Yesterday Universal Home Video announced a postponement of the Blu-ray release of Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection from the previous street date of 9.25 to 10.30. “Certain imperfections with the product have come to light and, as a result, we are delaying the release date to correct these points,” the release explained. “Our goal is to always deliver the best possible product to our consumers.”

As I understand it one of the imperfections that Universal is presently trying to correct is the color on the Vertigo Bluray (i.e., James Stewart’s aubergine-colored suit which used to be brown, the electric blue LSD suits worn at the inquest scene, the incorrect orange tint during the main-title sequence).

It’s a mark of character and integrity, of course, when a large company is willing to suck it in and admit error and try to improve a product before putting it on the market. But of course, Universal came to this realization only after voices outside the company (i.e., guys like Nick Wrigley and myself) saying this sucks and that looks awful and what’s wrong here?, etc. You’d think that if they had any pride they’d know what was wrong by their own reckonings and wouldn’t have to hear it from journalists. Alas, this is what major corporate video outfits are like — i.e., basically hermetic and ultra-political and often in denial when technical problems are evident. They don’t want to know about problems that they don’t want to know about unless they’re forced to deal with them.