The Fugitive - High Def Digest

[MrChaos]

Peter Bracke on The Fugitive:

This Blu-ray release, though an equal with its HD DVD counterpart, doesn't deliver a huge upgrade over the standard DVD release. Still, the video and audio show some improvement in high-def, even if the extras aren't that thrilling. Not a must-have, but this one is worth a look if you don't yet own 'The Fugitive' on disc.

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/fugitive.html

[Elder]

The movie itself was just fantastic but the disc could have used some work. It's certainly not a giant leap over the standard DVD release, which was sad. I just stumbled onto this site a little while ago and I must admit I'm extremely impressed by the quality reviews and writing featured herein.

[MARLOWE]

I recently purchased The Fugitive on Blu Ray and was shocked to find that it is in crappy FULL screen and NOT WIDESCREEN as advertised on the case.
Has anyone else encountered this error?!

[GamerGuyX]

Originally Posted by MARLOWE

I recently purchased The Fugitive on Blu Ray and was shocked to find that it is in crappy FULL screen and NOT WIDESCREEN as advertised on the case.
Has anyone else encountered this error?!

?

The Fugitive has a widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85:1. So there should only be slight black bars on the top and bottom. None if your set has overscan. If this is not what you get there must be something with your setup. I own the movie and it is not 4:3.

[Sarang]

Originally Posted by GamerGuyX

?

The Fugitive has a widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85:1. So there should only be slight black bars on the top and bottom. None if your set has overscan. If this is not what you get there must be something with your setup. I own the movie and it is not 4:3.

Personally I find it disappointing little effort has been exerted on the more recent yet slightly dated quality catalog's like this and "The Hurricane" for example. "The Fugitive" is a great movie and deserves better treatment then what they apparently gave the HD DVD/Blu-Ray.

[ceasarschariot]

I agree, while it has been sometime since I viewed The Fugitive on dvd. I recently started watching Blu Ray movies on my PS3. I rented The Dark Knight and I just couldnt believe what I was seeing ! This is on a Sony Full HDTV. So I decided to hit the retail store and found The Fugitive. Fantastic movie and couldnt wait to watch it.

Once the movie started I couldnt believe what I was seeing, the picture quality was so poor I actually stopped the movie and went through all the setting on my PS3. Nothing had changed, so I continued to watch the movie and couldnt help but feel like I just wasted 27 dollars ( New Zealand ).

While im sure the dvd would have been worse on a 40 inch, this was very disappointing. The poor quality also sent me to these forums, to start researching why some blu ray movies have extremely poor video quality, and to find out which movies have the proper video quality.

Unless The Fugitive is one of your favorite movies I wouldnt bother buying it on blu ray. I bought The Road Warrior as well, and I think it was released in 1981 and the video quality is better, but still nothing to brag about. Im really lost as to how it is possible for a blue ray movie to only be slightly better than a dvd, rofl !

The movie is great, the video quality is depressing !

Sony 40 inch FULL HD
Sony PS3
Using high quality hdmi cable

[Super-VHS]

As I stated in The Road Warrior thread, this blu-ray is hardly the pinacle of the format. MPEG-2 encoding on a measly 25 gigs, sourced from a 1080i master doesn't exactly make for good picture quality. The Fugitive, like many early Warner MPEG/BD-25 releases, needs a new BD to correct the wrongs of the 2006 version.

[Josh Z]

Originally Posted by Super-VHS

The Fugitive, like many early Warner MPEG/BD-25 releases, needs a new BD to correct the wrongs of the 2006 version.

The same could be said about every single Blu-ray released by Sony in 2006.

[Rich86]

All things are relative. If you are replacing an early dvd release of this title, you should see a significant improvement in pq/aq as the title was remastered subsequent to its original dvd release. That is the reason I replaced my original sd-dvd version of this title with a high def version (HD-DVD in my case, but it is the same high def quality as the bd from the review I read). I also don't automatically assume a bd release is bad just because it is on single layer media.

[Super-VHS]

Originally Posted by Josh Z

The same could be said about every single Blu-ray released by Sony in 2006.

