New Monty Python Restoration?

[antoniod]

I've been watching FLYING CIRCUS on the US's IFC channel, and I've noticed that the tapes look clearer than they've looked in a while, and there's no film dirt visible on the film/animation inserts(in the 3rd series, anyway).Have these gotten a new digital going over?

[Matthew Brannigan]

Yes, I understand that IFC are using the newly remastered copies, they are certainly a lot better than the awful blurry copies that PBS viewers are used to, especially if you watch them on the IFC HD channel. When I first moved to the USA I was quite surprised how poor most of the BBC shows look on PBS; goodness knows where they get the tapes from.

[John Wall]

Could it be a better 625-525 line conversion ?

[RWels]

Apparently the picture has been cropped a fair bit though. But I haven't been able to verify that myself yet.
Now all we need is a DVD release WITH bonus material.

Jul 18, 2010 5:36:22 GMT Matthew Brannigan said:

Yes, I understand that IFC are using the newly remastered copies, they are certainly a lot better than the awful blurry copies that PBS viewers are used to, especially if you watch them on the IFC HD channel. When I first moved to the USA I was quite surprised how poor most of the BBC shows look on PBS; goodness knows where they get the tapes from.

Ah, but don't forget, it was on a PBS tape that the missing Party Political Broadcast was recovered. So it isn't all bad.

[Matthew Brannigan]

Good point! Without PBS's enthusiasm in the 70's and 80's, given the BBC's lackadaisical attitude, I would bet that by now there would be either be a few episodes missing or many only on b/w telerecordings.

[davidmorgan]

Jul 18, 2010 22:31:39 GMT RWels said:

Apparently the picture has been cropped a fair bit though.

Indeed, IFC's HighDef channel zooms into the image to fill the widescreen frame, rather than center the original's full frame in the center of the HD screen, so information on the top and bottom is lost.

[RWels]

Apparently the latest python DVDs are cropped as well.

[davidmorgan]

Zooming into the 4:3 original frame to fill a widescreen, so the top/bottom are trimmed off.

[Simon Smith]

"Some of the Corpses are Amusing" website, a great job very well done by some excellent people.

Basically the third series was re-edited by the humourless BBC types who edited out whole sections, then stitched bits together to make episodes, thus losing a lot of the Python feel and humour(eg. later sketches making passing references to ones earlier in the same episode).

[Simon Smith]

Me again.

Try web.ukonline.co.uk/sotcaa/sotcaa_python.html?/sotcaa/pythonpages/python_tv_05.html

I think that's the right page, anyway, go to the bottom and read through the 10 links/pages, and it's all explained.