The Wraith DVD Comparison

ith the release of "The Wraith" on DVD with a superb widescreen anamorphic transfer, it gives fans of this cult classic the first opportunity since it's release in theaters to see and hear it clearly --in the way the director intended.

Since it's released this way only in the PAL TV format in Australia, we wanted to show you just how great this DVD is and how glad we were that we had a DVD player capable of playing it.

Picture

As we said in the review of the movie, region 2 DVD owners have seen a barely acceptable showing on DVD in normal pan and scan with a low contrast and washed out picture and hissy, muffled sound --not dissimilar to the video...

We could go on for ages about how watching this new transfer is like watching a new film, but I think the following screen captures of chapter 9, where The Wraith comes back for Keri say far more than words.

Fig 1: Unmodified* screen capture of the PAL region 2 DVD

Fig 2: Unmodified* screen capture of the PAL region 4 DVD

Sound

The sound of this brand new remaster is clearer and more dynamic, and lacks the hiss of the earlier video and dvd versions.

Tech Analysis NEW!

Jeff Knobloch knindly wrote in with the results of his analysis of the two DVD's:

"I have compiled a fairly detailed comparison of the UK and Australian versions of the movie "The Wraith" because I saw your site and thought it was worth doing, since this movie RULES. I own both, so I took captures, copied info, etc. so you can see the difference in quality. By the way PLEASE feel free to post any of this on the site. The differences are as follows:

Attribute	UK DVD	AU DVD	Notes
Video compression mode	MPEG-2	MPEG-2	Standard for all DVD's
TV system	625/50 (PAL)	625/50 (PAL)	Standard for some parts of Europe and Australia
Aspect Ratio
Source picture resolution	720x576 (625/50)	720x576 (625/50)	Standard for PAL disks
Frame Rate	25	25	Standard for PAL disks
Video Bitrate	8.50 Mbps	9.58 Mbps
Audio Type
Audio Bitrate	192 Kbps	224 Kbps

AS YOU CAN SEE, the video quality and sound quality and so on are CLEARLY better on the AU version. For example: Video bitrate of 8.5 compared 9.58 Mbps, which means about 11% better bitrate. It doesn't sound like a lot but it makes all the difference. As for the sound, both are supposedly "cd quality" but when you compare the bitrates, (even though both movies have a high sampling rate of 48khz) 224 is obviously better than 192. (by about 14%) Numbers like 11 and 14% don't sound like much once again, but wait till you see the pictures!

Editors Note: We attribute the massive difference in quality upon viewing to the quality of the source film and transfer to video. The UK DVD is clearly mastered from a poor video transfer whilst the AU DVD has a nice, crisp, widescreen transfer. I am told that if the source material is better, then often the bitrate can actually be lower and you'll still achieve a higher level of quality. In this case you have both.

Our eternal thanks to site reader Jeff Knobloch for taking the time and trouble to work on this tech stuff.

The Good News

Two bits of good news. First, the disc is apparantly not regionally coded. Our PC player set to region 1 did not complain. Your mileage may vary*.

Secondly, the disk is cheap. It will cost you only about $15 (or £10 for European users) !!!

*If playing on a home player, you will require one that will output the European PAL system or transcode to NTSC. Most offer one or the other. If watching the original PAL signal you will also require a TV or display capable of showing it. These are normally referred to as "multistandard" or "multiregion".