Quote:
Originally Posted by old_tv_nut
"The Red Shoes" has some very nice color, making it a good demo piece, but IIRC, does not have the variety of greens and yellows that Oz has. (I don't have a copy to verify that, but I saw the restoration release at a SMPTE meeting a few years back.)
Use of Oz reminds me of the stereo hi-fi engineers at Motorola in the 60s, who used Tijuana Brass records for testing, not because they had the most beautiful music, but because they had instruments in every frequency range.
|
That's a nice analogy Wayne; "The Wizard of Oz" is like one of those hokey stereophonic demonstration records from RCA, whereas "The Red Shoes" or "Meet Me In St. Lois" or even "DuBarry Was a Lady" are like a good recording of a Mahler symphony or a Neruda concerto.
It's not terribly intuitive to understand initially (at least it wasn't for me), but in general, I have found that the gaudier the color, the worse the set can perform before I notice. Very subtle color, relying more accuracy in the color sections, can be terribly difficult to get correct on a vintage set. This is why I prefer "The Red Shoes"; any pile of garbage can make "The Wizard of Oz" look passable, whereas "The Red Shoes" is a veritable workout for the color demod sections.