Gangs of New York (WMV-HD-DVD)

Release date: 02.02.2005

Get it at a good price at Amazon.de

Story

In the midst of the 19th century two men are standing vis-à-vis on Paradise Square in Five Points / New York. They are the leaders of two rivaling gangs in this quarter: Priest Vallon, leader of the "Dead Rabbits", a gang of irish immigrants, and William "Bill the Butcher" Cutting head of the "Natives". These two gangs are storming at each other and resulting in a bloodbath. The son of irish gang leader Priest Vallon has to witness how his father is slaughtered by Bill the Butcher...

After an absence of 16 years, Vallons son (Leonardo diCaprio) returns to Five Points and is seeking revenge for his father's death. He wins Bill's confidence. Thereby he "hits" upon the pickpocket Jenny (well played by Cameron Diaz) and both get to know each other really well.

This masterpiece made by Scorsese is nothing for action freaks. This movie places emphasis on the story and incredible brutality. There is also a little romance in it. Everyone, who valuee historically correct details, superb sceneries and costumes will get their money's worth. Although the movie is sometimes lengthy, it is a gigantic experience nonetheless.

Video

Overall, the film transfer was done quite well. Although having a lot of dark scenes, the movie is rich in details, which are even visible in scenes with illuminating fire or candlelight.
The depth of field is out of focus to some extent, but this could be intended to be for stylish reasons. Some scenes tend to show slight noise. Despite a lot of camera pannings blur stays in a certain humble range. This is best recognizable when making a freeze image during fast pans.

he complete movie is kept in shades of brown, which possesses its own charme. Thus making the colourfull wardrobes of the "higher society" more outstanding and these are really rich in colouring.

However small black bars [07] on the right or left hand side are visible in some scenes, which had traces of dust at the edges additionally. Otherwise there is hardly dirt or other damage to the video.

You are searching for compression artefacts in vain. When freezing the image in the scene with the mega explosion you can guess a light macroblocking. But this is not oberservable during the running movie.

Once again a resolution of 1280*544 pixel at 24 progressive frames per second was chosen, the same as on the prior WMV-HD-DVDs. The datarate is almost 6100 Kbit/s. That is a comparable rate to the normal DVD, though the images are proving that the right compression is capable of superior quality in high resolution. Therefore you do not necessarily need Blu-ray or HD-DVD.

By the way, there is also technical compositing masterpiece, which is presented at the end of the movie: A view from the cemetery on New York City in the flux of time. Really worth seeing!

Audio

Despite beeing in WMA 5.1 and having a datarate of 384 Kbit/s the sound is overwheling. It has been managed to let the smallest details be audible from a corner of the room every now and then. Mainly the fight and pub scenes with atmospheric environment noises are output through diverse surround speakers and this trumps are really an enjoyment for surround fans. Admittedly the sound level is so intense that one has to readjust on certain occasions.
The DVD offers a German and an additional English soundtrack. This is also encoded in WMA 5.1 and 384 Kbit/s and the quality of both mixings can be rated as equally good.

A HTPC was equiped with the soundcard "Soundblaster Audigy 2ZS" (THX certified) for playbacking the audio via three stereo/cinch cables with the THX-av-receiver "Yamaha RX-V1400RDS".
The original Windos Media Player, which is included on the DVD, was used.

But there is again the alternative to encode WMA sound to Dolby Digital in realtime to feed the receiver through the SPDIF. But for that you need further resources and this should not be done with weak computers, because this requires about 10% more CPU power.

Extras

There are no extras on this WMV-HD-DVD. Just the menu is slightly animated, so that the chosen chapter preview thumbnail will be zoomed in.

DRM

Also this time a copy protection is used. When the Windows Media Player or an alternative player does not automatically querie the licence, one has to do the slightly more complicated method by using the Windows Explorer (or any other data manager) and double clicking the "Licgen.exe" in the root directory of the DVD and gain the licence. This trick also works when copying the movie on the hard dik drive. This offers the advantage of putting back the DVD into the rack and not getting irritated by the bothering DVD-drive. This copy can be viewed for five days before putting in the DVD again and validating a new licence. By the way, it does not work to copy the "Licgen.exe" on the hard disk drive, either.

Alternative operating systems like Apple and Linux are also fully ignored.

Conclusion: The WMV-HD-DVD "Gangs Of New York" is a brilliant movie with superb video quality and excellent 5.1 surround sound. A pure home cinema expereience! Only the black borders are annoying, because they are striking on the canvas. How is that explainable? Did somebody operate the scanner wrong? The testing was done on following softwareplayers for WindowsXP: Originally included WindowsMediaPlayer -YES- WindowsMediaplayer 9 -YES- WindowsMediaplayer10 -YES- ZoomPlayer WMV Pro v.4.50 beta 4-Demo -YES- BS-Player v.1.00 Built 1.00.811 -No- Power DVD v.4 -No- During our testing of ZoomPlayer the licence had to be validated again and the file had to be restarted after some scene windings with the timeline. Only the "Bill" knows why! Your opinion on this movie and our review is desired. Please feel free to discuss it in our forums at Review: Gangs OF New York (WMV-HD-DVD).

I want it !

Editorial commentaries

Thomas Richter "Rosine, the revenger": After several deadline shifts "Splendid Film" finally released this top movie on WMV-HD-DVD on 02/02/2005. Video and audio are on a high level apart from a few exceptions. Luckily, extras were abandoned, HDTV-fans just want to have the movie instead of another making-of. Even the animated menu is not necessary in my opinion, because you just start the movie and access some chapteres at most. When I go to the cinema I also can't zap in the menu before the movie starts. Rather the best possible quality, less features!

This DVD presents once again what is technical possible today and that we do not necessarily need a new storage medium. We quickly need a player, which can play these disks before our wifes will block us buying new movies because of the intricate handling. Nobody can explain, why our Bill "The Windumb" Gates blames us honest fans and costumers potential bootleggers and urging us to DRM and annoying activations. The movie industry surley has its interests in DRM to increase the revenue. And Bill collects the charges for the licences without further ado. Perhaps these responsible people should think about to mark down the prices! Because every little helps.
It would be great to watch a movie on the portable DVD-player or laptop at the beach and when finished to use the disk to play frisby.
Hence I appeal to you: Agitate against DRM and for the continuity of WMV-HD-DVDs, but without DRM!!

Andreas "the horn" Hornig: This is High-Def's longest HD-movie until now and had almost been published on two splitted DVDs. But as this single-disk production proves, this low audio and video datarate, compared to a "normal" Dvd level, can even achieve a better result. At least this spares us a bothering DVD changing.