Michel Hafner (3 July 1999):
I very rarely buy non 16:9 enhanced DVDs of CinemaScope format movies. The reason is that they almost always are disappointing or outright bad. "Armageddon" is no exception. Despite high marks in some areas, this DVD can not provide something close to a theatrical experience. I enyoyed watching this movie on the big screen. I did not enjoy it much on our IMDb projection system. The shortcomings are too obvious.
The film master used is clean and gives no reason to complain. Color reproduction and contrast are good, too. The noise and grain level is moderate, but too high for a brand new transfer of a brand new film. Finally compression is done with a high bit rate. I have not seen distracting artifacts. Some slight I-frame pulsing is occasionally visible in facial and other textures. So far so good. What drags the DVD down though are severe resolution problems and video artifacts.
This is a non 16:9 enhanced disc. It's not Criterion's fault that it is not enhanced. The transfer is from Disney, and since it is Disney's policy not to provide anamorphic NTSC DVDs to their customers for the time being, that is what Criterion got and can offer. You have to know that Disney does indeed have a 16:9 enhanced transfer of this movie (and a HDTV transfer as well) but prefers to sit on it. As a consequence of this we get 33% less scan lines than we would with an enhanced disc. And boy, it really shows. Close-ups are more or less acceptable, but medium shots and overview shots are outright fuzzy, clearly lacking the detail available on good 16:9 enhanced products. Add to that a good amount of distracting aliasing present in most scenes and there goes the cinematic look. Further add to that overenhanced edges with ugly white halos and what you end up with are images that look rugged, fuzzy and over processed. This is the typical video look that destroys any illusions of seeing a real film print.
At the risk of being repetitive, here it is again. Disney has a 16:9 enhanced transfer of "Armageddon", by the way one of the biggest films of 1998, and quite the opposite of an obscure art house movie. Disney does not use it. They prefer to go with a fuzzy version instead, which has severe aliasing problems. And Disney resharpens the images with digital edge enhancement that leaves objectionable white halos around many outlines of objects and people. The result is the dreaded video look instead of the sought after film look. Why Disney is doing this, I don't know. What I know is, that it makes no sense whatsoever, if providing the best image quality to your customers is one of your goals as an enterprise. But maybe that is not one of Disney's goals. Could it be that Disney is trying to sell us "Armageddon" twice? Now an inferior version and later a better 16:9 enhanced version? Time will tell.
I can fully understand people though that do not buy such products and prefer to wait until Disney offers the same quality we have grown used to from labels such as Columbia/Tristar and New Line. Disney can do it, too. They have proven it with the 16:9 enhanced PAL versions of _Rock, The (1996)_ and Con Air (1997) which look a lot better than the not enhanced NTSC versions. What are they waiting for?
If you have not had enough of "Armageddon" after watching the movie on disc one, there is a second disc waiting for you, full with supplements of all kind, such as deleted scenes, tons of trailers and behind-the-scenes footage. Image quality here is, what a surprise, mostly of the kind that makes disc one look like reference material.
