Miami Vice TV series on Blu-ray

[SwissTubbs]

Dear Friends,

I can present you my own pictures from the Boxset to show you some closer look:

 

 

Artcards:

Booklet:

Episodeguide in the Booklet:

 

Im in love with that Box!
It looks fantastic and is a work of art!
I love the colors so much. So fitting
 

Really epic Boxset. The definitive Blu Ray Set in my opinion!!

Additional Technical Infos:

THEY FIXED THE ERROR IN SONS AND LOVERS!!!!
Zitos line is back! In 5.1 Sound and 2.0 Sound.
First HD Version worldwide on Disc with the Full Audio back in place.

Mentioned earlier in the Thread they fixed also the Picture stuttering in El Viejo!

Othe technical stuff you already know about

 

Edited October 3, 2020 by SwissTubbs

[Dadrian]

@SwissTubbs Dear Friend, thanks

It shall be mine! 

[SwissTubbs]

vor 3 Minuten schrieb Dadrian:

@SwissTubbs Dear Friend, thanks

It shall be mine! 

I cant believe what they delivered here.
EPIC!
Finally the Blu Ray Collection all Fans waited for and not some half assed attempt like the Mill Creek (loveless) oder Faboulus Films UK (Black Crush, only 5.1 Audio, for what they did its not worth the higher price). And also the Elephant Films has some Errors still present although they knew in time about it. And to be honest: I dont like the artwork for the French Set at ALL.

On this German set you get:

- Better Picture (see comparisons in this thread)
- Fixed Audio
- Fixed Video
- English Subtitles
- Stunning Artwork

Its a labor of love. They DID care and it shows.

The best those older HD Scans from Universal look.
Things would only get better from now on if Universal would rescan the whole show. But i doubt that will happen. And i guess when it would happen its not for Discs anymore. For Streaming and Digital.
MV was pre Digital. I want that sucker physical

 

[James]

Woow this looks really nice! I'm jealous and kind of want one but I already have my Fabulous Films release lol. Love how you get more with it, like those little booklets. A box set done right!

Koch is impressive. Definitely not a let down. Very hard to compete. It's a big release. Sorry.

[Scot from S.C.]

Wow, you guys are lucky! I wish this company would release an English version of this box set, complete with English booklets, etc. Has this company ever done so in the past? I know that they would sell quite a few here in the states.

[summer84]

It would have been nice, if the booklet had also been translated to English. But I'll try and use some Google translate. Maybe it's possible to scan the booklet into the computer and then copy paste the text into Google translate. 

[bodie]

You gotta remember this is a product for the German market - they've had bad quality copies with cuts before this on DVD. That's why they've gone to this effort, because a German speaking market still doesn't have a version.

Before the internet, nobody would have any idea what versions were in what territory, let alone able to compare differences. You just bought what was in your territory and that was it.

Now we have the choice, and of course there are all these good reasons for importing, but it's still a German release first and foremost. And Universal need that, which is why there is region coding, so that they get to sell the series to each individual territory over again - more $$$

If Koch put something out completely ideal for US buyers, that would hardly be in the spirit of what they are for as a German label and Mill Creek would likely see it as a tank on their lawn

[Scot from S.C.]

I say let the tanks roll. I really like what I am seeing from Germany. You would think the country that gave us the series would have something as nice available to us. 

[bodie]

9 hours ago, Scot from S.C. said:

I say let the tanks roll. I really like what I am seeing from Germany. You would think the country that gave us the series would have something as nice available to us. 

As a fan, of course I agree. But these are just products at the end of the day - they're just there to make money. Mill Creek, in fairness to them, budget label or not, got to market before anyone else. And frankly, their product was four years ago, it's more than paid for itself in that time.

The UK version from Fabulous was more expensive and didn't actually have anything over the US one to justify that.

Then two years later, the French; higher quality, higher price.

And now two years after that, the German; even better and even more expensive.

You pays your money and you takes yer choice, as the saying goes

[Tom]

vor 42 Minuten schrieb bodie:

As a fan, of course I agree. But these are just products at the end of the day - they're just there to make money. Mill Creek, in fairness to them, budget label or not, got to market before anyone else. And frankly, their product was four years ago, it's more than paid for itself in that time.

The UK version from Fabulous was more expensive and didn't actually have anything over the US one to justify that.

Then two years later, the French; higher quality, higher price.

And now two years after that, the German; even better and even more expensive.

You pays your money and you takes yer choice, as the saying goes

I agree. But one thing to add here that makes a difference with the new set. An international fan can benefit from the German release as well - it´s in English uncut with English subtitles (for the first time ever!) - if you can manage to overcome the shipping restriction to Europe - you get a great box and you probably can live with a booklet in German as the rest is universally useable. For a German speaking fan, the prior boxes were not that attractive. 