Very, very true.

I'd say that every BD supporting studio needs to revisit their circa 2006 releases.

Originally Posted by Rich86

All things are relative. If you are replacing an early dvd release of this title, you should see a significant improvement in pq/aq as the title was remastered subsequent to its original dvd release. That is the reason I replaced my original sd-dvd version of this title with a high def version (HD-DVD in my case, but it is the same high def quality as the bd from the review I read). I also don't automatically assume a bd release is bad just because it is on single layer media.

Single layer blu-ray is not itself a bad thing. However, in almost every case, a BD-25 combined with MPEG-2 encoding (from the infancy of the format no less.... encoding has come a long way in 2.5 years) does pretty much mean "bad release". The horribleness of most early BD releases is only exaserbated by the fact that the video encode had to share precious space with an absurdly inefficient PCM audio track.

With the use of far more efficient codecs such as AVC or VC-1 for video and Dolby TrueHD for audio, studios can produce perfectly fine results on a BD-SL.

[ruckus81]

Originally Posted by Super-VHS

As I stated in The Road Warrior thread, this blu-ray is hardly the pinacle of the format. MPEG-2 encoding on a measly 25 gigs, sourced from a 1080i master doesn't exactly make for good picture quality. The Fugitive, like many early Warner MPEG/BD-25 releases, needs a new BD to correct the wrongs of the 2006 version.

+1
This is one of the few HD discs that I'll double dip on only becasue there is actually room for improvement.

[Josh Z]

Originally Posted by Rich86

All things are relative. If you are replacing an early dvd release of this title, you should see a significant improvement in pq/aq as the title was remastered subsequent to its original dvd release. That is the reason I replaced my original sd-dvd version of this title with a high def version (HD-DVD in my case, but it is the same high def quality as the bd from the review I read). I also don't automatically assume a bd release is bad just because it is on single layer media.

Actually, the HD copies of The Fugitive are sourced from the same master used for the original 1997 DVD, not the master used for the subsequent "Special Edition" DVD released in 2001. You can tell because there's a blooper where you can see a crewmember's head in the shot after the train crash. That mistake was digitally painted out for the remastered DVD. This is even explicitly mentioned in the bonus features on the disc (which were prepared for the SE DVD), and yet the person's head is there again on the Blu-ray.



The Fugitive is widely acknowledged to be a very flawed transfer for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with being on a BD-25 disc.

[RedRedSuit]

I realize this thread and review are ancient, but I just watched this (I blind-bought it... one of my favorite movies) and feel the desire to chime in.

This Blu-Ray's video quality is quite terrible. 3.5 stars it ain't. It's literally the worst Blu-Ray I have ever seen, personally. It has nothing to do with contrast or anything like that; but the jaggy edges are unbelievably distracting and pop up all the time. As a demo of this, just watch the ending credits... they're shimmering all over the place. That's not to say I require beautiful ending credits, just that it's a good example of the kind of stuff that goes all through the movie.

Stay way.

[twonunpackmule]

Originally Posted by RedRedSuit

I realize this thread and review are ancient, but I just watched this (I blind-bought it... one of my favorite movies) and feel the desire to chime in.

This Blu-Ray's video quality is quite terrible. 3.5 stars it ain't. It's literally the worst Blu-Ray I have ever seen, personally. It has nothing to do with contrast or anything like that; but the jaggy edges are unbelievably distracting and pop up all the time. As a demo of this, just watch the ending credits... they're shimmering all over the place. That's not to say I require beautiful ending credits, just that it's a good example of the kind of stuff that goes all through the movie.

Stay way.

It's from the upconvert. It wasn't a real 1080p transfer. When done wrong it can bring up the dreaded shimmering. Not cool.


I have the HD DVD, and haven't migrated to the BD yet. Was waiting for a possible remaster. Personally, I didn't feel it was THAT bad of a transfer. It's not fantastic, but it certainly is better than the DVD...but that's not saying much.

[RedRedSuit]

I'm not surprised, though Warner denied it according to the review. But really, it's very obvious from the first minute there's something totally off on this transfer.