Hello Friends!!
What do we know about the EMS release of MINNESOTA CLAY? How’s the image/audio? CUT or UNCUT?
Is the new VCI release supposed to be an improvement over the EMS release?
Blonde66
Hello Friends!!
I just realized that the EMS dvd doesn’t have English audio or English subtitles. Oh well…
Hopefully the VCI release is UNCUT. If so, I’ll have to pick it up.
Blonde66
Anyone buy this dvd yet?
Blonde66
I ordered it from deepdiscount.com for $7.38 with their sale going on. Waiting for them to ship it yet.
It ain´t gonna be nuthin´ new
Was bored so I compared the new US VCI Entertainment Minnesota Clay DVD to the others I have on a widescren tv:-
The Spaghetti Western Collection - Diamond Entertainment - 5 disc 13 film set US NTSC English audio only
Movie version - Italian Titles, sad ending only
Picture quality - widescreen letterboxed, when watched in “cinema mode” (like anamorphic) some poor definition due to compression to fit 3 films on the same side of the disc.
Extras: none (except 12 other films)
VCI Entertainment - US NTSC English audio only
Movie version - New English titles, sad ending - interestingly it has a spoken intro at the start of the movie, about how poorly prisoners were treated, not heard this intro before
Picture quality - anamorphic but very grainy and looks as though you are viewing the movie through a slightly dirty window?
Extras - happy ending non-anamorphic, US trailer anamorphic, Any Gun Can Play trailer non-anamorphic
SPO Entertainment - Japan NTSC English and Italian audio, Italian and Japanese subs
Movie version - Italian titles, happy ending
Picture quality - widescreen letterboxed but very good quality, even when viewed in “cinema mode” (like anamorphic) no loss of quality evident.
Extras - video 4:3 of original English titles and sad ending, US trailer widescreen letterboxed, posters, info in Japanese etc
No English friendly PAL version available 
[quote=“Provvidenza, post:6, topic:2372”]Was bored so I compared the new US VCI Entertainment Minnesota Clay DVD to the others I have on a widescren tv:-
The Spaghetti Western Collection - Diamond Entertainment - 5 disc 13 film set US NTSC English audio only
Movie version - Italian Titles, sad ending only
Picture quality - widescreen letterboxed, when watched in “cinema mode” (like anamorphic) some poor definition due to compression to fit 3 films on the same side of the disc.
Extras: none (except 12 other films)
VCI Entertainment - US NTSC English audio only
Movie version - New English titles, sad ending - interestingly it has a spoken intro at the start of the movie, about how poorly prisoners were treated, not heard this intro before
Picture quality - anamorphic but very grainy and looks as though you are viewing the movie through a slightly dirty window?
Extras - happy ending non-anamorphic, US trailer anamorphic, Any Gun Can Play trailer non-anamorphic
SPO Entertainment - Japan NTSC English and Italian audio, Italian and Japanese subs
Movie version - Italian titles, happy ending
Picture quality - widescreen letterboxed but very good quality, even when viewed in “cinema mode” (like anamorphic) no loss of quality evident.
Extras - video 4:3 of original English titles and sad ending, US trailer widescreen letterboxed, posters, info in Japanese etc
No English friendly PAL version available :([/quote]
So you’d rate the SPO one as the best?
Yes Novecento, I was surprised how good the SPO version still looks, so if you can track it down for a reasonable price I’d go for that.
The other two are cheaply available which may be in their favor.
The VCI is a new digitally remastered version but just doesn’t look quite as good as the older SPO disc IMO, however it is anamorphic and does have the spoken intro.
The boxset is great value if you don’t have some of the other films on it, but it doesn’t look that great if you use the “cinema” function (basically stretches the image to fill the 16:9 screen - a bit like anamorphic if I understand it correctly).
The spoken introduction :-
Drunner Prison 1883
After the border war between the United States and Mexico, the South West became a wild and lawless land.
The United States Government built prisons, or labour camps as they were called, to house men convicted of federal crimes.
In compounds such as these men lived under the most primative and brutal conditions, with inadequate shelter and food.
Drunner Prison was known as “the rat hole” and every man sent there died before his time was up.
In the history of the prison no convict had ever escaped. Those who survived temporarily lived a life of complete despair, without a shread of hope.
Do like the quality on the Japanese disc myself on this one aswell.
Doesn’t your player have a ‘zoom function’ provvidenza?
What you describe (‘cinema’ function) is not the procedure, I guess, that is used with an anamorphic transfer. An anamorphic transfer is ‘upset’. When you look at picture, it looks vertically stretched (all people look like Don Quichote, extremely tall and extremely thin). To get the proper picture, your TV turns to ‘wide’ (the anamorphic pic is unstretched): the people look normal now.
