Alien Anthology [Blu-ray]
- Condition: New
- Format: Blu-ray
- AC-3; Box set; Dolby; DTS Surround Sound; Dubbed; Subtitled; Widescreen
Brace yourself for a whole new breed of Blu-ray: Four powerful films…eight thrilling versions…in dazzling, terrifying, high-def clarity with the purest digital sound on the planet. Two bonus dics and over 65 hours of archival and never-before-seen content, including the totally immersive MU-TH-UR mode feature, makes this definitive Alien collection!
: Which of these blu rays should I buy to use as demo discs? Help?
I just got a ps3 for christmas as well as an HDMI cable so I’ll be able to play movies in 1080p and am looking to buy some good “demo discs” to test the performance of my home theater system. The following is a list of some of the movies I’m looking at and was hoping you could recommend around 3-4 of these movies and 2-3 of the boxsets, especially if you own a copy of one of these blu rays and really enjoy it. Thanks! Also, if you have a blu ray with excellent audio and video quality that isn’t on my list that would be essential as a demo disc, please list it!
Movies
Apocalypse Now: Full Disclosure Edition
Avatar: Extended Collector’s Edition
Blade Runner (5 Disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition)
Casino Royale
The Dark Knight
The Exorcist: Extended Director’s Cut
Inception
Iron Man
Modern Times: The Criterion Collection
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
Star Trek
Sunshine
Up
The Wizard of Oz (3 Disc Emerald Edition)
Box Sets
Alien Anthology
Back to the Future Trilogy
Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series
The Godfather-Copolla Restoration
Life
LOST: The Complete Collection
Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy
Planet Earth
Toy Story Trilogy
Best answer:
Answer by bbt91945
This all depends on your personal taste of movies. Also keep in mind that you can not see the difference between 720P and 1080P in screen smaller than a 46″. You did not mention the audio system you have for the surround sound. The action movies will provide you more sound effects for the rear channels than most movies. There are not many blu ray disc movies with the the 7.1 surround sound. Hope this will help you out.
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Outstanding! A review by someone who already owns it (no, really). [UPDATED 6],
My local electronics store already had the Alien Anthology bluray on the shelves this Tuesday (October 19). At first I thought the street date had been changed at the last minute (it wouldn’t be the first time). But it appears that all the websites still list the release date for next Tuesday (Oct 26), so I guess my local store must have made a mistake (it wouldn’t be the first time for that either).
In either case, I already got my hands on the Alien Anthology set, and I thought that Alien fans who are still trying to decide whether it’s worth the upgrade before next week’s proper street date might want to know the following:
(Note: This review assumes that most of you have already seen the films, and there may be some very mild spoilers.)
[UPDATE: I've added LOTS more detail about the extras, including the extended Alien 3 doc. Find this under PROS section (3). In PROS section (1) I've also answered some questions from another customer.]
[UPDATE 4: More specifics on why the 3rd and 4th films' picture quality won't wow you as much as the first 2 films'. Under Cons section (1)]
[UPDATE 6: I've found more new extras on disc 6, including new deleted scenes from Aliens. Details in PROS section (3).]
PROS:
1) All four films look very good on bluray, and much better than the earlier DVDs, with the first two films looking the best. Alien almost looks brand new. Aliens still looks its age (sometimes), but it enjoys the single biggest improvement in picture quality in the jump from DVD to bluray that I have ever seen for a classic film (or pretty much any film for that matter). While there are still plenty of shots that still look soft or a bit grainy by today’s standards, the entire film looks sharper than ever and the grain is far less distracting. Some sequences, like the marines’ initial investigation of the abandoned colony, almost look like they could have been shot this year. The color quality and detail visible on the panning shot from the planet to Ripley’s orbital hospital room at the beginning of the film totally blew my mind. Detail and texture are excellent throughout and I saw no signs that DNR had been overused. After experiencing Aliens on bluray, I wonder how I was ever able to tolerate the picture quality on the DVD.
[UPDATE: The Theatrical and Director's cuts of Alien both look equally great. It's my understanding that Ridley Scott made some minor alterations to things like contrast, etc. in the Director's cut, but I frankly didn't notice any difference between the two. I haven't watched the Theatrical cut of Aliens in years, as I much prefer the Extended version, so I may not remember which all scenes were added for the latter. However, I did not notice any correlation between picture quality and whether a scene was in the Theatrical cut or added in later, so I assume that they all come from the same source and are of more-or-less equal quality. If I have a chance to look at it again soon and do notice any differences, I'll post another update.]
[UPDATE 2: I've watched the first 25 minutes of the Theatrical cut of Aliens and can confirm that the picture quality is identical to the Special Edition. In other words, it will cause longtime Aliens fans' jaws to drop off right before they become temporarily blinded by its awe-inspiring glory. This is truly the greatest film restoration I've ever seen prepared for the transition from DVD to bluray. Because of the film stock used, I didn't think it would ever be possible for the film to look this good.]
2) All four films also sound greatly improved compared to the DVD. This is especially true for Alien 3. Dialogue which was hard to make out on the DVD is now much clearer and easier to understand. I did notice some audio sync issues with some of the third film’s dialogue, but I think these are misalignments which were already present on previous DVD releases, and may therefore be inherent to the original film.
