A Hard Day's Night

DVD/TV/movies/etc
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Xenu
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A Hard Day's Night

Postby Xenu » Sat Apr 09, 2005 11:51 pm

Hey all,

Anybody have the old DVD (s?) of this title?

Is it...well, better than the current one?

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Postby Ess Ay Cee Dee » Sun Apr 10, 2005 12:03 am

I do. I was lucky enough to pick up a used copy for twelve bucks when the Miramax version came out.

It's good enough that I've never felt the need to check out the newer one. I do know that Miramax used a fucked-up 5.1 mix in lieu of the original. The extras might be worthwhile, but whatever.

The MPI version looks great. It's an open-matte transfer, which actually benefits the film. All of the music is in nice-sounding stereo and everything else is mono.

All in all, a very nice disc. Not $300 good (or whatever it sells for on eBay), but good nonetheless.

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Postby Xenu » Sun Apr 10, 2005 12:10 am

I wonder how the transfer looks by comparison...and whether it'd be worthwhile to attempt to sync the old audio to the new video.

I'm still astonished that nobody bothered to use the original, AMC-restored version with the mono soundtrack. The audio track on the current DVD sounds *very bad*.

BTW, rarebeatles.com seems to suggest there was another, interim version of AHDN on DVD. Was it at all different?
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Postby lukpac » Sun Apr 10, 2005 8:32 am

I'd check Google's archive of r.m.b. I seem to remember quite a bit when the Miramax version came out.
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Postby Rspaight » Sun Apr 10, 2005 8:50 am

I've got the old one (bought it when it came out, along with Help!). The transfer looks fine to me. I've never seen the new one, so I can't compare (though I imagine the 4x3 version is framed better than the "new" 16x9 edition). It doesn't sound fucked-up -- I concur with EACD's assessments.

I'm not aware of a third version.

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Postby MK » Sun Apr 10, 2005 9:44 pm

I got the new one cheap from CH, it was on clearance for $10 with shipping. Still sealed though, I'm still thinking it over: keep it or sell/exchange it. Kind of frustrating to think they actually nailed it, but it was for an AMC broadcast only - outside of the mono soundtrack, does the AMC version 'look' better than other transfers?
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Postby Xenu » Sun Apr 10, 2005 10:21 pm

Intriguingly, with the exception of the clearly-odd fake-stereo processing, the music on the new DVD doesn't sound all that bad. I've heard rumors of a custom Ron F. mono mix that was used, and I could certainly see that happening. Pity that they saw fit to ruin it.

I've heard that the dialogue track on the new disc beats the pants off of the one on the old disc, so it might be worth it to try to engineer some sort of frankensteinian hybrid between the versions.
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"Fuckin' Koreans" - Reno 911