Digital Remastering Is The Ultimate In Videotape Quality

Not that many years ago, you could make a tape off HBO or Showtime that would be superior in quality to a pre-recorded cassette of the same movie. It might even be superior to a laserdisc of the same title.

But restoration fever has taken hold of the video business, and quality has become a selling point. Not only have missing pieces of movies such as "Spartacus" and "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" been put back. Films that once looked muddy or fuzzy on tape, or sounded like they'd been recorded underwater or near a buzz-saw, are beginning to look and sound like the original article.

"Digital remastering" has become the code term for tapes and discs that have been upgraded with the latest technology; in some cases, the video has been transferred directly from the original negative. "Letterboxing" means the original aspect ratio has been restored. "Surround sound" means you can hook your tape or disc to an elaborate home stereo system that mimics the directional effects in theaters equipped for 70mm and six-track stereo.

Diamond Entertainment Corp. of Anaheim, Calif., has made a specialty of inexpensive restorations on tape. The company pieced together Frank Capra's "Meet John Doe" from several decomposing nitrate prints and used the original camera negative for James Cagney's "Something to Sing About." These and other restored classics, including "The Third Man" and "My Man Godfrey," are available from Diamond for $9.95. (For information, call 1-800-966-3339.)

In anticipation of the July 3 theatrical release of "Terminator 2," Hemdale Entertainment is bringing out a remastered version of "The Terminator" later this week. The success of Kevin Costner's "Robin Hood" has inspired MGM/UA to release a digital tape of Errol Flynn's "The Adventures of Robin Hood" July 24. Disney's animated 1973 version of "Robin Hood" has also been digitally remastered for its July 12 tape reissue.

The restored version of Stanley Kubrick's "Spartacus" will make its video debut later this year, and six of his other films have just been digitally remastered on tape: "A Clockwork Orange," "Barry Lyndon," "Full Metal Jacket," "Lolita," "The Shining" and "2001: A Space Odyssey" (available for the first time in a "letterboxed" tape). "A Clockwork Orange" and "Barry Lyndon" will make their "letterboxed" debuts on disc this summer.

The restored "Citizen Kane," which has earned more than $1 million in just 20 theaters since early May, will be released on tape in August and on disc later in the year. At the same time, Turner Home Entertainment is releasing a tape of a 25-minute documentary, "Reflections on Citizen Kane."

Next month, Connoisseur Video Collection is bringing out tapes of D.W. Griffith's "Broken Blossoms," taken from a hand-tinted negative and accompanied by the original orchestral score, and Abel Gance's "J'Accuse," which was restored with Gance's cooperation in the late 1970s. Connoisseur's list of August releases includes Roberto Rossellini's "Open City," mastered from the original negative, which was acquired from Rossellini's family.

MGM/UA is bringing out a restored version of "Tarzan and His Mate" July 24. Interama has just reissued tapes of Marcel Pagnol's French-language "Marseilles trilogy" - "Marius," "Fanny," "Cesar" - with electronically enhanced English subtitles. Republic Home Video, working with the UCLA Film Archive, has restored and digitally mastered such 1940s films as "Pitfall," "The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry" and "The Red Menace."

Word has leaked out that Disney has done a frame-by-frame electronic restoration of "Fantasia" - the strongest indication to date that the film will be released on video - while Paramount is celebrating "Star Trek's" 25th anniversary with boxed collector's editions of the "Star Trek" movies, which will be "letterboxed" on laser for the first time.

Cynics might suggest that this is a new form of planned obsolescence. Most of these movies have been on tape and disc before, and serious collectors already have them in their libraries.

Laser fans who shelled out $100 or more for the "letterboxed" disc releases of "West Side Story" and "2001: A Space Odyssey" just two years ago are being invited to pay $30 for MGM/UA's new laser versions - the first video transfers to be made from the original 70mm negatives.

According to Video Review magazine, MGM/UA's new $25 laserdisc of "The Bandwagon" has been "digitally remastered from an interpositive manufactured from the original three-strip Technicolor matrices." But what if you're pretty happy with the old "Bandwagon" disc you bought for $35 three or four years ago?

Still, the situation is a great improvement on the early days of video, when perfectly dreadful dupes of "His Girl Friday" were flooding the public-domain market, and even Magnetic Home Video's official release of the 1963 "Cleopatra" was missing an hour.

Most of the classics have been released to video. Now it's time to do them right.

Video notes: Buena Vista Home Video will release Tim Burton's early-1980s shorts, "Frankenweenie" and "Vincent," before the end of the year. Never available on video before and rarely shown in theaters, ("Frankenweenie" won a prize for best short subject at the 1985 Seattle International Film Festival), they were made years before Burton's success with "Batman" and "Edward Scissorhands" (which makes its video debut Thursday) . . . RCA/Columbia has joined MGM/UA in announcing that it will bypass tape and release some vintage movies only on laserdisc. The first titles are "The Eddy Duchin Story" (1955), "Twenty Million Miles to Earth" (1957) and "Down to Earth" (1947). The company is also releasing "letterboxed" discs of "Gandhi," "Jagged Edge," "The Deep," "White Nights" and "Starman." Video Watch by John Hartl appears Sundays in Arts & Entertainment. You can get more video information by calling the Seattle Times' 24-hour free service Infoline. Call 464-2000 from any touch-tone telephone and when instructed, enter the category number 0911 to reach the Video Hotline. You may replay all information by pressing "R" (7); back up to previous information by pressing "B" (2); and jump over over current information by pressing "J" (5). ------------------------------------------------------------ New videos in stores this week

Tuesday - "The Triplets: Video Triple Single," "Donna Summer: A Hot Summer Night," "Olivia Newton-John: Down Under."

Wednesday - Jeremy Irons in "Reversal of Fortune," Peter Strauss in "Flight of Black Angel," Holly Hunter in "Murder on the Bayou," Hans Conried in "The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T," John Turturro in "Men of Respect," Barbara Billingsley in "Eye of the Demon," Michael Landon in "I Was a Teenage Werewolf," Peter Graves in "It Conquered the World," Jayne Mansfield in "Female Jungle," Charles Bronson in "Machine Gun Kelly," "Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones," "Cory Everson's Step Training Video."

Thursday - Sissy Spacek in "The Long Walk Home," James Mason in "Five Fingers," Stuart Gordon's "The Pit and the Pendulum," Tim Burton's "Edward Scissorhands," Rob Lowe in "Stroke of Midnight," Karen Black in "Mirror Mirror," Paul Hogan in "Almost an Angel," Wings Hauser in "Frame Up," "Payback," "Bare Essentials," "The Best of America's Funniest Home Videos," Richard Burton in "The Desert Rats," Tyrone Power in "A Yank in the RAF," Don Cooper's "Pocket Full of Songs," five new volumes of "Monty Python's Flying Circus."

New laserdiscs: "The Doonesbury Special," Mickey Rourke in "Desperate Hours," Tim Robbins in "Jacob's Ladder," Fritz Lang's "Spies," Jim Belushi in "Mr. Destiny," Roy Scheider in "The Fourth War," Cary Grant in "Gunga Din," "The Kremlin," "Zohra Is My Name," "We Shall Overcome," "Tom Jones Live," "Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World," "The Lone Ranger," "Twilight Zone, Vols. 1 and 2," "Howling II."