Miami Vice TV series on Blu-ray

[Tom]

vor 6 Minuten schrieb 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.

Everybody who reads this thread can see who started to get personal (Who are you, etc..). But you can try to mislead here as well of course...

I‘m done with it and with you. And just for the record: not one single counterargument from you so far on my arguments.

[bodie]

Well I hope you're having a good Sunday, all the best to you.

[summer84]

On 10/4/2020 at 2:46 PM, SwissTubbs said:

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?

After Tubbs and Louis talk and Tubbs goes on board Crockett's boat. That whole dialogue/audio is out of sync with the picture. You hear the sound first and then their lips moving. At 8:54

Edited October 10, 2020 by summer84

[SwissTubbs]

Am 10.10.2020 um 18:47 schrieb summer84:

After Tubbs and Louis talk and Tubbs goes on board Crockett's boat. That whole dialogue/audio is out of sync with the picture. You hear the sound first and then their lips moving. At 8:54

Thats not a drop out. Thats just bad ADR and was always there. Its also on my old German DVD (on the english audio track of course) and also on the US Universal DVD Set. And of course its on every Blu Ray version including the new german one. But thats not a fault. It was always there because of the bad ADR job they did back then.

In the Scene before there was a real dropout which was later (badly) corrected on the mill creek blu Ray:

Timecode 7:29
Rico says "I have many wants and even more needs". The Words "I have many wants" are sounding different on the Mill Creek Blu Ray and the whole part drops in volume a little. Seems like a fix for me they did later.
Im not that familiar with the exchange history of the mill creek set. My Set has the exchanged Discs only for Season 1.

The same part on the german Blu Ray is sounding flawless without those sound differences.

But you can listen to it.
I did an audio Comparison in which you can hear the difference.
Its not about general quality of course but for this specific problem.

Mill Creek:
https://voca.ro/1gQB1WM0LJ01

German Koch:
https://voca.ro/1ctCPUgOTt0U
 

Notice the difference on the "I have many wants" sentence.

[summer84]

Thanks for the info! Good to know.

I did check the Tubbs and McCarthy scene yesterday, but didn't mention it in my post since the audio was flawless.

Edited October 11, 2020 by summer84

[summer84]

It's really good to see with Koch Films color correction, it shows Gina's original color of her dress in pink in the picture, compared to the DVDs.

I don't know, how it is with the other Blu-ray versions.

 

[bodie]

29 minutes ago, summer84 said:

It's really good to see with Koch Films color correction, it shows Gina's original color of her dress in pink in the picture, compared to the DVDs.

I don't know, how it is with the other Blu-ray versions.

Yeah we saw that with the first episode too, the HD masters making pink what on DVD was orange;

On 7/8/2016 at 3:48 AM, bodie said:

 

 

 

[bodie]

right click and 'view image' to get round that horrible photobucket watermark they slap on everything since they went premium

[bigsexybear]

Oh wow! I need this set! How does Trini look as the hitman with the new remaster? I am excited for this new release. The vibrancy of the colors is yummy! I can only imagine my favorite scenes in brilliant spectrum of friendly colors.

Edited October 11, 2020 by bigsexybear

[bodie]

22 minutes ago, bigsexybear said:

Oh wow! I need this set! How does Trini look as the hitman with the new remaster? I am excited for this new release. The vibrancy of the colors is yummy! I can only imagine my favorite scenes in brilliant spectrum of friendly colors.

Just for your reference, these most recent colour issues are common to all releases of the new masters. So that includes;

The Mill Creek remastered DVDs

The Mill Creek Blu-rays

The Fabulous Blu-rays

The Elephant Blu-rays

The Koch Blu-rays

Colour issues unique to the latter are here

 

[bigsexybear]

So the Kock blu-rays aren't more vivid? Sigh. I want to see the true vivid goodness.

[bodie]

14 minutes ago, bigsexybear said:

So the Kock blu-rays aren't more vivid? Sigh. I want to see the true vivid goodness.

They are, as per my final link in the post. But my point is what was being shown specifically above; the bikini and Gina's dress is common to all the releases I listed

[fakespyder]

About a week ago I was able to buy the Elephant version Blu-rays for a reasonable (2nd hand) price. They are coming from overseas so I have a few weeks to wait, but I'm pretty excited. The box artwork sucks, especially compared to the lovely Koch release.

In the end though, all I care about is the show and having a decent quality version. Skimming through this thread I get the sense that this Elephant version is reasonable, but with some errors. 

