インフィニティ Infinity! Macross Frontier マクロスF Blu-ray Disc Vol.3 review

   

 

1. Packaging, goodies.

Vol.3 includes episode 5 to 7. The awesome battle centric episode 7 is finally available in glorious 1080p!

The first press goodie is a Fold Calendar valid for 2009 and 2059, and it's Part1 Sheryl Version which is from January to April (So expecting the Part2 Ranka Version and Part 3 duet?? coming along in later volumes...) So four pages total and one plastic holder. The goodie just keeps getting better IMO, at least more practical...
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The calendars are two sided printed, with 2009 on one side, and 2059 on the other side. The Sheryl pictures are illustrated by RISA EBATA, the character designer for this series.

The 2059 side has Sheryl's schedule listed. Unfortunately the two sides have the same Sheryl. So four months we only get four designs of Sheryl...

So the following picture is how the plastic holder looks like. I just want to collect stuff, so I won't be able to actually fold it...

And here is the awesome jacket picture:

 

Disc label:

    

The booklet also focuses on the mecha this time, but adds more variety on the mecha. The main mecha is Macross Quarter, and there are introductions about destroids, VB-6 König Monster, and Queadluun-Rea. One problem is that the booklets are too small, and colors are NOT so well-calibrated, so that the images of the mecha in space (against a total black background) aren't very detailed...

First couple pages are introductions about the episodes.

  

There's two character profile pages this time. I'll only have the pixie squadron posted here, the other page is the bridge crew... 

  

 

 

And then a bunch of mecha...

  

  

 

 

The last page introduces the backgrounds on the macross frontier. 

  

Other stuff are the same as vol.2, some ads (z gundam BD box and Gundam 00), Blu-ray disc operation menu, and a Bandai online membership voucher.

   

2. Spec, Video Quality, Audio Quality, screenshot comparisons...

Here is the spec:

Video

Codec: mpeg4 AVC

Resolution: 1080p

Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1

Audio

Japanese: LPCM 2.0

Audio Commentary

Japanese: LPCM 2.0

Disc

BD 25

Bandai/honneamise manages put 4 episodes (acutal content is 3 episodes, but the way of authoring the disc is that they duplicate the video of episode 4, and put the audio commentary on that one, so it counts as four episodes of space) But anyway, the video bitrate doesn't drop because of that. It still got a beautiful full 40Mbps full bitrate transfer.

2.1 The Video: A-

The videos this time remain the same quality. There are some fixes to the characters so that they look more consistent. There's also one comment I read about bumping sharpness in episode 7, but I don't think it's as obvious as the brightness change in episode 4... So the video quality is solid, and the animation is quite consistent throughout this volume. About if there will be fixes for episode 8, from the preview after episode 7, it looks like there's fixes on Sheryl's face, but the face overall still doesn't look like a normal Sheryl...

2.2 The Audio: B+

The audio is again clean and clear, that's all I can say. It has not too much dynamic range. There's very little if not at all channel separation/directionality are present... LPCM 2.0 seems to be standard nowadays, but for this series, 2.0 is really limiting the Blu-ray capability...

2.3 The Menus and Subtitles: B

Same as the Vol.2, the menu of this release includes both non pop-up, DVD style always-on menu. Menus are static with no background music; as well as Blu-rays pop-up menu. The pop-up menu is missing the music chapters, the only way you can access the music chapters is thru the always-on menu, which defeats the convenience of what Blu-ray offers. The menu is simple and effective (Not so for the pop-up menu!), navigation is easy and intuitive. But again I would prefer a more Macross related theme...

And again, there's NO subtitles.

2.4 The extras: B

Audio Commentary (haven't listened yet..)

Other extras on the disc are MACROSS INFORMATION for Macross related ads such as CDs and BD/DVD INFORMATION, Macross Chronicles. For Bandai related ads such as (needs confirmation here.) It's not an extra feature rich disc, but there's a 16 page booklet, I'd rather prefer to have an actual print-out of the "extras".

 

3. Content:

needs more work

Final thoughts:

     add later.

Lastly, booklet scans:

JPEG version:

 

 

Uncompressed TIFF version (3 parts):

      

 

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