Here’s the promised big month of BD purchase. Well, the two items in part one here are actually unexpected, somewhat impulse buy.
I’ve always wanted the Planet of the Apes 40th anniversary set considering the first movie is so awesome, plus there’s a 200 page book in there. So since I can get this for $41 shipped, which is the lowest price I’ve ever seen on this set, I pulled the trigger.
The package came in relatively fast. It’s a 4lb beast! I’ve never received any DVD/BD sets so heavy. I was pretty surprised. I’ve seen some pictures online, but never thought this thing would weigh so heavy.
It’s a huge 5 disc digipak with a premium 200 page book. The thing is big and heavy, I put a standard UK Blu-ray just for comparison.
Upon opening, there’s a timeline summarizing the events happened in these 5 movies. These are big spoiler if you’ve never seen the movies, which for me I’ve never seen anything beyond the third movie. But since I’m a big sucker for bonus features, especially physical features such as the book, I know I HAVE to get this version instead of the individual release.
The book is printed on glossy photo-ish paper. The quality is very good, I’m extremely satisfied with it! The digipak, however is pretty bad. The central hub is made of some kind of plastic rubber, with the discs put on them extremely hard to take out. You have to twist the discs in order to take them out. But the problem is that the rubbers will come off when you twist… I think I might just go get some multi-disc Blu-ray case and make a custom cover for the peace of mind. I’ve never liked digipak anyway since they deform pretty fast and not suitable for long term storage.
Next up is James Bond Goldfinger Blu-ray Steelbook Amazon exclusive.
Another impulse buy. This marks as the third steelbook, and the second 007 steelbook in my collection (first being thunderball which was very awesome!)
Unfortunately he first one they sent had a pretty big dent. They are sending it in a cushioned envelope which is an extremely poor choice! So I have to request an exchange, the second one came in the next day since I have Amazon prime. But it's still coming in with a cushioned envelope. And guess what, still dented, but it is far smaller, and it’s from the inside which suggests maybe a problem when manufactured rather than the first one with externally squeezed into the case. I also got a $4 Amazon VOD credit out of this purchase.
Last one is actually ordered in this month, but since I’m doing a batch, here it is:
Tokusatsu Kaiju movie… I’ve seen some Godzilla (Gojira) movies, but Gamera is new to me, since it’s only $5.49 for two movies, I took my chance to get it. It turns out I enjoyed these two movies very much, pretty decent video (~11Mbps) and audio (lossy DTS-HR with 1509K core) quality since these are from Kadokawa’s new HD transfer despite they are crammed into a BD25 disc (The Japanese releases use full BD50 space for each movie, with LPCM 5.1 audio and special features, but for less than $6, what can you ask for more)... Although the acting and the monster costume are rather lame, I think Ultraman Heisei series (Tiga, Dyna, Gaia) made around the same time are much better in these regards. But the pacing of the movies are pretty fast, which made them very enjoyable to watch.
Vol.7 include episodes 17 to 19. The story picks up after episode 18. Episode 17 is like the director toying with audience by showing so many death hints to Ozma, but in the end he survives. Episode 18 shows the potential of Ranka, and put Sheryl into a bad situation. Episode 19 is quite a turning point (climax) of the show since Ranka’s reaction is directly related to Vajra.Back to packaging of this volume, the jacket picture has Sheryl and her manager
BelldandyGrace on the front, Canaria’s VB-6 König Monster variable bomber on the background. Grace has a very suspicious pose with Sheryl’s medicine in her right hand. I liked this cover better than last one since it depicts the show’s tone quite well.Disc label:
The booklet focuses much on interviews on character designer Risa Ebata and animation supervisor Yūichi Takahashi.
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.
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 last four volumes, 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 (ads) . Bandai related ads . 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 (5 parts):
See You Next Deculture