MGM Catalog Issue On Blu-ray
Dear Gary:
In the past, I have railed against sub-par Warner Brothers’ Blu-ray Disc catalog titles older than three to four years. So in the interest in being even-handed in my criticism, I also call MGM catalog titles on the carpet. This is not a critique of when a director chooses softer focus lens for a shot, or the limitations of Super-35 film, or sub-par film elements transferred to video. MGM appears to be three brands at war with itself.
The Good. I salute MGM for doing a great video transfer of The Good, The Bad And The Ugly. This Blu-ray movie has little or no edge enhancement or DNR for a film made in 1966. The MPEG-4 AVC codec ran at a fairly average high bit-rate on this movie. As a result, the film grain looks natural, and at times, the movie exhibits stunning contrast range and color saturation, despite its age. MGM also did a good job restoring/upgrading audio to DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, given the source was a compressed audio-range monaural soundtrack with lots of Automatic Dialogue Replacement (ADR). The movie and special features were wisely placed on a BD-50 disc. I tip my hat to MGM for giving the same loving care to vintage James Bond, Raging Bull, and The Pink Panther movies.
The Bad. The Graduate and The Silence Of The Lambs also use BD-50 discs. But for inexplicable reasons, very little restoration was done and the MPEG-2 video codec was chosen. It’s been repeatedly proven by the MPEG-4 AVC and VC-1 camps that MPEG-2 needs about 40 percent higher average bit-rate to match the contrast and color resolution of its newer codec colleagues. So an MPEG-4 AVC or VC-1 codec can accomplish with 25 Mbps bit-rate that requires about 40 Mbps bit-rate using MPEG-2. Will somebody put that MPEG-2 dog to sleep, please? Given the popularity of these films, one suspects either MGM will re-release these movies as “Fully-restored” Collection Editions on Blu-ray or sell the rights to Criterion for a proper restoration and MPEG-4 AVC codec treatment.
And The Ugly. Terminator, Usual Suspects, Out Of Time, Ronin, and others use MPEG-2 video codec on BD-25 discs with the DVD bundled in. Consequently, they have low-average video bit-rates (20 and below). Though pixel resolution is better, color and contrast resolution are like a DVD encoded at 4.5 Mbps video bit-rate. NET: they don’t look much better than they would appear on HDNet Movies (or is that a clue). In my considered opinion, earned by upgrading my movie library four times, BD-50 should be a requirement for any movie longer than 100 minutes. Otherwise, the movie and special features must be shoehorned onto Blu-ray Disc by:
(a) lowering video bit-rate
(b) lowering audio bit-rate (via
Dolby Digital or DTS)
(c) throwing out special features
(d) some combination of the above
Who made the lousy brand management decision to bundle a DVD of the same movie? Given that people who like those movies already own them, MGM is breaking a cardinal rule of product management by bundling in NO VALUE ADD TO THE CONSUMER. Are they just unloading extra DVDs from inventory? If that’s the case, why not donate them to public libraries for a tax write-off?
If MGM is doing it for profit, then whatever it costs to bundle in the DVD should instead be spent on better restoration (possible at lower costs, given better restoration tools available in 2009), BD-50, and using the MPEG-4 codec on all its Blu-ray Discs. If bad and ugly brand management continues to beat good brand management on catalog titles, MGM will deservedly reap lower sales and a sullied overall Blu-ray brand image.
Thomas Dorsey
editorgary@widescreenreview.com
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