A nice chap from MGM Home Entertainment returned my call this evening regarding my previous post. He seemed quite upset about the error and is looking into it. Excellent response.
Following my discussion with him, I checked out another MGM title which I purchased earlier today as a $AUS14.95 cheapie. This one is Raging Bull. It also carries a ’16:9′ claim on the back. Oh, oh. It’s actually a non-anamorphic transfer. Since it’s 1.85:1, that means 411 vertical pixels of resolution instead of the 554-ish that 1.85:1 in anamorphic widescreen gives you. Also in error on the back: the claim that it has English, German, French, Italian and Spanish audio tracks when, in fact, the disc is English only. It also claims subtitles in 13 different languages. Sorry, it’s in English and English for the Hearing Impaired only.
A possibly interesting point: the volume label for this DVD is 56040D4. Most DVDs have some kind of text title as their volume label, usually the name of the movie. But both this one and The Great Escape have what seem to be hexadecimal number codes. Would this suggest that, like The Great Escape, Raging Bull was also an early release and this single disc version is identical to that one?