I’ve been seeing ads for 50 Horror Classics. A lot of the films are hard to come by. Some of them really are Horror Classics. But I have a question.
There are 60 hours of video on five DVDs. That’s 12 hours per disc. Just guessing, but I think the longest DVDs I have hold maybe six hours. How do they get 12 hours of video onto each disc?
They are probably using the DVD-18 format. Also, a higher compression rate since most of the movies are black & white and mono.
Ah. So they are, in effect, like 12 six-hour single-sided DVDs. I didn’t think about the lower density of B&W films. (I did see at least one colour film in the commercial.)
I mean 10 single-sided DVDs.
Hm. The commercial is on again. It says four DVDs. The website says five. And the DVDs they show have artwork on the front – single sided. (Of course, they appear to be generated and may not depict the actual product.)
Does the website have a complete list of the 50 films? If so, you might wanna check 'em against IMDB and add up the running times. I highly suspect that the “60 hours” boast is somewhat exaggerated (a common tactic for these kind of products.)
Six hours per disc side (assuming they’re DVD-18’s) is horribly compressed. That’s visually equivalent to VHS in SLP mode. Expect to see lots of artifacts, pixelation, and other problems that plague highly compressed DVDs.
I don’t even want to imagine what 12 hours per DVD would look like, if in fact they are single-sided!!
I think they are the same set I have on a 12 dvd set, two on each side of a dvd. The titles look similar some good ones and alot of cheese. If you like cheesy movies you’ll love these.
The website doesn’t have a list, but they do have a low-res version of the commercial where they rush the titles by quickly. They do say ‘full length’. That would be an average of 1:12 per film, so I suspect they have some short ones.
Do you have the title and the source?
If you check eBay you will see a number of compilations like this floating around – classic musicals, classic comedies, etc. A lot of these are (or contain some) movies whose copyrights have lapsed into the public domain (such as As The Clouds Roll By or My Man Godfrey) – the kind you can download freely from The Internet Archive. They’ve also been highly compressed to about 1/4 to 1/8th their original size and have a minimal menu and, as you probably guess, no extra features. The quality of these varies – typically the compression is quite noticeable in dark scenes and in the gradations of black & white movies in particular. In some of them you can even see the block noise from the extreme compression.
Still some of them are a decent deal if you don’t feel like spending the time to download the PD ones.
Amazon has a similar set. I’m not sure if it’s the same but there are lots of reviews.
Incidentally, 90% of the films in these compilations are mediocre movies that no one considers to be more than random, typical films of the era.
Get yerself a couple of smart-ass robots and have at them.
Those are 50 films with a total of 60 hours of motion picture.
That’s an average of 72 minutes per film. Doesn’t seem as if there were too many feature-length films in this collection.
The man wants some tentacles and robots, then let the man get some tentacles and robots! Back to Sundance with you!
Would I be incorrect in guessing that a black-and-white movie would only take up approximately 1/3 the space of a color movie of the same quality?
Exactly! Sounds to me as if some Fellini love wants to make us all get culture! :dubious:
Damn straight! 
Yes, you would be incorrect to assume that. 
In fact, it’s been my experience that B&W films are somewhat harder to compress than color films. Those shades of grey can wreak havoc with blockiness & pixelation, especially in dark scenes!
I have this in the 12 disk set. I also have the 50 Chiller classics, and have the 50 Science fiction classics on the way.
It’s a great way to catch older movies you want to watch.
All are available on ebay and Amazon.
A bit off topic, but a while back I got the DVD of Splitting Heirs for $5.99 from deepdiscountdvd.com. It’s the only DVD I’ve ever seen that has no menu at all. When you put the disc in, it just starts playing; and when the movie’s over, it loops back to the beginning and plays again until you eject it.