I am starting to wonder if studios are deliberately releasing poor transfers in an effort to get more people to move to BluRay.  Certainly if transfers became low bitrate, then the differences would stand out more and convince more consumers to move to BR.  I have always been very happy with my upconverting DVD player, and the quality of most of my anamorphic DVDs.  Recently however, some of the ones I have watched have had very questionable quality.  For instance, Rob Zombie's Halloween II.  Maybe he was going for that 1981 vibe or something, but the transfer was terrible.  Dark scenes were grainy, it looked slightly better than some of the VHS-to-DVD martial arts flicks I bought off of eBay from Hong Kong (ie. crap).

There have been a few other recent releases where I thought the same thing.  I am worried this is a subtle studio attempt to get me to go BR.  I am not against BR, eventually I am sure I will eventually move to that format, but I am definitely not into double dipping so I am not going to upgrade my collection.  Also, I am a cheap bastard and rarely pay more than 10 dollars for a DVD, usually 5 bones.  I get them at pawn shops, eBay, Previously Viewed at Blockbuster, the big sale bin at Canadian Tire, etc.  30 bucks for the same movie on BR just doesn't interest me.

Thanks,
R.

Ah, thanks for that link!  That explains a lot :

"Rob Zombie shot 'Halloween II' using 16mm film stock to deliver an overly gritty and grimy presentation."

R.