'Tremors' - High-Def Digest review

[jed]

Just posted Kenneth's review of 'Tremors.' A longtime fan of the film, he says this HD DVD edition is certainly an upgrade over anything that's come before it, but alas it's far from perfect.

Full review here:
http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/1102/tremors.html

[resevilfan86]

Like Kenneth, I watched this movie over and over on VHS. Can't wait to see it in HD.

[beyondmediaonline.com]

Excellent review and this movie is very good looking on hd-dvd.

[ben1080p]

I will eventually be getting this one.

[Office Ed]

Great little movie, it's the chemistry between Bacon & Ward that makes it work so well. I think i'll have to get this one.

[Giantfoot08]

Look like I will have to be picking this one up!

[DVDTherapy]

Originally Posted by Office Ed

Great little movie, it's the chemistry between Bacon & Ward that makes it work so well. I think i'll have to get this one.

Michael Gross is brilliant as well

[Dragoncrest]

I'm certainly getting this title, in my opinion one of the best horror comedies ever made.

I still have my original vhs of it somewhere.

[ROBB]

I registered here just to comment on the reviews of two recent movies: Tremors and 2001.
I bought Tremors and was stunned at the poor picture quality - it is not my player, since all my other movies look great. I really like the film and feel gypped.

Problem 1: Resolution. The review says it borders on miraculous. My disk has detail far below my reference dvds, much less hd dvds. This is the lowest-rez hd dvd I've ever seen. Only the blu-ray "Brahm Stoker's Dracula" sucks more. The only time the image looks sharp is on the startup menu, but then it is only quarter-size.

Problem 2: Picture stability. The entire image on my disk jiggles veritcally from the first frame of the movie to the last. The menus, featurettes, and outtakes are all okay.

Problem 3: Video Artifacts. These are worse than I've ever seen, including when I've watched dvds on a $48.00 upscaling dvd player. The worst are the skys. Sometimes I saw amorphous "bundles" of creeping artifact dots next to a character actually compress when the character moved - meaning that they stayed in the same formation but squeezed horizontally to fit the narrower space the character left them. This looked like the type of old analog video effect they might have used on Sesame Street to show a character or letter becoming narrower.

The color balance of the disk matches the review, as well as the hideous amount of edge enhancement. I've rented many hd dvds and have never seen anything like this disk.

I can only assume that: the reviewer never actually looked closely at the movie (I know better); that my disk is defective (don't see how); that my player (Toshiba HD-A2) doesn't "like" the disk; or that, despite checking for upgrades to my machine, that they've been done and I haven't gotten them.

Has anyone else had these problems with this disk?

[Spideybat]

I glanced at mine and it looks incredible. Great job Universal!

[Peter Galbavy]

I put my copy in the player last night but then ended up asleep by 8pm as a result of jet lag. Sigh. Maybe tonight.

If this transfer is good enough then the only other "wore out my VHS copy" films that need to hit HD DVD will be, for me, Young Einstein and Little Shop Of Horrors. Shows my age doesn't it

[wallijonn]

Robb,

I have to ask what your TV set make is since I didn't see any of these faults on my Pani 42" plasma (it isn't something I was looking for, but then again it didn't jump right out at me, either.) I did set the light level to dark, though, and adjusted brightness accordingly. To me it looked a thousand times better than the other worm movie, "Dune," I saw the same day.

[CaptainCanuck]

I watched it last night and thought the pq was excellent.Tons of detail . I liked this movie a lot except for the fact that they pretty much buried Ward's character near the end and gave the rest of the movie to Bacon as a hero and he got the girl of course.
I loved the survivalists and Reba McIntire was excellent.

[ROBB]

I cannot ignore that the image jiggles up and down. It is slight, but I haven't seen it on any other film in years, or even on the rest of this disk - just the movie itself.

There are areas with detail that is 2x2 pixels, but a fair amount of the rest is smudged by compression. This resolution is the same as my "Attack of the Clones" dvd, because of that, I'm not impressed.

Would someone with a good, experienced eye check out the image stability? I dealt with image quality professionally for too many years to gloss over an HD disk that is equalled by a dvd that is at least four years old.

We are being spoon-fed catalog titles that will pop up again in a few years sporting slight improvements, so that we will buy them all over again. The first wave of HD is littered with catalog titles that have "planned obsolescence" written all over them.

[Mcrice]

One of my favorite all-time movies. Want to get it, but alarming to see these posts...Anybody else having issues with the disc?