THIS is ONLY 1 opinion.................... (written at 5:30am)
First,
This is not a transfer of the Definitive Collection LD's but a transfer of the "Faces" set (which is said to be of better quality)
It's like watching the film for the first time at home again!
But this time we are treated with a 15 second THX LD trailer that is followed by a 27 second "Millenium Falcon" intro which navigates straight to the main menu. This basic menu layout that thankfully lacks all the "Drama and SPFX" that most new commercial DVD's all seem to be infected with, instead MeBeJedi delievers a neat, clean basic menu layout that features an immediate chapter selection screen (witty chapter names
). The discs menu structure lacks any needless title screens and selecting a chapter is simple enough and by simply pushing your down arrow button you can highlight the commentary link which then jumps you to the appropriate commentery page which feature a brief description of the commentary for that chapter. Again these menus are very simple and you should have no problem moving through them at all ~
The Video Quality...
The Picture is awesome!!!
So far the colors are the BEST I've seen yet and DAMN the video just looks so clean.............
It's apparent that this was the result of a painstaking color correction process - the gamma levels have been adjusted, contrast and the color levels (was it done HuffyYUV) have all been restored. The color seems a bit red in some scenes but it is neither distracting or overdone this seems to be a side effect of the contrast changes, it does seem to be a bit overly white on the Tantive IV but like I said it's still one of thes best - IMHO
BUT as far as the general video quality... Under my DVD players zoom feature the quality holds up....
@ 2x zoom they still look very good @ 3x zoom you say damn this is a good transfer (good job on the the VBR and color correction is perfect!) - the colors really are that good and are even better then the actually laserdiscs IMHO -
The Audio Quality...
This is the best feature yet! - THE PCM track is better then the TR47 set - IF you crank up the TR47 set there is some noise in the audio stream.... THIS set has very little noise to no noise in the audio. It's a cleaner and smoother PCM audio track then ANY other set I've heard as it has the most natural sound.
2 audio formats/ 3 audio tracks
LPCM 2.0 @ 1536 kbps
WOW ~ This is a great sounding PCM and with the care that was taken in the conversion the matrixed surround track was reatained and BOY what beautiful playback you get.
AC3 Dolby Digital 5.1 - THE BEST 5.1 EVER ~ It really only sounds like a perfect conversion - there is NO fake rear steering just a WONDERFUL re-encode of the original PCM - CHEERS to you on that! (it's a little quite but most DD 5.1 is)
AC3 Dolby Digital 2.0 -
And the commentary is clean but a little loud compaired the rest of the video.
OVERALL -
I did not see or here any major or noticable errors in the video or the audio other then the contrast being a bit much - BUT that is me knit picking
. There are no "missing" scenes and I do not recall even seeing a side flip or a disc change and from what I saw today - the TR47 and the Dr. Gonzo set may well soon become things of the past.
UPDATE!
OKAY - Today I had a few friends over........
I did a blind test with 4 DVD versions of the OT. For the test I put in each of the DVD's and played the first 5 minutes of each film (as the first 5 minutes really do push the limits with all the white - so the colors really stand out on the scenes on the Tantive IV
I tested it on this gear -
Projector Playback -
Projection Panel: nView Spectra C - connected via SVGA
Video processer: ViewSonic NextVision N4 - connected via SVGA
Over Head Projector: 3M 9700 - 410w/4000 lumens
TV Playback -
TV: Apex 27" - connected via S-video
DVD 1: Mintek 1600
DVD 2: Apex AD-1500
Audio Playback
Decoded via PRO-LOGIC II + DTS NEO6
The PLII was the winner here ~ The DTS was a bit to quite and the conversion created extra noise
A/V Receiver 1: Onkyo TX-SR501 - connected via TOS-LINK
A/V Receiver 2: JVC RX-315 (used to power tactile transducers)
Front Speakers: NHT New Wave x2
Center Speakers: NHT New Wave
Rear Speakers: Kenwood KS-203 x2
Center Rear: Kenwood KS-203
Sub: KLH ASW10
Tactile Transducers: AURA "Bass Shaker" AST-1B-4 x2
All three films were tested on both my TV (first) then the Projector...
Again We watched the first 5-10 minutes and skipped around the disc for other scenes (Anchorhead, Vadrer+Ben's dual and the D-Star).
The end result was that everyone (all 5 of us including my wife
) picked the MeBeJedi set for BOTH audio and visual followed by the TR47 set then the Dr. Gonzo Set.Here are some comparison screen captures
- I'm sorry about this dial-uppers BUT quality is the point here...
THE DR. GONZO set
THE TR47 set
THE MeBeJedi set
