Mr Chuckles dot net

While shopping for my wife just before Christmas, I came across a copy of Robin Hood: Prince of Theives on DVD at Best Buy for $15. I know she liked the movie, being a classic chick flick, so I decided to pick it up for her. She did indeed like the purchase, and we watched it the next evening. I immediately noticed that the picture was very hazy and speckled, and a few minutes in I started to notice streaks, blips, and artifacing of the picture. It was almost always worse in dark scenes, and I quickly assumed that I had a bad copy of the DVD. However, a little reading online told me otherwise. Apparently, the standard DVD of this movie is a pretty bad transfer, and to really see a good picture, you need to buy the special edition. Well, I think that just sucks. Why should I be forced to pay $10 more for a movie to get a good picture? I would assume that there would be some minimum standard of quality for any DVD, but this is apparently not the case. I mean, this DVD looked like a 3 year old VHS tape that had been watched one too many times. I’m also unable to return this DVD, since it has been opened, and I’m sure exchanging it for another copy will produce the same result. So I guess I’m stuck with the crappy copy. I’ll have to pay more attention to so called "special editions" in the future.