Screengrab on the left is from a Millcreek DVD; screengrab on the right is from Alpha Video. Same film and yet the scene is zoomed in on the Alpha Video. Why? because they had to crop out the MC logo seen at the bottom right corner of the image on the left.
As someone who has tons of PEPLUMS on DVDs from every possible company, I've noticed that PEPLUM flicks on Alpha Video DVDs are actually those from Millcreek Entertainment 50-pack but with the Millcreek logo cropped out. If you purchased any Millcreek Entertainment DVDs, you probably noticed that at every 10 minutes or more, the MC logo annoyingly appears at the bottom right corner. Well, I don't know if Alpha Video has a deal with Millcreek but it's obvious from these screengrabs taken from KINDAR THE INVULNERABLE that Alpha took Millcreek DVDs, digitally cropped the scenes when/where the MC logo appeared, tweaked the image a bit, repackaged them and sold them as new. The scenes before and after the MC logo appears are not cropped; they are identical on both AV and MC films. The red square on the screengrab from the MC source on the left shows where the crop needed to be in order to remove the logo and also maintain a 4:3 aspect ratio and that's what the image on the right looks like. It's amazing.
But there's more.
The Millcreek 50-pack is usually priced at $20+ (Amazon currently has it at $13) while Alpha Video sells the same titles in individual or in combos DVDs for around $5 to $8 (examples here and here). So let's calculate this: 50 titles divided by 2 = 25 combo DVDs. 25 times $7 = $175 to buy the same number titles found on the MC 50-pack!!!
In other words, avoid Alpha Video at all cost.
(I added the words Alpha Video on the image on the right; those words do not appear on the source image)
1 comment:
Thanks for the heads-up on the Alpha discs. And the MillCreek is already cropped from a widescreen print, it appears. Sad what they do to most peplum titles on dvd. Would be great if some enterprising company put out a series of restored peplum on dvd, like they've done in Europe.
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