Gladiator (Blu Ray)

Paddo81

Has anyone rented or bought this yet. Its a film Ive always wanted to see in HD but after reading some reviews it looks like a case of just milking the consumer for all they're worth.

Interested to hear from anyone who watched it. Whats your opinion?

krudler

The transfer is meant to be awful, its full of edge enchancement and the software they used to clean up the grain even removed some of the arrows from the opening Germania sequence,see below:





They should have recalled it after this, altohugh now they can release a "Ridley Scott approved transfer" edition in the next year or two, I'll stick with the upscaled dvd for now

Galvasean

Damn, that is very very sloppy.
I'm beginning to hate Blu-ray. It's a minefield.

Sean Quagmire

Watched this last night and yes the transfer is not great. Particularly in the opening war scene in Germania. You can see in one scene where a soldier is standing there and were his sword should be on his hip there is a aluminous green cgi stick?

but the close ups of the faces are very good as expected with stuble and facial marks looknig very sharp.

For transfer i would give it about 6/10. good in some places but could be a hell of a lot better.

Paddo81

Thats really sh!t it has to be said. One of the most anticipated films on Blu Ray and they release garbage like that. I was hoping that the long, loooong wait for Gladiator had something to do with lovingly created the greatest HD experience for a long time - It obviously wasnt. :mad:

Mr. K

Wow, I came close to buying this over the weekend. Glad I didn't, it looks a bit disastrous. Shame really!

humanji

I did buy it. At least I got This Is Spinal Tap on blu-ray too, so that should ease the pain.

Sean Quagmire

Galvasean wrote: »

Damn, that is very very sloppy.
I'm beginning to hate Blu-ray. It's a minefield.

It really is. I was just about to order American Psyco on blu ray but Its got some terrible reviews

callaway92

I pretty much got the Blu Ray version of Gladiator immediately when it was originally released (the 2 disc one) and only watched it for the first time tonight (the extended version).

After reading all over the web about how bad the quality apparently was I was pleasantly surprised to find a near perfect version of it.

The arrowhead picture posted above isn't even noticeable in real-time. Some scenes and pictures look spectacular in it, particularly the one with Maximus picking up the spearhead when meeting Commodus for the first time after escaping the execution attempt. You can see every grain of sand 100% clearly. It's beautiful.

Sound on it is 5/5. Picture quality is near perfect.

On the off-chance that someone considering buying this is reading this thread (it's the first result on search) don't mind the posts badmouthing the quality. It's excellent viewing of course.

callaway92

callaway92 wrote: »

I pretty much got the Blu Ray version of Gladiator immediately when it was originally released (the 2 disc one) and only watched it for the first time tonight (the extended version).

After reading all over the web about how bad the quality apparently was I was pleasantly surprised to find a near perfect version of it.

The arrowhead picture posted above isn't even noticeable in real-time. Some scenes and pictures look spectacular in it, particularly the one with Maximus picking up the spearhead when meeting Commodus for the first time after escaping the execution attempt. You can see every grain of sand 100% clearly. It's beautiful.

Sound on it is 5/5. Picture quality is near perfect.

On the off-chance that someone considering buying this is reading this thread (it's the first result on search) don't mind the posts badmouthing the quality. It's excellent viewing of course.

The original Bluray release of Gladiator was terrible.

The widespread criticism forced the studio to release a remastered version in 2010. The remastered one is reference quality and the original release looks like a DVD in comparison.

callaway92

ahhh, I probably have the remastered one so. Was wondering alright. It didn't make sense the amount of criticism it had received.

Thanks

Well you say you got it immediately upon release...the original crap release came out in 2009 and the remaster came out about a year later. So its possible you have the bad one.

If your box has Pocket Blu logo on the back you have the remastered version:


Otherwise you have the older version (and might want to get your eyes tested :pac: )

There was an exchange program where you sent off the crap version and got the remastered disc for free. That's going back 3 years now, I have no idea if it is still valid.

callaway92

^ Yeah, that's the one I have

Felt like more than 3 years ago that I got it but sure I'm not complaining

Overheal

PIXELS?! ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?

krudler

That old pic is shocking bad, the dvd looked better.