How dark is too dark? – DVD Video Playback (Updated)
NOTE: This was written before the advent of
Blu-ray, so the debate may seem moot, but the debate still continues into
Blu-ray and over the Kolchak: The Night
Stalker box set in particular. We
recently covered a new edition from Australia, which you can read about
below with link included.
We have
had some interesting conversations, debates, and reviews seen on this, other
websites and even print publications about Video Black. It has been a “holy grail” in home video only
equaled by Video White and surpassed by that hardest of all video colors,
Red. Even the best digital High
Definition still (even updating this article 4.5 years later) cannot do
Red as well as the best film stocks and especially the best film color
processes (three-strip Technicolor, three-strip Tru-Color, the result of
shooting in large frame formats, even 16mm and sometimes Super 8mm color
film). But we will stick to Black for
this essay. The debate came up again
when reviews came in for MGM’s reissue of the Horror double feature The
Night Stalker/The Night Strangler.
Our review is as follows:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/1379/Night+Stalker/Night+Strangler+(MGM/rem
Video
Watchdog Magazine just recently caught up with that DVD and though the second
film was a bit darker than the first and the previous copy from the out of
print Anchor Bay version of the two films several
years ago. Then, Universal released the
sequel TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974 – 1975) and our review
offered:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/2888/Kolchak:+The+Night+Stalker+(1974-75+se
The color
was good and better than I felt many people were giving it credit for. Some thought it was awful, while others were
thrilled the show was out in such good copies.
I thought it played well for an older TV show, with the darkness not
bothering me as much. As a huge fan, it
was ironic it bothered so many others.
Now comes a Region 4 PAL DVD import set of the series which has better
color and is a bit clearer, even at the expense of detail, as this review will
show:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/9520/Kolchak:+The+Night+Stalker+-+The+Com
Those
complaining about the U.S.
edition might want to get it, though there is also a U.K. version (cover image now
included with this essay) that we have not covered, but may be closer to the
new Australian set from reviews we have seen.
Getting
back to our previous points: unlike the telefilms, each episode had different
qualities, and some were dark.
Sometimes, this was because the show was shot darkly on purpose and at
night, but with variances within episodes of the picture quality, it is hard to
say any one show was consistent. One
reviewer suggested the scenes of the monsters were being darkened because the
creature make-up and costumes might look lame or silly and the show has some
monster appearances that show some age (i.e., their werewolf (in a great
combination of Scooby Doo and counterculture mode), a landed flying
saucer in They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be, Richard Kiel
looking too much like Richard Kiel (and known so internationally as “Jaws” from
the James Bond films) as The Diablero in Bad Medicine, the
headless biker in Chopper or reptilian killer in The Sentry)
that one can fess up to. Another critic
said he had the old Columbia House VHS tapes and could see some more detail in
the tapes versus such darker scenes, but that is nominal as compared to the
Australian version and detail at what price?
Even those
who saw darkness could not agree. Some
said it was all the prints. Others said
it was the monster sequences. Some said
it was many scenes, but we said it was only on occasion. Even with THX and other video standards,
Video Black is a funny thing. Some
people simply cannot handle something being too dark, while others may simply
have their TV calibrated improperly. In
a day and age of a disturbing majority of film and TV productions going for the
degraded digital look and having all of its color desaturated, mutilated or
gutted out, Video Black offers unexplored new territory. This “gray ghetto” has skewed the issue, made
worse by those who cannot distinguish from origin al black and white stocks
(Classic Hollywood) with silver content and then cheaper, more commercial,
grayish version we have now. Even when
the prints have been a bit dark, TV movies or series, all the Darren McGavin Night
Stalker productions were shot exceptionally well and the series especially
was shot often at night versus the nearly obsolete day-for-night shooting. Note that none of the complaints were about
the look of the first telefilm, the only one to have any day-for-night work.
Yes, some
of the master materials form the Universal set might be late analog-compatible
composite D2 digital tapes, but they are NOT the same exact masters as the VHS
releases. Though we skipped reviewing
the VHS releases for obvious reasons, the later prints in order of how the
series ran were not as color rich as earlier shows, something the DVDs have
corrected nicely. The sharpness
improvements and range of color blow the VHS out of the water, so any overly
dark shots are a minor setback in comparison to the tapes. And most importantly, the MPEG-2 video
compression on all DVDs has notoriously had a Video Black problem, which is why
we address it in so many of our reviews.
When Disney (who owns the telefilms which they licensed to Sony/MGM) and
Universal redo the shows for digital High Definition in a few years, these
differences will be more obvious. Though
the DVDs in both cases are not perfect, they remain some of the best looking
and sounding classic TV on DVD to date.
Video Black is therefore a more complex issue in the DVD format and with
Blu-Ray and even HD-DVD arriving next year, their higher resolution will reveal
just how much of an issue this always was with DVD and it is one of the reasons
why so many titles have had to be reissued.
It is also one of the reasons the studios were not immediately behind
DVD in the first place, until it proved itself in the marketplace. So in any case, next time you read a review
(other than this site, of course) where someone complains about the picture
being too dark, take it with a grain of salt.
Otherwise, you might miss out on some great programming on DVD.
Yours
thoughts on the matter are encouraged.
You can write us on what you think about this subject. We’ll see about catching the third set ASAP
as we hope for a Blu-ray edition in the near future.
[This was
the site’s home page letter beginning in October 2005 and going into November,
updated February 2010.]
