new laurel and hardy blu-rays: secret subtitling, bad menus that are the opposite of "play-all"
weary flake <[email protected]> Tue, 28 Jul 2020 15:25:11 -0700
| Newsgroups | rec.arts.movies.past-films,alt.comedy.laurel-hardy,rec.arts.tv |
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| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
There's a new four disc Blu-ray (or DVD) collection of Laurel and Hardy: https://www.amazon.com/Laurel-Hardy-Definitive-Restorations-Blu-ray/dp/B084P3S7NJ/ with 2 features: Sons of the Desert Way Out West and 17 shorts: Berth Marks The Battle of the Century Brats Busy Bodies The Chimp Come Clean County Hospital Helpmates Hog Wild Me and My Pal Midnight Patrol The Music Box One Good Turn Scram! Their First Mistake Towed in a Hole Twice Two The Battle of the Century is a silent short and is something new as it is near complete, when it used to be missing a third or so of the end. The other shorts are all sound. Also new is the thorough subtitling of the discs, all programs, interviews and trailers have optional subtitles. Network's blu-ray of Flying Deuces, and Fox DVD sets that have The Big Noise and A Haunting We Will Go DVDs have subtitles, but the shorts on other DVDs and VHS tend not to have subtitling or captioning. But it was a bad move to keep the subtitling secret, as it isn't mentioned on the packaging and the information from the distributers didn't mention subtitles: were the producers/distributers aiming to reduce sales by making it appear as if it was just another Laurel And Hardy set without optional subtitling? The packaging is ideal for what it is, no overlapping discs, easily replaceable conventional size four disc Blu-ray case if it becomes broken, and without trash packaging like using cardboard, steel or binding it into a book. If I turn off the blu-ray player during a program it'll remember where I am when I turn the player on again, unlike some other blu-rays. The programs have extraneous pre-titles on some and pointless post-credits on all shorts and features. This information could have been in a slim booklet which would fit in the case but they failed to include a booklet, and so instead intrude on Laurel & Hardy. The Hog Wild (1930) short is in a full 1.33 ratio, that was only available in the sound-on-disc prints of the film while the conventional printed-on-film sound format only came in the 1.20 ratio. I guess they took the sound from the 1.20 version and combined it with the film from the 1.33 version to make it best. Terribly intrusive menus that are the opposite of a "play-all" feature on this new Blu-ray set. Every program, including interviews and picture compilations are buried in sub-menus that then always exit to the Main Menu, with no way of selecting the next program or playing it through. For instance, there may be 15 short audio interviews and each one exits from the sub-menu into the main menu at the end and then you need to clickity click to the next selection which you need to remember in advance. There were many justified complaints about some DVDs 20 years ago about menus that didn't have a Play-All feature and how each episode of a show would exit and would forget where you were and where the next episode was. Well, this new 4 disc Blu-ray set is worse than those, as it seems to have been designed to be as intrusive as possible, making it the opposite of having a "play-all" feature. There is noise reduction on the picture and mild noise reduction on the soundtrack, throughout. I've heard much worse elsewhere but it's there. The picture has been stabilized in this new set unlike older sets. A butchery of the Hog Wild short is on the Laurel & Hardy: The Essential Collection DVD set from 2011, where the RHI label took the 1.20 version and stretched it 1.33, for a flaming visual defect, among a more complete collection that crams too much, using compression, onto 10 DVDs: https://www.amazon.com/Laurel-Hardy-Essential-Collection-Stan/dp/B005BYBZKY/