If you use a function to fill the 16x9 TV with a normal picture (all people looking normal), there are two possibillities: the TV (or DVD player, both may have similar functions) turns to wide - in that case all people start to look like Sancho Panza (or Fernando Sancho): short and fat; Or the TV/Player only stretches the sides - in the middle of the image, all seems normal, but the extreme left and right are stretched horizontally.
I have the St.Clair Vision 3DVD box, and it has a non-anamorphic, 1,78:1 (approx) transfer of Minnesota Clay. When I use the zoom function of my TV or Player, it zooms in and fills the screen with a normal picture (no stretched image). The image becomes a bit less sharp though
scherpschutter, I was using the “cinema” function on my TV and although I was expecting the “Fernando Sancho Effect” (hehe) as you described, the picture didn’t look deformed to me? Perhaps a little of the top and bottom is cropped? Or indeed it is stretched at the sides as you point out and I missed this. But if I use the TV’s “zoom” function I do get noticeable cropping of the image.
Of course it is subjective, I’m going to take some photos of the screen and see if I can get to the bottom of it, trouble is I have a really cheap camera, but I will try. 
[quote=“Provvidenza, post:11, topic:2372”]scherpschutter, I was using the “cinema” function on my TV and although I was expecting the “Fernando Sancho Effect” (hehe) as you described, the picture didn’t look deformed to me? Perhaps a little of the top and bottom is cropped? Or indeed it is stretched at the sides as you point out and I missed this. But if I use the TV’s “zoom” function I do get noticeable cropping of the image.
Of course it is subjective, I’m going to take some photos of the screen and see if I can get to the bottom of it, trouble is I have a really cheap camera, but I will try. :)[/quote]
Haven’t got much time today, but we could turn all this into a database article later this week
I know what you mean with a cropped picture when using the zoom function (this is probably caused by the overscan of your TV), but some players have a zoom function where you can zoom in step by step.
I’ll try get some comparison photos from the widescreen tv when it’s not being used for important things like cookery programs and soaps :
In the meantime here are some VIC Player snapshots new VCI vs. old SPO
VCI - 4.11 GB DVD file size - runtime 1:28:44 NTSC
SPO - 4.07 GB DVD - run time 1:27:41 NTSC
[quote=“Provvidenza, post:13, topic:2372”]
[/quote]
Contains spoilers 
Here are two screenshots from the St.Clair Vision disc (3DVDs/9movies)
[/URL]
[URL=http://img831.imageshack.us/i/vlcsnap2010101920h27m47.png/][url]http://img156.imageshack.us/i/vlcsnap2010101920h25m24.png/[/url]
![http://img156.imageshack.us/i/vlcsnap2010101920h25m24.png/[/url]](http://img156.imageshack.us/i/vlcsnap2010101920h25m24.png/%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
Picture quality suffers a bit from having 3 movies on 1 disc, but is not bad
The new VCI disc has a different credit sequence than this version: on the St.Clair disc they’re shown against a red background
I also have a copy of the Australian disc, but haven’t watched it yet
Shame it hasn’t been re-released like some of the other SPO titles.
;D
[quote=“scherpschutter, post:15, topic:2372”]Here are two screenshots from the St.Clair Vision disc (3DVDs/9movies)
Picture quality suffers a bit from having 3 movies on 1 disc, but is not bad
The new VCI disc has a different credit sequence than this version: on the St.Clair disc they’re shown against a red background[/quote]
Sound like it is exactly the same as on the Diamond Entertainment set, 3 movies on one disc also.
Yes, despite what the VIC Player snapshots look like, the SPO disc looks much better than the VCI on a Widescreen TV, I promise 
hmmm, those run times have me confused now???
[quote=“Provvidenza, post:17, topic:2372”];D
Sound like it is exactly the same as on the Diamond Entertainment set, 3 movies on one disc also.
Yes, despite what the VIC Player snapshots look like, the SPO disc looks much better than the VCI on a Widescreen TV, I promise
hmmm, those run times have me confused now???[/quote]
Many SPO discs have in fact, despite being NTSC, a Pal runtime. So the 1,27’41 min correspondents to a 92 min NTSC runtime. And that is the runtime of the happy-end version.
Thanks, that’s a relief!
Really bad shots and not exactly the same frame, but they give an idea of what I mean about the SPO disc looking better, taken from my widescreen TV:-
SPO disc viewed in TV “cinema” mode
VCI disc viewed in TV “auto” mode
[quote=“blonde66, post:3, topic:2372”]Anyone buy this dvd yet?
Blonde66[/quote]
me, very good picture! and also very good spaghetti! crisp and good sound too