And, from a price/performance perspective the prior boxes were between quick buck (Mills Creek) and rip-off (French box, as the higher quality is hardly visible but the higher price is and the art-work is sick). The German release looks pretty expensive, but given the effort they have put into it to get to that result and the sales volumes they can expect in a 100m people market as opposed to US/UK, it is a fair price.

Edited October 4, 2020 by Tom

[bodie]

I'm with you on the first bit and have said as much.

On the second bit, don't forget the French is higher quality picture and audio over the US and UK - The French was the only set to have the original stereo mixes in lossless and both it and the remix are 24bit on there. The German is 16bit for both.

And the prices of both the French and German are high primarily due to their respective local language options, they are the same in that regard, just Koch want $30 more than the FR was on release ($10 shy of Mill Creek's whole current price).

As an importer, if I were using the term rip-off, it would not be the French product I'd be pointing at. The UK that was worse than the US, was $124 on release. The French was $176 and better than both UK and US. The German won't ship to the US, so you're going to be getting on for like $300 to land the German one in the US... great though it is, is it great to the tune of that much more, for refinements on the same masters that can be had for $40?

As I said earlier, that's a subjective choice for each of us, but there is no question that objectively theirs is a great release

[James]

18 hours ago, summer84 said:

It would have been nice, if the booklet had also been translated to English. But I'll try and use some Google translate. Maybe it's possible to scan the booklet into the computer and then copy paste the text into Google translate. 

You can get the Google Translate app and translate with your phones camera. 

[Tom]

I wrote that the French set is a bit better than the prior ones but it is hardly noticeable. I don’t think the visual differences are seen by most people let alone the 24 bit audio feature that nobody will be able to distinguish from 16. thus both is for me no argument to justify a much higher price.

[SwissTubbs]

bodie my friend you are way to nice to the French set in my opinion

I dont think it matters AT ALL if the Audio is encoded in 24bit or 16bit. Thats all theoretical and nobody would EVER hear a difference. Its just impossible.

And the so called higher Quality Picture of the French Box set in comparison with the mill creek is just not really there. It has a lot of encoding problems like the mill creek just sometimes in different areas. The difference is negligible. Its all not important if you watch in motion. The differences are just too small.
And it has the SAME Color Problems with the same gamma shift.
Because you did some Shots of the Elephant for our comparison with the german one here is a comparison with the Mill Creek of Calderones Return Part 1 with your screenshots:
https://slow.pics/c/Ho14RByH

Nothing there you could tell the two apart in motion. Differences in encoding you can point out in stills but not in motion.
Im sure like you presented back then theres shots in which the mill creeks looks more bad than the elephant. But thats vice versa.
On the Second screenshot the artifacting going on behind Tubbs is even a bit worse on the Elephant Films.
They both dont have the best Encoding and you could play the faults out against each other easily.

I agree with you that Elephant put at least more Effort in the Boxset in comparison with Mill Creek and the UK one. The French People at Elephant created Extras and as far as i know did a lot for their French Dub.
But in terms of picture quality they clearly cant shine sadly.

And the other story is the english audio. I think it was you that wrote back then that Elephant knew in time about the Missing Line of Zito. But they still didnt fix that. Correct me if im wrong and it was another Member. But they knew about it and didnt fixed that.
The guys that did the work for the Koch Blu Ray learned about this issue from me on August 22. I checked my emails. The disc files of the Disc with that episode is from August 27 like a lot of the other discs cause deadline was end of august.
So they fixed it last minute and Elephant Films who knew about the issue sooner did nothing.

So im with tom here: The pricing for the elephant is not justified in my opinion.
They were the best set around before the German one yes. But they could have done much better considering the price tag.
 

So we have to agree to disagree here which is just fine.

 

Edited October 4, 2020 by SwissTubbs

[bodie]

The German price tag is mainly due to German audio. The French price tag is mainly due to French audio.

If we are going to praise the German for improvements, it's only scientific accuracy to have done the same all this time for the previous best, the French.

It doesn't stop being what it is because something else comes along.

If we're discounting audio spec, then we're not talking about anything other than subjective opinion - each are entitled to those as I've said all along.

But I'm not being kind or unkind to anything or anyone, I'm just looking objectively at the specs between these products... it's not a personal issue

[SwissTubbs]

vor 57 Minuten schrieb bodie:

If we are going to praise the German for improvements, it's only scientific accuracy to have done the same all this time for the previous best, the French.

Only exception is i NEVER praised the French Release.
I hate the artwork. Its really ugly (which is of course only personal taste) and i could not understand that they didnt correct the issues that were presented to them.

I just searched the thread bodie and you mentioned this back then:

Zitat

Thanks, the stuttering and Zito's missing line they were told about many months ago - they had every opportunity, but clearly it didn't get through to the right people, or it wasn't possible.