I was wondering if there is an up-to-date list or chart of all the Blu ray versions and their respective positives and negatives?

thanks

Edited October 13, 2020 by fakespyder

[bodie]

8 hours ago, fakespyder said:

About a week ago I was able to buy the Elephant version Blu-rays for a reasonable (2nd hand) price. They are coming from overseas so I have a few weeks to wait, but I'm pretty excited. The box artwork sucks, especially compared to the lovely Koch release.

In the end though, all I care about is the show and having a decent quality version. Skimming through this thread I get the sense that this Elephant version is reasonable, but with some errors. 

I was wondering if there is an up-to-date list or chart of all the Blu ray versions and their respective positives and negatives?

thanks

Yeah, basically they first came out from Mill Creek US as DVD and then on Blu-ray. Over time people started spotting various errors with Universal's source masters, many of which Mill Creek got corrected.

The same masters then came out in the UK from Fabulous without any assurances on those corrections and with incorrect video levels which killed lots of information and detail in the darker parts of the image.

Then Elephant came along with the corrected versions as per Mill Creek, but crucially they put the original audio on there in lossless 24bit quality, where the Mill Creek only had it lossy and the UK didn't have the original mixes at all.

The French has some exclusive extras and they also went to great pains to secure French language options - even including a fondly remembered original French VHS dub. And of course their asking price reflected that extra work - they did more on it than anyone else on the market then and time is money.

And all of that also applies to Koch Germany who have also done extras and German language options for their market, lossless 16bit remix and original audio, and also some work on presenting the video masters better than any of the others, see here. And of course that comes at an even higher asking price than the previous releases.

As I said earlier;

On 10/4/2020 at 9:38 AM, bodie said:

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

so if you got the French version for a good price @fakespyder that sounds like a good deal compared to paying the French or German asking prices for what are fundamentally the same masters of the show on all the versions worldwide, just with variations as per above that some people care about, others not so much

[bodie]

and there is more courtesy of @SwissTubbs about the German version than that post of his I linked to - they have also themselves fixed a couple of snags with the Universal masters that remained on all the other versions - because Universal would not address them, Koch did. They've earned their high price tag if you are chasing down every last thing, but of course that's not going to be things your average viewer will even be aware of, let alone pay for - the main reason for their price is the German audio and subtitles and bringing decent quality to that market at last; the German DVDs were cut and terrible quality.

[fakespyder]

Thanks for the information bodie

The seller has a good 100% rating on ebay and the pictures he posted looked good. So I'm hoping I got a good set.

I'll know in a few weeks... fingers crossed.

Edited October 13, 2020 by fakespyder

[ivoryjones]

On Koch, does the MV logo from Seasons 3-5 look as wrong as it looks on Mill Creek BDs?

The image below comes from Mill Creek BD, S3E16 "Theresa":

[summer84]

It's basically the same. And nothing like the original colors. The purple is a bit darker here. I do prefer the blue and pink though. 

Edited October 18, 2020 by summer84

[Tom]

vor 1 Stunde schrieb ivoryjones:

On Koch, does the MV logo from Seasons 3-5 look as wrong as it looks on Mill Creek BDs?

The image below comes from Mill Creek BD, S3E16 "Theresa":

 

Of course, it has to look the same, as there is only one Universal HD Master for the series!

And the color is not "wrong", it is as the producers chose it. I personally also do not understand why they changed that often and I also have my personal preferences, but there is no choice for BluRay labels to make when they use the only master there is.

 

[ivoryjones]

3 hours ago, Tom said:

And the color is not "wrong", it is as the producers chose it. I personally also do not understand why they changed that often and I also have my personal preferences, but there is no choice for BluRay labels to make when they use the only master there is.

 

I disagree, and there’s evidence the logo color is wrong all right (scenes also, a well known example is on “Duty and Honor”, the scene Castillo is injured—it originally looked a lot like Michael Mann’s “Manhunter”, on BD “Duty and Honor” is just terrible, kind of a 70s TV show look, it has nothing to do with “Manhunter”).
 

On all digital releases that I could check, the logo (S3-5 especially) looks terribly different than it once did on the original broadcasts (that’s why I’d appreciate an image of that from Koch’s). Additionally, the record covers (please take a look at the MIAMI VICE II front cover and related singles covers), TV specials and etc look a lot like the broadcasts, so there is no reason or evidence to doubt the way the show looked back then.