3) The new extras are extensive and excellent. Within the first couple minutes of sampling the new enhancement pods on disc 5, I learned a couple of tidbits I had been unaware of before. These are a wonderful extension of the already superb making-of documentaries. The MU-TH-UR interactive mode is easy to use and will probably prove helpful to those who are only interested in seeing certain parts of the behind-the-scenes material, but I haven’t used it much. I’ve only sampled a couple minutes of the trivia track portion of this feature (titled “Datastream”), but so far it appears as though it will mostly be a re-hash of material you can find in disc 5′s documentaries. The set also includes ALL of the extras from EVERY previous release of these films, as promised (at least as far as I can tell), in addition to the extended Alien Evolution and Alien 3 documentaries.
[UPDATE: The extended Alien 3 documentary includes...
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|The Ultimate Alien set,
The “Alien Anthology” may have taken some time to come to Blu-ray Disc, but it has been worth the wait. We received the set directly from Fox so are able to give readers an early sneak peek. The films themselves are presented in both their theatrical versions and extended “special edition” versions, Even Alien3 comes in a half-hour longer version here, and they’ve gone to the trouble of re-recording bits of dialog and sound effects to clean up the audio from the restored portion to match the rest of the film. It is nice to have the choice to watch either cut of all four movies, and the SE version of the second film really adds depth to the story and the characters making a great film even better.
Each film gets the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 treatment (the first two films’ theatrical cuts are also available in Dolby Digital 2.0 and 4.1 channel mixes). Sound is excellent overall, though perhaps not quite as bombastic as one might expect from such action-heavy titles. It seems like more should be coming from behind us at times, and the low bass rumble of the weapon fire and explosions is lacking ever so slightly in deep extended bass. But these are fairly minor criticisms as the sound is clean, imaging is precise, and dialog is clear and articulate throughout. The video transfers are clearly superior to the DVDs that came before them with rich detail, nicely saturated colors and deep blacks. H.R. Geiger’s creepy organic art on the derelict alien ship in the first film has never looked so detailed and powerful and you can practically count the pores on young Sigourney Weaver’s face. There are still minor instances of murky blacks, some ringing and softness here and there due to mild use of noise reduction, but overall, the transfers are pristine, considering the age of the films. The first two films, though the earliest, look the most improved here – no surprise considering they have been painstakingly remastered at 4K resolution for this release. Only “Aliens” is presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1 – nearly filling a standard 16:9 screen with thin black lines at the top and bottom. The rest of the films are presented in a CinemaScope 2.35:1 aspect.
The extras are extensive, to say the least (be prepared to spend some time here), with special features available on each disc, plus two entire Blu-ray Discs packed full of additional extras: one with “Making Of” documentaries, interview segments and behind-the-scenes footage, and one disc featuring the “Archives,” chock full of seemingly every last piece of material — text, still photos and video — supporting the films and their back story. A helpful “MU-TH-UR” mode (with its own tutorial) is included to help you navigate through the massive amount of supplements – even allowing us to go directly to specific chapters on other discs: just eject one and insert the other, and it will take you directly to the requested material. Pop the original disc back in and the player will remember where you left off, asking if you’d like to resume. A nice feature made possible via BD-Java.
At least one commentary track is available for each film (“Alien” has two), with every director but David Fincher (Alien3) participating in the commentary fun. All four films also have isolated score tracks (in Dolby Digital 5.1), so you can appreciate the nuances of the film’s scores without any distracting dialog or sound effects. Although much of the supplementary materials used here are re-purposed from earlier home video releases (DVD and laserdisc), we found many new and extended interview segments and snippets we’d never seen before. I’m sure die-hard fans will find hours of enjoyment in the set, and the audio and video quality alone is worth the upgrade. I know I can never go back to the DVDs. Highly recommended!
UPDATE (10/24): Some early purchasers and reviewers have noted some compatibility issues with the set and certain hardware. We’ve tested the disc with twelve players so far (OPPO, Panasonic, Samsung, LG, Philips, Toshiba and Sony), with mostly minor compatibility issues noted. On the OPPO BDP-83, the “Director’s Cut” of “Alien” begins playing zoomed in with only the top left corner of the image visible. Hitting “Menu” then “Play” restores the image to its proper size. Also a Samsung BC-C6900 plays Ridley Scott’s intro video to the Director’s Cut of “Alien” squished to 4:3 (should be 16:9). Similarly a Philips BD-P7200 played the Ridley intro in a tiny window at the top of the screen, but the film itself played fine in both versions. But otherwise every player we’ve tested seems to play the set without issues. Some players are extremely slow to load the disc (particularly older players), but this is to be expected from such a BD-Java-heavy title. BD-Java can use quite a bit of on-board memory and processing power once you get fancy (and boy are these discs fancy!)…
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|For collectors only,
It’s just an egg case that holds a little box, which holds a foldout sleeve, which holds the disks. You also get a booklet insert, which I assume is similar to the one in the anthology collection. That’s it. No extra disk with more features. No photo or art inserts or lenticular film negatives or laser etched comics. Just a plastic egg that looks kinda cool if you’re into that.
Another interesting tidbit is that is has been announced that only 5000 of these will be offered in the United States. That may sound like an immediate collectible potential, however I have seen stuff like this before just fizzle so don’t look at it as a guaranteed return on investment. Again… this is really just for the serious Alien fan.
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