So Elephant CLEARLY did know about the issues and did nothing.
I dont see why i should praise such a release. If nobody would have told them thats another story.
For example i just saw here in this thread that there are Audio Drop Outs on "The Great Mccarthy". Thats something i never mailed to the german label because i missed the information. Do you have timecodes for those Drop Outs so that i can check if they are there on the german set?

As for the elephant:

Zitat

It doesn't stop being what it is because something else comes along.

No it doesnt.

But we have different opinions on the elephant set. I think thats the main issue in how we write about this. And thats ok. Would be a boring world if everybody would think the same.

 

Zitat

 

If we're discounting audio spec, then we're not talking about anything other than subjective opinion - each are entitled to those as I've said all along.

Thats true!

Zitat

But I'm not being kind or unkind to anything or anyone, I'm just looking objectively at the specs between these products... it's not a personal issue

Oh i dont have a personal issue too. I dont know anybody at the other Labels. I just compare them. And by doing that its clear for me that the Elephant Boxset so far did the most for the show but they didnt exactly enhance the important things sadly. And that they didnt correct errors of which they knew about in time is a shame in my opinion.

 

Edited October 4, 2020 by SwissTubbs

[summer84]

4 hours ago, James said:

You can get the Google Translate app and translate with your phones camera. 

Oh cool! I didn't know that! I'll try it out. Thank you James!

And I'm happy to see you on the site again!

Edited October 4, 2020 by summer84

[Tom]

„If we're discounting audio spec, then we're not talking about anything other than subjective opinion - each are entitled to those as I've said all along.“

Sorry but that is a manipulative approach bodie.

Using specs just for sake of specs is misleading for potential buyers. You insinuate that one can hear that difference and that one can achieve a better quality with it. Both is not the case.

16 bit Audio is stereo quality. The Original MV analog Master is „only“ Normal Stereo too - was unique in 1984! So encoding with 32 bit will NOT deliver more quality as nobody can hear it and the Original does not support it, but it will waste lots of additional storage and Bitrate that could have been better invested in a better video encoding. (in contrast to audio, the analog 35mm Video Master of Universal would support 4K encoding)

Specs comparison only makes sense for reasonable and distinguishable technical features. Otherwise it’s just „specs jerking“ for technicians but useless for consumers or potential buyers.

 

Edited October 4, 2020 by Tom

[bodie]

I'm not going to argue with anyone. These are just commercial products. It doesn't matter like that to me.

But if these things matter from Koch, then they also matter from anyone else - otherwise that's unscientific.

[Tom]

It’s not a science project. It’s supposed to be a comparison for normal consumers. And no one can hear the 32-16 bit difference after encoding from 16 bit source material. The Visual difference is obvious. With or without „scientific approach“. That’s what matters.

[bodie]

2 minutes ago, Tom said:

It’s not a science project. It’s supposed to be a comparison for normal consumers. And no one can hear the 32-16 bit difference after encoding from 16 bit source material. The Visual difference is obvious. With or without „scientific approach“. That’s what matters.

No, clearly having a fight over a product is what matters to you. But it doesn't matter like that to me.

[Tom]

Not fight but stick to reasonable arguments and specs instead of specs crunching for specs sake. And the latter is what you do and that will just confuse potential buyers without giving them any perceiveable viewing or listening edge.

And you are still short to explain how to encode and hear 32bit audio quality from a 16 bit audio master.
 

PS. MV used 2/3 of popular music from records not CDs as most albums were not even available on CD back then. 

 

[bodie]

8 minutes ago, Tom said:

Not fight but stick to reasonable arguments and specs instead of specs crunching for specs sake. And the latter is what you do and that will just confuse potential buyers without giving them any perceiveable viewing or listening edge.

And you are still short to explain how to encode and hear 32bit audio quality from a 16 bit audio master.
 

PS. MV used 2/3 of popular music from records not CDs as most albums were not even available on CD back then. 

 

Who are you to discount scientific fact on the basis that, to you, subjectively, it's irrelevant? There's passion and enthusiasm, but come on, you're kicking me around here when there is really no call for that kind of tone.

[Tom]

vor einer Stunde schrieb bodie:

Who are you to discount scientific fact on the basis that, to you, subjectively, it's irrelevant? There's passion and enthusiasm, but come on, you're kicking me around here when there is really no call for that kind of tone.

Who are you to talk about science given the misleading specs argumentation you use?

I used a lot of arguments including the more than 16bit is not distinguishable and not supported by the source. 16 vs 24 bit is objectively irrelevant for both reasons. 

 You did not give any coubterargument at all (there is none of course) but try to mouth at me instead. 

You behave like a majesty who can’t stand criticism. 
 

Edited October 4, 2020 by Tom

[bodie]

See these personal comments are where you have come unstuck here. If you'd played the ball, not the man, I'd still be dicussing it with you as ever I was with everyone else. But you've got your teeth out and that doesn't work with me - you'll get no slanging match here.