One would have to suppose that a perfectionist like Michael Mann (and maybe also Dick Wolf), NBC and Universal would not give a damn about colors, precisely at a time the show was on top of the world (worldwide), and that in a case of a TV show that was (also) famous and revolutionary for its colors.

One would also have to suppose the prints haven’t got the slightest bit old, reddish and faded, or that Mill Creek/Universal would spend a lot of time and bucks restoring the prints (and that would not deserve mentioning when promoting the BD set). Unlikely, if you consider the issues on the MC release and how is really tough to find a white on the scenes that is not even slightly contaminated with some “warming” effect. One can easily see that even the sea foam (opening) is somewhat reddish, which suggest the vinegar effect that tends to mess with print colors. Sometimes the show (on digital releases) looks like an old Polaroid photo. The “white glow” from S3-5 logo is pale and too warm.

[Tom]

vor 6 Minuten schrieb ivoryjones:

I disagree, and there’s evidence the logo color is wrong all right (scenes also, a well known example is on “Duty and Honor”, the scene Castillo is injured—it originally looked a lot like Michael Mann’s “Manhunter”, on BD “Duty and Honor” is just terrible, kind of a 70s TV show look, it has nothing to do with “Manhunter”).
 

On all digital releases that I could check, the logo (S3-5 especially) looks terribly different than it once did on the original broadcasts (that’s why I’d appreciate an image of that from Koch’s). Additionally, the record covers (please take a look at the MIAMI VICE II front cover and related singles covers), TV specials and etc look a lot like the broadcasts, so there is no reason or evidence to doubt the way the show looked back then.

One would have to suppose that a perfectionist like Michael Mann (and maybe also Dick Wolf), NBC and Universal would not give a damn about colors, precisely at a time the show was on top of the world (worldwide), and that in a case of a TV show that was (also) famous and revolutionary for its colors.

One would also have to suppose the prints haven’t got the slightest bit old, reddish and faded, or that Mill Creek/Universal would spend a lot of time and bucks restoring the prints (and that would not deserve mentioning when promoting the BD set). Unlikely, if you consider the issues on the MC release and how is really tough to find a white on the scenes that is not even slightly contaminated with some “warming” effect. One can easily see that even the sea foam (opening) is somewhat reddish, which suggest the vinegar effect that tends to mess with print colors. Sometimes the show (on digital releases) looks like an old Polaroid photo. The “white glow” from S3-5 logo is pale and too warm.

I see what you mean. But this means that we don´t talk about bad BluRay quality of a certain label, we talk about that someone changed the opening logo color usage or coding since the original broadcasts. As I said: there is only one digital HD master of Universal that all labels have to use for their release. MC also used a completely wrong gamma shift on top of that when encoding from that master, thus all MC material looks colorwise wrong and completely dull anyway compared to the masters. Koch used the same masters but is the only one with a correct encoding, correct gamma shift and on many episodes did manual corrections additionally which results in the best picture quality ever on any MV bluray.

If it is true that the Universal master has different logo colors than the original broadcasting (I haven´t checked that in detail as I am not really into this), then someone has changed the opening credits for the master since original airings. This cannot be corrected unless someone takes the effort to restore the original airings and then makes another HD/BluRay master. But this is a detail hardly any potential buyer is interested in enough to buy another box just for this reason. Thus, you´ll have to live with it. 

Openly, I enjoy the Koch box as it, for the first time, gives tribute to the original colors and the picture brilliance of MV. And it took 30 years to get that right. So, If the above mentioned microscopic detail is the only problem left, I can live with it.

 

[ivoryjones]

5 hours ago, summer84 said:

It's basically the same. And nothing like the original colors. The purple is a bit darker here. I do prefer the blue and pink though. 

Thank you so much, @summer84, sorry for the trouble! At least to me, so much for buying another set!

[Dadrian]

Forgive me if someone already answered this (I can’t remember):

Does the Koch set show the full original 4:3 aspect? The Mill Creek discs have a little bit of the top and bottom cut off. 

[Tom]

vor 25 Minuten schrieb Dadrian:

Forgive me if someone already answered this (I can’t remember):

Does the Koch set show the full original 4:3 aspect? The Mill Creek discs have a little bit of the top and bottom cut off. 

Yes. No cut off that I see on my set.

[Dadrian]

33 minutes ago, Tom said:

Yes. No cut off that I see on my set.

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