i was most disappointed by the "flash gordon" transfer. looked like a crappy 300kbps video stream. plus the audio was screwed up.
"excalibur" was disappoining too, despite beautiful colors in the transfer. the biggest problems (not mentioned in dvdfile's review) are:
1) in anamorphic the matting is too narrow. i.e., the aspect ratio is wrong, and tops of heads are cut off! watch the credits in anamorphic and you will notice some names at the top of the screen are only 1/2 visible.
2) there is a great deal of shimmer, especially in the scene where young arthur pulls the sword from the stone. the bright sky and tree limbs vibrate.
4) the audio was remixed to stereo, but collapses to mono for the final scene with wagner's "gotterdammerung" music. perhaps this was on purpose.
3) as noted by dvdfile there is a lot of pixilation and breakup in smokey scenes.
the new "the shining" release: in the scene where grady talks to jack in the red bathroom, there is a lot of vibrating. i tried to get others to verify this but everyone here who promised to look at their disc flaked out on me (thanks, guys
). it is especially sad because this new "the shining" disc is otherwise a nearly perfect transfer.
the new "barry lyndon" release: there is a lot of noticeable telecine misalignment, a slight rocking back and forth of the picture. again, a real shame considering how amazing this transfer is otherwise.
my wife bought "royal wedding" on the alpha video dvd. i have never seen a dvd that looked so bad. it looked like it was taken from a vhs copy recorded off broadcast television, and the print, well let's just say the film broke on the mgm lion's roar and was patched back together with a bandaid. i simply refuse to watch it.