Info and forum posts by 'Dave Bell'

RE: Lord of the Rings Extended Version what extra bits did you notice? **SPOILERS**

There`s a list of DVD chapters in the booklet, indicating what is wholly new, and which others have been expanded.

RE: LOTR- Two Towers 4 disc, cheapest place?

Quote:
Yep, but DVD.co.uk are doing it for £17.99 delivered...

Do they have an off-licence?

This item was edited on Thursday, 20th November 2003, 21:09

RE: How bad is the sound on FOTR 4 discs R2?

With my ears, I probably can`t hear a lot of the differences, but the DTS track on the FotR EV is a disappointment.

Meantime, I`ll be handing over my money for the DVDs, and I expect the job to be done right. A lot of people put a lot of work into making a movie -- any movie -- and they deserve a DVD which shows what they did, without added errors.

RE: DVD Player £ 37.99 from Aldi

Why do you say it`s bad? Can you give a pointer to published info?

RE: Decent price for R2 Two Towers extended

If you`re within reach of a Morrisons supermarket, they may be a better bet. I know they sold Fellowship of the Ring EV for 20 quid.

RE: Sell-through price of DVDs

The differences between rental and sell-through DVDs can matter a lot. While the movie is usually the same, you en up with none of the extras on a rental version, and it`s possible, though still uncommon, to have a lot of advertising that you can`t skip.

The rental DVDs are very much the equivalent of rental VHS, except for wide-screen and better sound. Over the last year, I`ve seen Blockbuster making a habit of trying to sell ex-rental DVDs at inflated prices. I reckon they`ve been over-estimating the demand for some movies.

At least there are some marked as "rental copy". In other cases, buying second hand, the clue is the lack of extras. "Gosford Park" is an example of that.

I tend to rent a VHS tape from my local shop, rather than bother with an ex-rental DVD.

RE: The final word: is it worth upgrading to the EE of FOTR, taking everything into account?

<i>Do both R1 and R2 versions include the MTV spoof?</i>

It`s only on the R1 version.

The differences between the two movie cuts are more than just additions, The arrival in the Shire is quite different, for one. It`s not silly to have both editions. There isn`t much overlap, if any, between the extras, though the EE does make the theatrical cut`s extras look lacklustre in comparison..

RE: Blockbuster Sale 80% off!!!!

Considering their ex-rental prices, sometimes on stuff that`s available new in a local supermarket, I am not surprised...

But tempting if it wasn`t such a long trip...

RE: Morrisons 2 for £15 offer

Quoting the original:

"Comparing Grimsby to Sc***horpe, the two Morrisons branches I`m familiar with,"

It looks like there`s an automatic censor-bot running.

Doesn`t it look silly.

(Is there a DVD out of "The Titfield Thunderbolt"?)

RE: TWO TOWER DVD ARTWORK????

TTT suffers from being the middle of the film.

Those who love the book will know that there is a pretty major change to one of the characters, which is in some ways worse than the changes in FOTR.

Still, there`s be time to watch the DVDs and go into the cinema, come December, and see how it all fits together. Expect to see the visually exciting stuff.

RE: 4 Megpix digicam £200. 3 x optical, 2 x digital zoom

Also, you should be wary of build quality. I`ve just had a cheap camera fail, about a month out of guarantee, with an internal short. Luckily the batteries were low on charge, or I would have had a fire.

At least it has an optical zoom. That`s a good sign. But it may not be the bargain it looks.

RE: Morrisons 2 for £15 offer

It`s been running for quite a while now, but not in all branches. Some don`t give as much space to DVDs, and don`t have it.

Comparing Grimsby to Sc***horpe, the two Morrisons branches I`m familiar with, Grimsby is pretty much limited to the chart sections. Sc***horpe has a much wider range, including this offer as well as a lot of cheap DVDs from such labels as Hollywood DVD.

There`s currently a DVD bargain bin as well, and Morrisons are usually pretty good on price. Often cheaper than play.com

If you`re not insistent on just buying DVDs, there are also a lot of films on VHS which are worth checking out.

