Angel and the Badman

Angel and the Badman has always been a favorite movie to me. Angel contains humor and drama, action and romance. The movie can be enjoyed by anybody regardless of age or gender. I have a well-worn VHS copy and wanted to acquire the movie on DVD and enjoy DVDs superb quality. Now, after several months delay, Barns and Noble finally delivered a copy issued from the Roan Group. Unfortunately, this DVD does not meet with the DVD promise. What could be wrong with Angel and the Badman? The first thing I noticed was the soft image quality. The video lacks the high detail one expects from digital playback. The contrast range is compressed and requires fiddling with display controls to get almost acceptable brightness range. Another interesting and annoying issue is the constant blue and pink sparkle in and otherwise black and white image. The playback seems to jitter slightly as if the framing is not consistent. How could this be? When played back on a PC the answer becomes clear. At the top of the image the observant and knowledgeable viewer will spy the first line of scan beginning part way across the screen. This is an artifact of interlace scanning and indicates this DVD's video source originated from a VHS tape---not the original film print. This is a very sloppy conversion with apparently no attention to details important to creating a quality product such as captioning or alternate languages. Don't waste money on this DVD from the Roan Group---buy a VHS tape instead.