NEW DIRECTORS CUT

[stanton]

Plasma versus LCD/LED

Before I bought me a Plasma I asked several people who are interested in this technical stuff much more than I am about the better technology, I even made a poll in a German forum. Result was that nearly everybody said that Plasma for several reasons reproduces a better, a more naturalistic picture.

Only one dealer opted for LCD. But when he asked me which TV in his shop was the best looking imo, the one which I chose was the only Plasma he had on sale. From that point on I was damn sure what to buy.

[dave jenkins]

I've never owned a Plasma TV, my friends don't like them owing to reliability problems, Sony stopped making them several years ago and I wonder whether really a TV can be smart enough to differentiate between good data and bad data.  For me it doesn't seem prudent to buy a TV because it obscures parts of an image and technology seems to be going in a different direction.

I'm not sure what reliability problems your friends are referring to. There used to be a problem with "burn-in", but my understanding is that the technology evolved and did away with the problem. Another issue was supposed to be that plasma isn't supposed to last as long as the other options (LCD/LED), but that might not even be true anymore either. Anyway, until we've actually run the different screens in real conditions through a number of years, we won't really know. If your ONLY concern is longevity, then probably an LED is the way to go. I'm willing to chance having a screen with a shorter lifetime if it delivers the kind of image I enjoy most. I've had my plasma more than 3 years now and it's never given me a lick of trouble and it still looks great. I'll let you know, though, if it suddenly craps out.

[Cusser]

Plasma TVs .... it's claimed that they are better at coping with fast action. 

Like the incessant telephone ringing near the beginning of Once Upon a Time in America ?

[drinkanddestroy]

Thanks for the additional info dj.  I'll certainly include plasmas when I next look for a new TV.

 

just one article I read about plasma vs. LCD vs. LED
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2387377,00.asp

I am sure there are many other articles and many other opinions.

Note that plasma may cost 3 times as much on your electricity bill as LED

[dave jenkins]

Note that plasma may cost 3 times as much on your electricity bill as LED

A philistine is one who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

[Novecento]

I've never owned a Plasma TV, my friends don't like them owing to reliability problems, Sony stopped making them several years ago and I wonder whether really a TV can be smart enough to differentiate between good data and bad data.  For me it doesn't seem prudent to buy a TV because it obscures parts of an image and technology seems to be going in a different direction.

Having said that you certainly get a lot of TV for your money with Plasma TVs and it's claimed that they are better at coping with fast action. I'll certainly be looking at both Plasmas and LEDs when I next purchase a TV and I'm tempted to try something different.

Plasma basically needs rebranding. It is seen as an older technology that was replaced by lighter, thinner, more energy efficient, cheaper LCD/LED TVs that were not as susceptible to image burn-in.

Of course most of these aren't really issues any more (and frankly who really cares if their TV is heavy?), yet LCD/LED technology has swallowed up the market leaving only LG, Samsung and Panasonic to serve an increasingly niche plasma market.

What was of course forgotten along the way was that LCD/LED TVs do not handle motion properly (boosting things to 100/120Hz or 200/240Hz only makes things worse for different reasons). Personally I never had a problem with blurry fast action, but I am a sucker for elegant camera movement and what would really get me was the jerkiness of a high-res image as the camera scanned across the scene.

[dave jenkins]

A poster at hometheaterforum has confirmed what we've been hearing from other sources and has started another discussion on this topic. Here's his introductory post:

This quietly snuck out from Warners in Italy. The film is on one disc and people were already complaining about screen caps on one of the usual silly forums. It's always best to see the disc in motion, of course. And there's no reason a fine Blu-ray can't come for a four hour plus film on a BD 50 if there are no extras at all on the disc, which there aren't. But these people see bad compression from still frames. I don't. In any case, the disc came today.

 So, now I have seen the first forty-five minutes and I can speak having now actually seen the thing. And I'm here to tell you, compression is the least of it - spreading this transfer over five discs would not help it. Why? Because it is a complete botch job of the film called Once Upon a Time in America. Mr. Leone and Mr. Delli Colli would be fuming if they saw what their beautiful film has been turned into. I saw this film seven times in its short version and about seventeen times in its long version, and owned a beautiful LPP 35mm print of it. The photography is stunning. You would not know that from this new restoration. I have no idea what the new prints or DCP look like, I can only go by what's on this Blu-ray and it looks like crap.

