Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

So I bought this last night, just happened to be at walmart past midnight and picked it up. They had two versions, the basic and a 2 disc collectors edition. The basic version was what I grabbed, didnt really want all the extra special features anyway. I get home and pop in the movie, yes it was 1am when I started it, but anyways I started the movie and noticed it right away that it looked very grainy on the opening scene and throughout the movie. Then about twenty minutes into it the Dolby Digital cut out the movie went to stereo output and then started to skip and freeze. Well I was already upset about the poor video quality then the disk is bad too. Hoping it wasn't my actually equipment I threw in another movie and all was well.

Today I decided to take the movie back and exchange it hoping that I had just gotten a bad copy and that would solve the problems. The sound seems to be ok, but the video is still horrible It just upsets me that the video quality is this bad, I know I'm spoiled having all the equipment to take advantage of a good picture and that the normal person wouldn't notice the difference, but this really bothers me.

Has anyone else that has the basic version noticed this, or has anyone gotten the Special Edition with just the movie on the first disk, how is the video quality on that?

Sorry for the long post, I'm just curios if anyone else noticed it.

I don't feel so alone now. I bought the deluxe set yesterday and noticed off the bat how poor the picutre quality is throughout the film. I own all the other Potter films and they seem to be pretty well done. I'm not sure what happened with this one.

hm that sounds really odd, I was gonna go pick this up this week too. maybe I'll wait for another press???

glad to see I'm not the only one that noticed it

I got the 2-disc version and it is excellent. In fact, I'm about to watch it again right now. I'm kind of a HP nut... I've had no problems with the sound or picture, so I'm hoping yours were isolated incidents.

~Chuck

Something that might interest your Harry Potter nuts..

From www.bash.org

<JonJonB> Purely in the interests of science, I have replaced the word "wand" with "wang" in the first Harry Potter Book
<JonJonB> Let's see the results...

<JonJonB> "Why aren't you supposed to do magic?" asked Harry.
<JonJonB> "Oh, well -- I was at Hogwarts meself but I -- er -- got expelled, ter tell yeh the truth. In me third year. They snapped me wang in half an' everything

<JonJonB> A magic wang... this was what Harry had been really looking forward to.

<JonJonB> "Yes, yes. I thought I'd be seeing you soon. Harry Potter." It wasn't a question. "You have your mother's eyes. It seems only yesterday she was in here herself, buying her first wang. Ten and a quarter inches long, swishy, made of willow. Nice wang for charm work."
<JonJonB> "Your father, on the other hand, favored a mahogany wang. Eleven inches. "

<JonJonB> Harry took the wang. He felt a sudden warmth in his fingers. He raised the wang above his head, brought it swishing down through the dusty air and a stream of red and gold sparks shot from the end like a firework, throwing dancing spots of light on to the walls

<JonJonB> "Oh, move over," Hermione snarled. She grabbed Harry's wang, tapped the lock, and whispered, 'Alohomora!"

<JonJonB> The troll couldn't feel Harry hanging there, but even a troll will notice if you stick a long bit of wood up its nose, and Harry's wang had still been in his hand when he'd jumped - it had gone straight up one of the troll's nostrils.
<JonJonB> He bent down and pulled his wang out of the troll's nose. It was covered in what looked like lumpy gray glue.

<JonJonB> He ran onto the field as you fell, waved his wang, and you sort of slowed down before you hit the ground. Then he whirled his wang at the dementors. Shot silver stuff at them.

<JonJonB> Ok
<JonJonB> I have found, definitive proof
<JonJonB> that J.K Rowling is a dirty DIRTY woman, making a fool of us all
<JonJonB> "Yes," Harry said, gripping his wang very tightly, and moving into the middle of the deserted classroom. He tried to keep his mind on flying, but something else kept intruding.... Any second now, he might hear his mother again... but he shouldn't think that, or he would hear her again, and he didn't want to... or did he?
<melusine > O_______O
<JonJonB> Something silver-white, something enormous, erupted from the end of his wang

<JonJonJonB> Then, with a sigh, he raised his wang and prodded the silvery substance with its tip.

