HD Alert!

Scenes from HELEN OF TROY (1956)

I usually make comparisons between copies of a title I have in my collection in a separate post but since I only had the DVD as reference, I decided to do it now with HD Alert. The Blu-ray is much better than the sad DVD transfer. I'm a fan of this movie and the director, Robert Wise, but I always thought the movie looked murky from the DVD. Well, no more. Here's a short list of improvements. I didn't retouch these screenshots.

- The image with the Trojan horse. Above is from the Blu-ray. Below is from the DVD. So much better on the Blu-ray.

- Corrected aspect ratio. If you look at the rectangular shape of the screenshot from the Blu-ray and compare it to the one from the DVD, you'll see that the rectangular is much wider. Warner basically squished the film, in order to fit better on most widescreen TVs but by doing this the image is distorted. 

- The colours are beautiful and pop, compared to the greyish image of the DVD. Flesh tones are beautiful on the Blu-ray.

- The depth of field work in the cinematography is also greater. You really have a better sense of space and depth on the Blu-ray than the DVD. There's no comparison.

- The audio is also better on the Blu-ray release.

 

- Squished image of the DVD (below) makes the actors look taller and thin. The corrected one above is more true to life. The colours are more vivid. And the image above is also not cropped. Compare the tree line in the distance between the two screenshot. So the image on the DVD was not only squished but also cropped. The Blu-ray fixed this. This alone makes it worth buying. With Jacques Sernas.
 

 

The colours and clarity of the image is much greater on the Blu-ray (above) than the old DVD (below). The image was drab on the DVD. With Brigitte Bardot and Rossana Podesta.
 

So, yeah, the Blu-ray is really worth getting!