DVD details for
Heat (1995) More at IMDbPro »

Michel Hafner (29 December 1999):
This DVD edition of Heat (1995) by Warner Brothers, certainly one of the best movies coming out of Hollywood in 1995, is quite good, but not entirely up to the challenge.
The film master used is clean apart from a speckle now and then, and images are steady. Contrast and color rendition are good. The many dark scenes are rendered mostly with deep blacks and good shadow detail. Some shots have dark grey instead of black. Colors look natural. There is a distracting color balance shift from colder to warmer in chapter 17 at 1:36 which shouldn't be there. Sharpness is good but uneven. Some shots are very sharp, others pretty fuzzy.
So far no serious complaints. But unfortunately we aren't done yet. The noise and grain level is too high for a new transfer. It's not yet bad but quite noticeable in many scenes. To reduce it digital noise suppression has been applied. Not with the necessary care, I have to say. Noise reduction artifacts are present in most scenes, usually more or less slight, but occasionally easy to see and distracting. Probably the worst examples are in chapter 8. From 3:24 to 3:27 the lamp is jittery because of it, the following shot shows the glass bricks on the right oddly flickering up to 3:44, then it's again the lamp that flickers, pretty severely shortly before the shot ends around 3:59. From 4:00-4:05 there is ghosting around the black outline of Diane Venora (try to step through these seconds once for an eye opening experience). Problems like that are in many scenes, textures flicker slightly and look unnatural. A pity, since current hardware can reduce noise and grain without producing such artifacts, IF the parameters are carefully adapted to the shots. This has not been done here. A a consequence this DVD gets the lowest rating in the video artifacts category, also because edges are over enhanced in many scenes. Compression is good. I have seen no distracting problems (some mosquito and general noise, as usual).
Overall this is a good looking DVD from Warner Brothers, but it's nowhere near reference quality. Reports to this effect from other sources are simply false. There are a couple of shots that look great, but image quality overall is uneven and a bit disappointing. "Heat" is an important film. This DVD does not do it full justice, but it's good enough to often give a film like experience and involve you in the arresting drama.