew them in person and demanded a lot of $$$ for this.


Sorry for my english...

[rewak]

It's a long story, and no ones 100% sure i think, but the gist of it is MK2, the French owners of the film, proposed doing a special edition release of the movie with deleted scenes and a documentary and got pretty far into the process of the thing before the company went on the brink of becoming broke so they opted to forget the whole thing and release a bare bones edition of the movie. Since then no one knows whats going on, whether MK2 own the rights to the deleted scenes and just aren't sharing or whether the rights are in limbo.

By the way if anyones interested in a comparison between the 1080p and 1080i versions of the movie there's some here - http://www.caps-a-holic.com/hd_vergleic ... p?cID=1430 Basically it looks like Universal re-did the movie in 1080i to brighten it up a tiny amount

[Montana]

I'll be boycotting any new FWWM release that doesn't have the deleted scenes. I think that the only way we can get the various rights parties to understand that we would like 1) a good transfer, 2) extras and 3) deleted scenes is stop allowing them to milk us with reissues and boxed sets by refusing to buy any more DVDs of FWWM. That way a) there would be no incentive for the studios to issue substandard material and b) give them a real incentive to provide the the 3 things listed above.