CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

**kal**

One day only: $46 for all 4 Die-hard movies on Blu-ray at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000W4HIY0?ie=UTF8&tag=curtpalmecrtp-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000W4HIY0

Kal

Tom.W · Joined: 09 Mar 2006 Posts: 6635

Damn Kal you just cost me another $46.... Wink

wallace123456 · Joined: 14 Aug 2006 Posts: 2236 Location: Northwest VA area

greg_mitch · Joined: 03 May 2006 Posts: 5320

Great deal but bad movies. Sad

I can tolerate the first one.

Do you get these deals through an email list Kal? Or do you just surf Amazon all day? Razz

VideoGrabber · Joined: 09 Apr 2006 Posts: 933 Location: Michigan

I'm tempted to grab these but a couple things folks should know:

a) they're not the 4 individually cased Blu-ray units that you normally get in a set. It's just the 4 bare discs in a single multi-case.

b) I'm reading some really bad reviews at Amazon of the BR PQ on the first couple discs. Some claiming they're "upscaled DVD quality", and "very disappointing". Can anyone who's seen these comment on that? Thanks!

**kal** · Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 5:06 am Post subject:

VideoGrabber · Joined: 09 Apr 2006 Posts: 933 Location: Michigan

OK. Here's what Dan Hirshleifer, the HD Editor for DVDTalk had to say about the PQ on the first two Blu-ray discs in his review:

"Die Hard: I was surprised by how much better Die Hard looked in HD than it did on DVD. Aside from the obvious difference in compression artifacts, many of the shots on the Blu-ray have increased clarity and detail. Jan de Bont's stylish lighting, with plenty of lens flares, is well reproduced. The close-up of John in the air duct with his lighter on is a night and day difference. On the other hand, Die Hard is a naturally soft film, shot with anamorphic lenses and a shallow depth of field. It doesn't escape the curse of the late 80's film stock, with colors that look well worn. If you're looking for the best reproduction of the film on home video to date, this is it. If you're looking for demo material, you'll need to keep on moving. 3 Stars.

Die Hard 2: As I mentioned above, Die Hard 2 does not have the visual sophistication of its predecessor. Renny Harlin went for a much flatter look, sometimes going so far as to bathe a scene in a red or blue light. As you can imagine, this results in an image that is generally devoid of fine detail. But even beyond the inferior cinematography of the film, I feel like Fox didn't put as much effort into this film's transfer. Much of it looks blotchy and I was able to detect artifacts in various scenes. The close-ups don't reveal as much detail as they did in the first film, and even a medium two shot looks shockingly soft, to the point of feeling almost out of focus. 2.5 Stars."

It sounds like dh2 is not only the worst of the batch, but basically of DVD quality. But dh1 isn't as bad as some have painted it. The set still managed to get a "Highly Recommended" rating, and the overall Amazon rating was 4 of 5 stars.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a fresh Collector's Edition released sometime in the next year, with dh1 and dh2 remastered, and dh4 in an UR release (vs. the PG-13 standard version). And possibly some of the Supplementary materials in HD, vs. 480p for everything (same as the DVD sets).

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 8:11 am Post subject:

But, acording to the review above, if it was shot with the intentional soft focus look how much better could they make it look? I hope they don't introduce grain filtering and EE to try and make it look 'sharper' that it was the day it was shot.

VideoGrabber · Joined: 09 Apr 2006 Posts: 933 Location: Michigan

I agree with those sentiments, however "Much of it looks blotchy and I was able to detect artifacts in various scenes." Combined with, "I feel like Fox didn't put as much effort into this film's transfer", I'd think that they could still improve dh2 quite a bit, and that's the worst of the bunch. dh1 may not have as much room for improvement, but I suspect they could improve things a bit there. Also, with dh4 being the only PG-13 of the bunch, many thought it lacked the "flavor" of the rest of the series. So an "Ultimate" release that addressed these issues wouldn't be surprising.

In spite of the above, I ordered the set anyway. None of the above may transpire, and they're the best we currently have. Also, none of the discs is cheap in their single film BD format, even at sale pricing, so you're basically getting all 4 for the price of 2 discounted.