“Blade Runner” Rating
Dear Gary, I’m a new subscriber to Widescreen Review and love it. I’ve found it very informative. I’m writing because I’m confused by the P5 rating for Blade Runner in Issue 27. Like the reviewer, I found excessive chroma delay when viewing the widescreen version via the component output. I’ve been forced to use the S-video output where there is no chroma problem. I noticed the problem right away on the red credits. Did anyone check out the pan-and-scan side? That side has no chroma problem. What gives? Is this going to be reissued? Something obviously got messed up. That’s why I don’t understand the P5 rating. It’s a shame that I can’t use the component outputs for this title which would really benefit from it. I have other titles that are stunning via the component outputs.
Ken Riebold
Film Review Editor Suzanne Hodges Comments:
I reviewed the Blade Runner anamorphic widescreen DVD, and I did notice the problems you mentioned. Though we noted chroma delay in our September/ October 1997 Issue 25 (the first issue in which we reviewed DVDs) review of Blade Runner, by today’s standards, we would have stressed its distraction and rated the disc differently. Here is why. When we first began reviewing DVDs and had the LaserDisc counterparts in our library, we almost always gave the DVD a higher score than the LaserDisc (with only one exception that I can recall at this time: The Crow) based on the higher resolution that even non-anamorphic DVDs (though sometimes slight) have over LaserDiscs. The P5 score for the DVD was based on the LaserDisc being a P4.5 (though that score dates back to 1993, when it was reviewed in Issue 4). Detail is dramatically improved over the LaserDisc. If we had no LaserDisc to compare to the DVD, viewed alone, it may have brought in a P3 or P3.5 at best. It wasn’t long before we realized that DVD was not going to disappear and that we had to set some standards. We have since updated our rating scales and, as often as possible, will inform our readers whether “by today’s standards” the LaserDisc does not stand up to the score it may have been given five, six or seven years ago. And though the DVD still betters the LD, it is given a lower score as such. I have heard there may be a Special Edition DVD release of Blade Runner later this year; but if this is true, a special edition in no way indicates whether or not a new transfer will be done. One possible reason that the “problem” you describe does not appear on the pan-and-scan side is that the pan-and-scan image is “bigger” in the vertical plane, thereby using a greater amount of image resolution. It is utilizing every available line of resolution since it occupies the full height of the video frame. So technically, the DVD pan-and-scan version of Blade Runner is “sharper” than the anamorphic widescreen version—but since only half of the movie’s image is displayed, so what?
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