A River Runs Through It

ID: PILH-1006

Price: 25,000 yen

Discs: 2

Sound: B-Mode

Running Time: 2:03

Released: Pioneer

Robert Redford’s coming of age story about two brothers growing up in a strict household, but all sharing a common interest. Stars Tom Skerritt, Brad Pitt, and Craig Sheffer. A great film especially if you are into fly fishing and beautiful mountain scenery.

Amazing, simply amazing! This is one disc I had the lowest expectations for and so far is the best looking MUSE Hi-Vision laserdisc I have seen to date. The picture is very bright and vivid, while catching all the little details one would expect out of High Definition video. The scenes featuring the stunning Montana Mountains and rivers as a backdrop is so jaw dropping you feel you are there. Colors are bold and vibrant while not appearing over saturated. There is a lot of picture detail in each scene including dark scenes.

I found this disc surpasses the DVD version in both picture detail and color space. MUSE compression artifacts are basically absent, and only the slightest amount of film grain is present. It amazes me and disappoints me other film titles aren’t like this. This wasn’t the last film transfer to be released in the MUSE Hi-Vision format, but it certainly is the best.

One thing that stands out with this film transfer over many of the other movie transfers is the flesh tones of the actors. Most of the MUSE Hi-Vision laserdiscs, the actors flesh tones always had a slight green tinge or hue to them. Not in this film, which clearly shows MUSE Hi-Vision laserdisc movies can look outstanding. This is the bench mark for the movie category of this format, and it’s rather sad to see other film transfers fall short.

Sound is delivered via the B-Mode 48KHz channels. The sound is very warm and natural, with all sonic details rendered very well. The water effects are especially done very well that you tend to turn and look around and make sure a faucet wasn’t left on and running. There is very little surround details, and low frequency details are kept to a minimum, but none of this detracts from viewing of this film.

This is a winner, and I recommend this to anyone with a MUSE Hi-Vision set-up. If you don’t have a MUSE Hi-Vision laserdisc set up, I suggest you not view this title as it will make you reconsider obtaining a complete set up. This is what all film Hi-Vision discs should look like, and is by far the best looking movie disc available.