Tesco Bargain Bin Sited...

There`s a VHS and DVD bargain bin out in the local Tesco.

DVDs mostly at the 7 or 8 quid mark, and nothing obviously spectacular.

Worth checking -- I did see a couple of Hornblowers, from the TV series, and did buy Karloff the Uncanny in "The Mummy".

RE: Lord Of The Rings FOTR CE £29.99

Not that I have room for bookends...

Too many books...

But past experience of FotR prices will likely have me heading for the local Morrisons, come August.

RE: Lidl - £99 Surround Sound kit

Yes, Dolby Pro Logic is prominent on the box, but unless I`ve misread the small print, and I may have, it does have a digital input.

I wonder if the customers were put off by that?

RE: No picture playing DVD`s

Just a guess, but is the DVD being output as RGB video and the VCD as composite video?

I don`t see any reason why they should be different, but if the scart input on the portable is composite only...

RE: Macrovision defeater at Maplin £24.99

> Can anyone tell me the url for the cheap Scart leads please?

Don`t know the specific URL for the source up-thread, but quite a few of the cheap-hardware shops sell them for around a quid. I bought mine from Poundstretcher.

Downside: you`re not going to get the best possible picture.

Upside: they`re cheap, and RGB video is better than composite.

Lidl - £99 Surround Sound kit

Seen in the local Lidl today, and it doesn`t seem to be selling so fast. a surround sound amp and speakers for £99.

Spec seems OK, multiple stereo inputs and a digital as well, with a full 5.1 speaker set.

Silver finish, but I couldn`t tell how big the speakers were from what was visible on the box.

35W RMS for the subwoofer, 1100W PMP for the whole system.

A price this low suggests the quality isn`t all that great, but I have bought decent electronic stuff from them in the past.

RE: Zulu - bargain at £3.99

I`d agree that the new R2 edition is worth the extra, though the bargain price for the lower quality version isn`t a waste. But the price difference is small enough. If we had to pay the full price the distributors expect, I think I could live with a bit of dodgy colour on a four-quid DVD.

An example of what price competition can do?

RE: LOTR 4 disc probs

No problems on my older-version Wharfedale 750, so I doubt it`s some exotic new feature on the DVDs.

Can you borrow a copy from a friend and see if that works?

RE: What do you think of

"Saving Private Ryan" is one of the war movies which does stay pretty close to history, though it would have been nice if some mention could have been made of the British and Canadian forces landing to the east of Omaha Beach. Once off the beach, the events of the film maybe represent the history, rather than depicting history, but it`s not the warping of history that some movies are.

You may as well criticise "The Cruel Sea" for not showing the US Navy`s contribution to the Battle of the Atlantic.

RE: Dogma Re-release

"Is Dogma about to be re-released, noticed it in HMV for 10 squids and thought of getting it but not if a super-duper-nutter release is imminent."

Picked it up today for £5.99 in a bargain bin at Morrisons, which seems a fair price even if it is only the film.

Bargains at Morrisons supermarkets

Around here, one of the best places for DVDs seems to be Morrisons, and there can be some good prices on VHS too, if you`re so inclined.

Currently, their "chart" rack has Fellowship of the Ring, extended version, at £19.99 and Zulu at £12.99 and generally lower prices than other stores. Most of the ordinary DVDs are currently at £9.99, or two for £15 (Men in Black, Saving Private Ryan, The Mummy), and I picked Dogma out of a bargain bin for £5.99 (similar mix to bins in other supermarkets, but lower price).

The local Tesco has been running a bargain bin for several weeks, but at higher prices. Kwiksave had a bit of a price cut after Christmas. On the whole, Morrisons seems worth checking first.

RE: OFFICAL RELEASE DATE: TWO TOWERS DVD!!!!!!!!!

posted by movie_buff on Thursday, 9th January 2003, 15:03

Maybe they need extra time to work on the extended version, i heard that the running time for the extended version is nearly 4 (yes, FOUR!!) hours.


