Alien Resurrection (1997) [0032584]

Don't know if it's allowed to post a review of just the video part of a laserdisc... if so, you can continue to read this review!

Few days ago I captured this DTS LD (just video) to make a comparison between its colors and BD ones; today I wached the raw capture (just the black levels were lowered a bit) so I thought to report my impressions; I watched it along with BD audio, so of course I'm writing just about the video, even if I'm pretty sure DTS audio will rock!

Let's start from the color grading: it is really different from the BD, and *maybe* the master used for this release used a silver retention processed print. Colors are punchy, alive, in comparison to dull ones found on the BD; skin tones are almost every correct, not natural, as it's expected from a movie set inside a starship full of artificial lights.

Some colors "pop up" from the usually brownish, or other dark tones, background, like for example the green water and the yellow clone tanks. And they seem to never bleed, maybe a SuperNTSC encoder was used.

Resolution is good, on par with the better titles on LD; watched it on a 42 inches PDP, and, apart few shots with a lot of diagonal lines, which were rendered with jagges, as expected, the rest of the movie was very sharp; I noted it in particular when Ripley watch the girl when is taken by the alien, and a lot of small bubbles are emitted by that girl... well, even the smallest bubble is well rendered!

There were very few occasional dropouts - I counted maybe three or four whites one - maybe there are black ones, but they passed unnoticed. There are evident traces of rainbows in tiny colored details; I think that using a very good 3D comb filter probably it will be possible to avoid this problem. Also analog noise is present, but noticeable only in few scenes.

EDIT: Forgot to mention: even with low levels not adjusted, the contrast (luminance dynamic range) is higher than BD in many, many shots...

So, thinking that it is a movie shot mostly in the dark, and with an higher saturation than the usual ones found on laserdisc, the quality of this title is very good; often I completely forgot that I was watching a raw laserdisc capture...

EDIT2: THX AC3 is basically the same; when levels are changed (lower black level, higher white level) and the saturation increased, they are identical. Again, no audio, sorry...

Aliens (jap LD) and Alíen resurrectión i can confirm they have the correct director intended color grading

In fact cheap VHS releases could be used
to see how white and whiter skin tones were originally.....the wider the gamut is in some HD formats the more difficult the white point to balance it seems to be in some releases...

Some amazing BD releases for me.....Exorcist, Conan the Barbarian

Sorry for giving this thread an unwanted resurrection, but I recently won this LD on YAJ (using Buyee) for a reasonable price. Luckily, I am able to playback DTS tracks on my setup, albeit only two channels, and so far the track sounds pretty good, and it's actually quiet throughout most of the film. It's been a while since I spun the Blu-ray, but I would believe your assessment about the colors. I like the LD for now.

My video chain is a Pioneer DVL-H9 outputting S-video, to a Retrotink 5x pro outputting 1080p, then finally to an Onkyo AVR outputting to the TV in 4K.

Tech analysis aside, Resurrection got some seriously bad critic reviews.

For my part, I absolutely loved the concept and the all star cast.
Did not even see the ending climax coming.

After seeing Alien : Romulus, which I am still reserved as far as my opinion .
Loved some parts however some aspects were pretty sad in retrospect.

In comparison regarding the entire franchise, Alien 3 was my fav. Fincher had an impossible task and he delivered in spades. The director cut in particular was stellar imo. Dutton rocked his role.

Resurrection stood alone in certain aspects. The bio-weapon concept was epic. A "floating" lab that burns up from orbit reentry.
Ron Perlman was a fun addition to the cast with his ability to create a loving atmosphere !
Loved his role.

That's it, off topic which is my way frequently.
Apologies for that !

Cheers to the membership mates !

Keep it real out there !