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It has been a joy watching restored favourite cult films on blu-ray recently. My memories of many choices have been VHS rentals which were notoriously poor high contrast transfers and with low resolution. Seeing them again on better formats helped. Laserdisc was more filmic... 1/
... and offered a more sympathetic and truer version of the film on physical media albeit a bit soft due to resolution and CRT TVs. Around 1998 DVD was the much lauded next evolution of home cinema and it was a vast improvement but again suffered from high contrast transfers. 2/
Worse, some of the releases just seemed to be HQ transfers of the previous poor VHS releases but with added sharpness which hurt the filmic appearance previously seen with laserdisc. Thankfully we started to get a lot of the additional content from the LD era and commentaries. 3/
It opened up a collectors market for special editions and more attention was given to the transfers and content. Later releases were produced with more care and older films were given seriously needed restorations. Sadly, the prices also increased but that's the trade off. 4/
Now, I can enjoy a lot of early films I missed at the cinema either as near to the version released. The projector helps create a similar vibe too but the quality of the transfers is what impresses the most. Watching 2K or 4K transfers from the original negative is a joy. 5/
Still haven't upgraded to 4K but looking forward to another welcome return to each cult film as new. Companies like Anchor bay, Arrow and others offer quality releases of my favourite films with careful restoration and content. It's like watching them for the first time. 6/
It has been quite a journey through the various resolutions and physical media over the years. From VHS, laserdisc, UMD, DVD, HD-DVD [which I loved] to blu-ray and looking forward to making that leap to 4K in the future. Already got my favourite films lined up on my Wish List. 7/
