I can’t tell if Nick Wrigley or Gary W. Tooze or some other contributor wrote DVD Beaver’s review of Fox Home Video’s new Grapes of Wrath Bluray, but the key statement, for me, is “there is…more information shown in the frame on all 4 sides.” Notice the three telephone poles on the left side of the DVD screen capture (top) of Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) walking along a country road, and then count the poles in the same image from the Bluray below it….four!

What I don’t understand is why did the person who mastered the previous DVD crop the image in the first place? There are four telephone poles in this shot, so why not show four telephone poles? What kind of professional would say to him or herself, “You know something? Three telephones poles are enough. Who needs four? What difference does it make? Eff the fourth pole!”

The review states that “the 1080p better shows the contrast with layering that brings out the strong density of the source. Significant amounts of detail are now visible that were black masses on the SD-DVD. The Grapes of Wrath has plenty of sequences shot in very low lighting and these greatly benefit from being rendered via the Blu-ray transfer. Fox’s dual-layering with high bitrate has provided a dramatically brighter and richer video presentation.”

In short, added visual info turns me on as much higher resolution, greater detail and “surprising depth,” etc.