<JonJonJonB> 'Get - off - me!' Harry gasped. For a few seconds they struggled, Harry pulling at his uncles sausage-like fingers with his left hand, his right maintaining a firm grip on his raised wang."



SheepStar

Sheep said:

...wang...

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Brilliant, LMAOROF.
Lets see how 'long' it takes to get your 'wang' rubbed off the page.

I had heard about the problems before the disc came out.. the review on IGN mentioned that the video seemed sub-par, especially for such a high profile release in a time when DVD quality is generally superb. Studios have gotten much better lately at creating the DVD masters, but they seem to have slipped up with this one.

I noticed it even on my old 27" TV (haven't upgraded yet.. hehe). The image wasn't as sharp and detailed as a lot of other DVDs I own. The film was also quite dark overall, which probably caused some problems for the compression, but they should have been able to overcome it.

In the end, this will just tide me over.. the HP films are on my short list of films that I'll be re-buying in HD once I get all the equipment to enjoy them.

I just watched the 2 disc set. Picture seemed fine ,however, it was very,very dark in places. Had to double check my display settings to see if something had changed. Sound was excellent, best of the lot so far.

just watched it, my roommate just said it looked bad & wondered if i had done something to the settings. he knows nothing of HT so if even he can see it there must be something up with the disc. it definately didnt look very clear to me like the other discs looked....

I thought the video and audio was sub par.

Im looking forward to buying and watching this movie tonight. From what I hear, it's the best of the bunch thus far.

I agree, bad video quality.Sound ok but just ok...

watched it last night... video was week and the sound was very muted

Personally, I don't think any of the HP DVD's are the last word in PQ; this one is no different. Dark, and at times grainy. But really, that was how it looked in the theater.

Thats said, Goblet is still my favorite thus far.

Brian

Not sure what you guys are hearing or not hearing but I had no issues with the sound at all. I had THX select2 engaged and soundstage was deep, lots of nice rear effects and ambient noise. Center channel was clear and distinct, Bass was thunderous, dragon scene was awesome. Weak or muted is not at all how I would descibe it, I would use the dragon scene for a demo in a heartbeat.

The use of the LFE was minimal and not implemented well when it was and the overall dynamics were poor in the Goblet of Fire which is why I say the audio was sub par and are the two biggest gripes I have with the sound track. Movies in this genre are expected (by me anyways ) to have very dynamic soundtracks that make use of the LFE track and Harry Potter failed to deliver. I had just watched Walk the Line the day before watching this movie and the soundtrack to Walk the Line has much better dynamics and is one of the better soundtracks I've heard in new releases lately. It outclassed The Goblet of Fire two fold for quality of soundtrack.

My daughter picked up the soundtrack for Walk the Line and it is actually quite good. In movie, Walk the Line was pretty good as well.

I was pretty disappointed with this Potter flick. The others didn't give you that "this is the middle of the story" feel; they had a story unto themselves. This one felt incomplete, and drawn out for what it presented. Definitely not one of the better films in the series.

j_garcia said:

My daughter picked up the soundtrack for Walk the Line and it is actually quite good. In movie, Walk the Line was pretty good as well.

I was pretty disappointed with this Potter flick. The others didn't give you that "this is the middle of the story" feel; they had a story unto themselves. This one felt incomplete, and drawn out for what it presented. Definitely not one of the better films in the series.

Click to expand...

Maybe I'm so hell bent on it being awesome because I love it (just like a Bose customer right?), that I see passed the bad video/sound. I did notice that the sound wasn't all that, but it was good enough for me. I think the 3rd one had the best sound. This one is by far my favorite though, and I've watched it 3 times in the last 4 days. I can't wait for the rest of them!

~Chuck

Well I threw the movie up on a Sony 60" SXRD today and I did notice the movie to be kind of dark, but I still think it looked pretty good... Oh well!

~Chuck