Blu Ray Screencaps of Basic Instinct.
This is one of the worst Blu Ray releases i have had the misfortune to buy and Lionsgate should sack whoever gave the go ahead for this release.
Basic Instinct is a good movie which deserves a much better transfer, they should have struck a new master from a pristine quality print but instead they have obviously used an old master and then applied massive amounts of processing to the image. The film's natural grain structure has been treated to a dose of DNR and i believe scratch removal tools have also been used on this transfer.
You will often see smearing motion trails and edge enhancement is visible in a number of scenes. I thought faces were approaching waxy levels at times and there was just an overall lack of real high definition detail in a film which could look stunning on blu ray. This blu ray release does improve on the DVD editions of the film and if all you are interested in is a little more detail over the DVD then you might be happy with this release.
I want more than just an upgrade over DVD and when i buy or rent a blu ray i fully expect film like quality and this release fails in that regard and everything is just too smooth and processed looking. I am very disappointed with this release and hope one day it finally gets a new master and a new release on blu ray. I understand Europe has their own transfer of this movie and i hope to check that one out sometime this year but i suspect it will not be much different to this one.
The frames below do not do justice to how bad this film looks when in motion.
View blu ray screencaps of Basic Instinct below. Click twice for the full HD image.
I understand the Studio Canal edition has different framing to the American edition.
It’s in my rental queue with Blockbuster and i’ll check it out sometime this year but i really think they need to make a new master as it could look very good on Blu Ray as of course most films could if handled right.
Incidentally have you seen The Spirit ? The UK rental edition i received is missing the 7.1 DTS Master Audio track and my Oppo reports it as plain old Dolby Digital 5.1 at 640kbp/s and indeed WinDVD which i don’t really use but it has it’s uses reports it as having no bass channel.
I know from reading your site you think lossless vs 640kbp/s isn’t much difference but losing a couple of channels makes a difference and personally i do feel the bass and channel separation is better with lossless….Of course that might also be the placebo effect playing tricks on me and if the sound mix is poor then lossless won’t help matters.
I understand the version you can buy has the proper soundtrack and comes in at around 30GB while this rental edition is 23GB. Anyway i’ll be posting screencaps of this less than thrilling superhero movie at the end of the week.
Ugh, that looks hideous. I didn't think the European release from Studio Canal was all that great, but it's vastly superior to this.