Sunday, October 19, 2014

Miss Marple Blu-ray Preview


I have often said to people, if you are waiting for something to come out on Blu-ray let me buy the DVD and that will inevitably lead to a fully remastered Blu-ray release. It goes without fail. Just when I am waiting for a Blu-ray release of something, I buy the DVD only for the Blu-ray to be announced.  The latest in this journey is the upcoming release of the BBC series from the 1980s Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple.

It was only a few short months ago that I finally gave in and decided to buy the 12-disc R2 DVD boxset that I had been debating to buy since it came out a little over 2 years ago. Literally in a week or so that I bought it, news came out that a HD Blu-ray set of the first volume of episodes would be released at the end of October. Don’t get me wrong, this is awesome news!  I’ve read on forums that some people were concerned that this could possibly be taking the SD masters and up-resing  them to 1080p like the Blu-ray releases for Tinker, Tailor Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People. That is not the case. This was done by the same folks who did the awesome restoration on the House of Cards Blu-ray set.
Yesterday I received my review copy of the first volume and while my proper review won’t be out for a couple of weeks, I wanted to share some images from one of the episodes to show what the restoration looks like and what a restoration it is! The new scans are from the original camera negatives and they are beautiful. These were restored from 16mm film. They look great as you can see below.

I am slightly concerned that A Pocketful of Rye is not on this set since it is part of Series 1 but The Murder at the Vicarage is on the set which aired after. Someone in the know may have an answer to this but I am just going off of different episode guides, etc.  Maybe it was spacing issues on the discs or something. As long as we get it, I will be happy.
Below are comparison shots (to see clarity and quality) between the most recent R2 DVD release and the upcoming US Blu-ray set. As you will see, these are approximations. It’s mainly to get the gist of the difference in quality. Click on image to see the size difference. Top image SD and bottom image is (obviously) HD.























Here are some other shots to enjoy.
Please look for my full review of this Blu-ray set coming soon.
















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5 comments:

Jeff Flugel said...

Oh, I am all over this Blu-Ray set! Thanks for the screencaps.

Sergio (Tipping My Fedora) said...

Looks fantastic - I really hope they release this in the UK too!

felixunger said...

Does the back cover show the region coding? I really hope it'll play in Region B!

Greg said...

I am really sorry for not getting back to you sooner. I finally had a chance to check the Miss Marple set and I believe it to be region free. This is how I got to that conclusion. My Blu-ray player is multi-region (it's an Oppo) and I have to manually set the region I want to play. While set on Region B, it still played the Miss Marple set but titles that are marked as Region A such as my MPI Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes and Region A Space:1999 did not play while set in the Region B mode. It came up with a card that told me it was the wrong region.

Anonymous said...

In case you hadn't already figured this out, the new release order follows the order of the books.