 There is no contrast - just milk. The detail is blah. Worst of all (but I know it won't be bothersome to most because color problems rarely are) - the color. Awful. What a joke. Want to see the correct color and contrast, just pop in the old Warner Blu-ray and you'll see it perfectly because that's exactly what the prints looked like in terms of color and contrast (that original Blu-ray may not be perfect but side by side to this new one, it's better in every way). I find it hard to believe I'm saying this, but there is far more detail in the Warners Blu-ray than this sorry mess. You see it right from the first shot and it gets worse as you go. When it goes to Fat Moe being beaten to a pulp his blood is - brown/orange. Not vivid red - brown/orange. His hair, which is red - is brown. Then you go to the Chinese theater and gone are all the shadings and the beautiful reds and golds, rendered here lifeless and blah. Then you get to the scene in the rain where Noodles' buddies have been shot down. There's a fire truck. Brown/orange. Fire trucks are not brown/orange. Then you to to the scene in the station and see that beautiful, stunning Coney Island mural - hard to make that blah, and yet... Then Noodles comes back older and the mural is now the big apple of the Big Apple. What color is an apple? Well, in this instance it should be bright red - it's brown/orange and hardly bright. And so it goes. There are no blacks in this transfer - just milk. I put them side by side and there's no question that even if you don't like the bitrate of the original Blu-ray, if you want a Once Upon a Time in America that actually looks as it should, that's the only choice right now. I fear for watching the rest of this thing, but since none of the additional footage has appeared yet, I'll mush on just to see how all that works.

A complete failure.

If you want to follow the discussion you can do so here:
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/t/326227/a-little-look-at-once-upon-a-time-in-america-the-restoration-on-blu-ray

[drinkanddestroy]

Thanks for sharing this dj.

One poster on that forum says he thinks they made the color suck so bad so that the new scenes, which we know look awful, shouldn't look that bad in comparison 

I am very happy that it hasn't been released in America yet. Maybe, just maybe, the issues will be fixed before it's released here.

[dave jenkins]

One poster on that forum says he thinks they made the color suck so bad so that the new scenes, which we know look awful, shouldn't look that bad in comparison 

Yeah, I saw that. I have a sneaking suspicion he's right.

[stanton]

And his opinion about the new footage also doesn't make me to wish the new footage in a hurry:


"Now that I've finished, I don't think there's one of the twenty minutes' worth of stuff that makes a bit of difference, really. It does make it longer, and you do get a little explanation of something here and there, but Leone's long cut worked wonderfully."

Of course other people will see this different, but on my last re-watch OUTA felt already overlong.

[drinkanddestroy]

And his opinion about the new footage also doesn't make me to wish the new footage in a hurry:


"Now that I've finished, I don't think there's one of the twenty minutes' worth of stuff that makes a bit of difference, really. It does make it longer, and you do get a little explanation of something here and there, but Leone's long cut worked wonderfully."

Of course other people will see this different, but on my last re-watch OUTA felt already overlong.

well that's just his opinion on the artistic value of the scenes (rather than the image quality), so I don't worry about that; that's just up to each individual viewer.

Personally -- though I haven't seen the new scenes placed into the movie, I've just seen them compiled together in one big 20 minute video -- I  think some of the scenes are useful and some aren't. But I'll have to reserve final judgment on that until I see the full movie (which, it now seems, may not be for a quite a while).

[rexlic]

A happy birthday to Shane MacGowan--nobody had 55 in the office pool, that's for sure--and a great time to spin that modern day Christmas carol, the Pogues' "Fairytale of New York."  About the song's origins, MacGowan recently told the Sun newspaper that “Our idea of New York was based on movies like Once Upon A Time In America, which we were obsessed with.  We borrowed a lot from the soundtrack of that film."  In fact, the Pogues had apparently never been to New York at that point.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9jbdgZidu8

[Novecento]

About the song's origins, MacGowan recently told the Sun newspaper that “Our idea of New York was based on movies like Once Upon A Time In America, which we were obsessed with.  We borrowed a lot from the soundtrack of that film."

Interesting - I didn't know that!

[Novecento]

Of course most of these aren't really issues any more (and frankly who really cares if their TV is heavy?), yet LCD/LED technology has swallowed up the market leaving only LG, Samsung and Panasonic to serve an increasingly niche plasma market.

Seems like soon we will be down to just two as Panasonic is pulling out:

http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=211857

Apparently they are going to put their efforts into developing OLED (Organic LED) which is markedly different from what we currently call LED.

[dave jenkins]

Seems like soon we will be down to just two as Panasonic is pulling out:

http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=211857

Apparently they are going to put their efforts into developing OLED (Organic LED) which is markedly different from what we currently call LED.

Interesting. Maybe my next screen (many years from now, hopefully) will be an OLED.