Reader feedback
On DVD quality assurance — or lack thereof
The following email was received in response to our recent articles on PAL Speedup and the New Yorker DVD reviews of A Man Escaped and Lancelot du Lac. Reproduced with the kind permission of the author.
From : Glenn Kenny
Subject : PAL speedup: "fact of life"?
Date : May 30, 2004 10:24:36 AM MDT
To : Trond Trondsen / robert-bresson.com
Mr. Trondsen:
In your illuminating and upsetting article about the problems of A Man Escaped, you write, accurately:
"PAL speedup is needlessly inflicted upon NTSC material and this is widely accepted as a 'fact of life.'"
I recently had a conversation with Ian Ritchie of the U.S. company Fantoma, which recently issued first-rate discs of Fassbinder's Martha and In a Year With 13 Moons. We were discussing the dispersal of the materials restored by the Fassbinder foundation, and he informed me (not to my surprise, alas) that Wellspring's Fassbinder transfers were plagued by PAL speedup. He then informed me that this problem could be eliminated in the mastering/authoring process at an expenditure of only five hundred dollars, U.S.
Which makes the neglect of such companies all the more maddening.
It's particularly galling in the case of New Yorker, as Dan Talbot was responsible for bringing these films to U.S. audiences. Unfortunately, he has never "gotten" home video, as we used to call it, and apparently still doesn't.
Best,
Glenn Kenny
Premiere Magazine U.S.