BSG 35th Anniversary Blu-Ray Review

borjis · May 14th, 2013, 03:13 PM

The audio is perfect as it should be.

DTS-HDMA 2.1 with full SenSurround mix intact. (I wasn't expecting this it all)

Your blu-ray player will map it to a 5.1 system perfectly.

the aspect is 1.85. it was not "zoomed" it was cropped from full frame.

I just got it. Some thoughts.
It's never looked this good. It's very sharp and clean, colors pop. There are occasional very small dust specs, but its way cleaner than the original DVD (non-anamorphic) release. Also the colors are much better. The original DVD had a green tint...this one looks perfect. The special f/x footage looks a lot better than I thought it would. John Dykstra was being too hard on himself when he got upset over the theatrical release not holding up on the big screen. The models look great at 1080P.

It's 1.85 matted, though on a 16x9 tv the very small black bars top and bottom are not seen.

Universal did a PERFECT job on this title. There is film grain. A bit moreso at times, but this is good,
it means they didn't do what many consider "screwing it up" by applying DNR.

Bestbuy has officially put it on backorder status as of this morning. (tons of people pre-ordered)
The facebook page has over 900,000 likes.

An insider said if it sells well, the series will very likely be done. I think thats a given now...

Charybdis · May 28th, 2013, 10:59 AM

Great news! I got mine the second day it was released in-store and have watched bits and pieces. I thought it looked great! Very good news indeed...now the entire series on Blu-Ray!!!

martok2112 · May 29th, 2013, 11:59 PM

WOW! Simply.......WOW!
I found several copies of this at my local Best Buy (at the time when it was reported that one might be lucky to find a singluar copy in-store, or would otherwise have to special order it), so I jumped on the chance....and WOW!

They did a bang up job of remastering this. With the exception of the occasional (very minor) VFX flaw, this really looks beautiful. I'm just now at the point where Apollo and Zac are running from the Cylons, and it looks gorgeous. But, man, did they really clean this up?! They did indeed.

Methinks Universal might have done this with an eye toward possibly another reboot....but this time geared more toward the feel (or at least the spirit) of the original series. If they were willing to expend even this much effort in just cleaning up and sharpening up the theatrical version of Galactica....well, I won't hold my breath, but the thought is nice.

Another nice advantage is with all this hi-def sharpening, one could really do some model research and set research for their own CG projects! It's already got me stoked to push forward on my BattleSTAR Galactica WARS project.

You can also see, however, the low detail of the background battlestars during the fleet shots.

At 120hz, the show has that classic BBC Doctor Who/Blake's 7 look to it ('cept with better visual effects), but that doesn't bother me one bit.

And WOW, I never even noticed before, the green, winged, lizard-like pet on the Imperious Leader's left shoulder before. And LMAO, also never noticed the "MADE IN USA" readout on the scanner screen when Athena is running the Viper damage check with Starbuck. There are just soooo many things one can notice in this high def upgrade...some of which give me a good laugh. It's like finding Easter Eggs. Example....an Earth name found on a pipe that Apollo is examining when searching for solium leaks....Kennedy. (It would seem that the new series was not the only Battlestar Galactica show to have Earth borne names, the old series did it FIRST!.... I am, of course, being facetious, but yes, Kennedy does appear as raised lettering on the piping. Obviously the manufacturer of said piping in the shooting locale. )

If someone was not aware like we are, one might not even be able to determine that this was shot in 1978, such is the upgrade in quality. And although I was never fanboyish about this "Sensurround" thing, it does state on the audio profile for the packaging that there is indeed an embedded 2.1 Sensurround format.

Punisher454 · May 30th, 2013, 02:19 AM

Quote:

Another nice advantage is with all this hi-def sharpening, one could really do some model research and set research for their own CG projects!

Using various available sources I've been building this huge library of screen shots categorized by the intended object of interest, all for modeling reference. Now I'll have to get this release to bring out some of that mystery detail.