Customer Reviews

NEW Piano - Piano (1993) (Blu-ray)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

By the artwork I believe this Blu-ray to be an import from Australia and the bad news is that it is a terrible transfer.

Having purchase this disk I offer the following review based on the assumption that it is the same product.

The back cover states that this disk has been mastered to 1080i Standard. Why on earth 1080i???????

Why was the film not re-mastered from film stock and to 1080p Standard?

The interlacing is apparent from the very start. The title sequence background has very obvious horizontal streaking. An ominous beginning.

This Blu-ray suffers from too much green and too much grain. Most of the red seems to have been filtered out thereby making the film darker than it should be. As a result the flesh tones are unnatural. Having seen the film in the theatre, to me this print has been made unusually dark for no apparent reason. The opening sequence where Ada McGrath is looking at the light between her fingers is strange because her fingers appear to be black, when in reality as anyone who has done this themselves know that the light through your fingers appear flesh coloured or red. This sets the darkness for the rest of the film. My Region 2 DVD has colours that are lighter, more red and natural looking (as I remember them from the theatre).

Viewed on a small screen (i.e. my PC) the picture generally looked OK, however on a large LCD TV all the shortcomings were accentuated and became unacceptable.

Another annoying feature of this disk is the omission of automatic subtitles for translations where required;
(i) When Ada and Flora McGrath are both conversing in Sign Language.
(ii) When George Baines or any of the Natives are speaking Maori.

Automatic translation subtitles were included in the theatre and also on my Region 2 DVD, however, on this Blu-ray; nothing.

There are selectable subtitles for the Hearing Impaired, but these have no translations for the Maori dialogue either.

The only thing that is an improvement over the DVD is the addition of a DTS-HD 5.1 Audio track. Everything else, I consider to be sub-standard for a Blu-ray.

What the manufacturers of this Blu-ray have done to this wonderful film is nothing short of a disgrace. A DVD up-scaled to 1080i would have been quite OK if the source material had been better. At US$34.99 I would expect a bit more effort should have gone into the making of this Blu-ray.

Being more than a little disappointed with my purchase, the next day I returned the disk and obtained a refund.

The 3 stars are for the Disk not the movie. The film deserves 5 stars.

My wife & I love the movie The Piano.. let's just say it strikes all the right chords and it falls into that category we have reserved for just a handful of special movies that are worthy of being watched over and over. Anyway when the Blu-ray version of The Piano was released(apparently Australia made this happen)we immediately bought it from Amazon and tried it. This was a very disappointing experience.. you get all worked up to see one of your favorite movies upgraded in glorious Blu-ray and suddenly it all turns into a big non-event. It absolutely would not work in my newer model Sony Blu-ray player.. no picture, nothing. I even went so far as to drive to the local dvd shop around the corner and they allowed me to try it in their Blu-ray player.. nothing. I quickly sent it back to Amazon for a refund. Later on I decided to take a chance and try out another copy of the The Piano (Blu-ray), this time I obtained it from a local dvd shop (the shop is actually one of the ones on Amazon's secondary market). The dvd packaging was identical to the first one I had obtained from Amazon(same Australian source) labelled "a world of stories dendy heart", it was noted however that there was a small black sticker on the package that states it is compatible with PS3. What about the average Blu-ray player that most people have? Anyway, I tried this second copy and you guessed it, it also did NOT work! I returned it for a refund. I give up. Why is this inferior type of product being sold and why doesn't Amazon address this. My recommendation is don't buy this product unless you want to be inconvenienced.

So far, this Australian Blu-ray is the only way to get Jane Campion's lovely film in high definition.

The upside is that it looks better than the non-anamorphic region 1 dvd from Artisan.

The downside is that it's a 1080i transfer AND sourced from a PAL master so it suffers from 4% speed-up which is very noticeable in Holly Hunter's voice and ruins the gorgeous Michael Nyman score that I know by heart.

It is also worth nothing that even though the disc is coded for Region A, B, and C that it does not play in my US-based Playstation 3. I could only get it to play in my multi-region Sherwood Blu-ray player.

So, if you're looking for a US-friendly solution to see "The Piano" in HD, this isn't it.

Upon trying to play the "PIANO" allegedly Blu-Ray disc, it would not load on a brand-new, functional Blu-Ray player.

I am very disappointed. The person who I gave it to as a gift is having her "techy" boyfriend check it out to see if it is salvagable by making a copy for now.

I would actually like a new copy.

Thanks,
Vera Scholl