There`s a lot of rumours about, but I did hear, a couple of months back, that the cinema version was going to be quite a bit longer than it turned out to be. The trouble is that, unlike FotR, I can`t see what can really be added which adds to the story. An extra hour would nearly have to be a re-make.

RE: Humphrey Bogart DVDs - which ones to get?

There was an anniversary release of "Casablanca" on VHS which I think I`ve since seen on DVD. This has a trailer or two, and a documentary on the movie. I`ve no idea what`s on the announced R1 release, but this older version wouldn`t be a mistake.

To be honest, it wouldn`t be a bad buy on VHS -- I`m sure it`s around in one of those three-movie sets. I try not to buy VHS these days, but sometimes it`s really cheap.

RE: Samsung ML4500 Laser Printer for £72.85 inc VAT

Not as good a deal as the 2nd-hand Laserjet I bought, a year ago, but laser printers are generally a good option if you want black text printing. Only likely catch is that some of the cheap ones depend on Windows drivers. I`ve run my Laserjet under plain-old-DOS, Windows, Linux, and attached to an Apple Mac SE/30.

But I can`t figure out what this has to do with DVDs :)

RE: What`s your favourite Christmas Movie?

The Fellowship of the Ring.

The Two Towers is good, but not that good.

The Return of the King comes next Christmas, and at that point you have a movie that can run for nine hours or more, plenty of distraction from the banalities of TV.


Dr. Zhivago is also good, and The Sound of Music, and anything with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

With any luck, by Christmas 2004 I can totally avoid "The Weakest Link".

RE: Digital Camcorder--to--VCD ?

The main gotcha for recording the VCD is that the low-level format of the disk is different: it isn`t the same as a CD-ROM. Back in the early days of video on CD, there were a couple of Anime films which were put on CD-ROM as VCD-compatible files, and they don`t work.

So older CD-burner software is no good. Current versions of Nero work fine, but the MPEG conversion untility provided is not all that good. It`s better to do any re-sizing and encoding with other software. There`s been a couple of giveaways of video editor software on coverdisks.

If you do digital still photography, you can put that onto VCD as well. I know of two programs which can handle this, and they work in distinctly different ways.

The Ulead software uses the VCD still-photo resolution, which is close to that of DVD. The UI is a bit basic, it`s a fiddle to adjust slide-show length to match the music, and you can`t get fancy transitions between pictures.

The Magix software avoids all those problems, but the fancy transitions mean that it has to record the show as a VCD movie, halving the available resolution.

The info available suggests that SVCD is better for movies if your player can handle it, but many can`t. What I`ve seen about "MiniDVD", which is a DVD file system on CD-R, suggests that it`s a format best avoided. Hardware players often can`t spin the CD fast enough, and it isn`t any sort of standard.

Properly created VCD is a safe format. Putting the MPEG data onto a CD-ROM will lose playback on standalone hardware, but is a good backup. Older DVD players don`t seem to support SVCD.

Getting the video data into a computer -- that can be the hard part. :(

RE: Best all-in-one remote control

Something like the Philex Wizard might do -- it can learn the codes your existing remotes do, and it`s within the suggested budget. But I`m not sure if that model is still available. It also feels a little flimsy.

The trouble is that there`s getting to be an awful lot of hardware out there, and earlier models are dropping of the lists of what the less flexible remotes can handle.

RE: CHEAPEST R1 DVD`S AND IMPORT DUTY PROBLEMS

Note that play.com do their delivery from the Channel Islands, which are outside the EU and so purchases can get hit for these charges, but at least they`re Royal Mail delivery.

Import duty and VAT are also applied to the P&P, and if it doesn`t go through Royal Mail the charges really add up.

I got the extended version of Fellowship of the Ring locally, rather than take a chance on being hit with charges. I have been caught out a couple of times, on non-DVD stuff, and I`m reluctant to face the hassle again.

As for a "system to avoid customs charges"... If Customs and Excise catch on, things can get unpleasant.