US Blu-Ray - Series 5 release

Brisco · Post by **Brisco** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 4:57 am

anti-clockwise wrote:Are you glad you bought it? When The Persuaders came put on bluray people were gushing with comments of how authentic and visually spectacular it all looked. What are your thoughts after Escape? Would you buy the next series in bluray? Is it really worth it in the end?

For the low price of $20, I don't regret buying it, and for the same price I would definitely buy the next season as well. (Or preferably the previous season.) I can't bring the Optimum discs over to a friend's house if I want to share The Avengers, because most people don't have all-region players. But no, this HD upgrade is nowhere near in the league of Network's Persuaders! Blu-rays, which is too bad. That set was revelatory. It was like watching the episodes again for the first time, and suddenly they're all MOVIES instead of TV. This isn't like that. It's an improvement over the old A&E DVDs that was previously the only option for Americans, but not a night and day difference.

timlamb · Post by **timlamb** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 6:35 am

Looked at this set today folks. Now the pal pitch speed up I am not noticing.

The blackened camera lens on the edges is miniscule and a part of the original filming process. I don't overscan content on my tv so this is a non-issue with me. My tv is a Panasonic 65VT60 the critics pick for the best set at the value electronics shootout for 2013 so reference is easily appropriate.

I compared this to my digital copy I had downloaded from amazon a few months back for the episode "From Venus with Love". The bluray is noticeably better and it should be. Downloaded HD typically looks like a really good dvd. The bitrates are far to low for any form of quality. Could this set look better. Beyond the shadow of a doubt. Entire shots between edits hover around 5 mbps for video and far too often on this set do you see bitrates in the dvd range of 5-8.5 mbps. You should never see this on a bluray. My guess from watching a good amount of content for a day is an average video bitrate in the 11-12 mbps range. Quite low! The 1st two discs are confirmed at 39.6 GB! That is a max of 12.5 mbps total and 12 mbps for video folks. I was at least hoping for 15 for video. Damn near 8 hours of content on 40GBs! I am amazed and perplexed.

The reality is the masters from 2009 for the content are superb and that is why this set actually looks decent. The sad thing is they could have hit it out of the park with reference video if they wouldn't have gone so cheap. The DD audio isn't even 640 kbps instead it is at dvd standards of 448 kbps. They aimed the pricing at the Walmart crowd and failed to realize this series is far too sophisticated for Joe Six Pack. Ultimately they have hurt sales of this set as many have cancelled their orders already and won't purchase due to the poor encoding. This set has the record for the most HD content ever squeezed onto a single disc. I can only hope for season 4 someone gets a clue and releases a 5 disc set at minimum! Going from 20-30 mbps you won't see a big difference in PQ, going from 10-20 mbps you will. The masters to the series are stunning! Compressing these to 12 mbps negates much of the hard work done in the remastering.

Here's to hoping the region B set isn't locked! The shame is this could easily have been a reference set. The UK set is set at 7 discs with lots of extras so at 4 episodes per disc by guess they will easily hit 20 mbps for reference video.

starboy9091 · Post by **starboy9091** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 6:46 am

I looked quickly at 'The Forget Me Knot' after I got home. The new set does include it. I have the episode in my German Tara Part 1 box also. I think the new Blu-ray may have been taken from the German sets. The picture and sound is pretty much the same. I did notice some ghosting in the picture though that bothers my eyes. I don't notice it in the German DVD's. Maybe the fact that they put so many episodes on each disc caused it. Would a lower bitrate cause it? I'll check other episodes.

Brad

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 9:32 am

timlamb wrote:The 1st two discs are confirmed at 39.6 GB!

So they've not even utilised the full 50GB capacity of the discs!

This set has the record for the most HD content ever squeezed onto a single disc.

I think that record may be held by the VEI Blu-ray of the David McCallum Invisible Man series, which has 13 50-minute episodes on one single-sided dual layer Blu-ray!

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 9:54 am

Jace wrote:Here you go:

new pitch comparison for The Avengers Blu-ray posted on Spy Vibe. see what you think. the Blu-ray *might* be right between the A&E and Optimum, or on-pitch w Optimum?

http://spyvibe.blogspot.com/…/11/avenge ... pdate.html

Thanks for that, Jason!

It sounds to me like the pitch is identical to the Optimum discs. As a UK viewer, this is how I'm used to hearing The Avengers, but I can understand that US viewers will be finding it odd!

anti-clockwise · Post by **anti-clockwise** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 12:09 pm

Alan wrote:
timlamb wrote:The 1st two discs are confirmed at 39.6 GB!
So they've not even utilised the full 50GB capacity of the discs!

This set has the record for the most HD content ever squeezed onto a single disc.
I think that record may be held by the VEI Blu-ray of the David McCallum Invisible Man series, which has 13 50-minute episodes on one single-sided dual layer Blu-ray!

so is there anything better to look forward to coming out in Britain? This set sounds so very underwhelming..

.tri

anti-clockwise · Post by **anti-clockwise** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 12:18 pm

Brisco wrote:
anti-clockwise wrote:Are you glad you bought it? When The Persuaders came put on bluray people were gushing with comments of how authentic and visually spectacular it all looked. What are your thoughts after Escape? Would you buy the next series in bluray? Is it really worth it in the end?
For the low price of $20, I don't regret buying it, and for the same price I would definitely buy the next season as well. (Or preferably the previous season.) I can't bring the Optimum discs over to a friend's house if I want to share The Avengers, because most people don't have all-region players. But no, this HD upgrade is nowhere near in the league of Network's Persuaders! Blu-rays, which is too bad. That set was revelatory. It was like watching the episodes again for the first time, and suddenly they're all MOVIES instead of TV. This isn't like that. It's an improvement over the old A&E DVDs that was previously the only option for Americans, but not a night and day difference.

How terribly unAvengerish! I have the region free player but I agree with you there it is a pain that there is only one way to watch. Do you think that this set is selling well or really my first concern is they will take it off the market again like they did last time and then I will regret not buying. would rather have tony Curtis signature of Roger Moore's name for $35 at the moment.

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 1:22 pm

anti-clockwise wrote:so is there anything better to look forward to coming out in Britain? This set sounds so very underwhelming.

There were French, British and German sets planned for release this month but all have been put back until next year. No idea of the reason.

Hopefully it is so they get them right!

starboy9091 · Post by **starboy9091** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 2:51 pm

I want to take back what I said about the ghosting issue. I think my TV was cold and that caused the ghost blurring issue. It's an older 720p model. I left it on a while and reviewed through disc 3. I think it is a pretty good release like the reviewer on that site said. One thing I did notice on the end music on the credits showing the Tara ending, the music uses the Series 5 music until the Tara theme, then it finishes with the brighter music used for Series 6. Not sure why they did that.

Brad

anti-clockwise · Post by **anti-clockwise** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 3:42 pm

starboy9091 wrote:I want to take back what I said about the ghosting issue. I think my TV was cold and that caused the ghost blurring issue. It's an older 720p model. I left it on a while and reviewed through disc 3. I think it is a pretty good release like the reviewer on that site said. One thing I did notice on the end music on the credits showing the Tara ending, the music uses the Series 5 music until the Tara theme, then it finishes with the brighter music used for Series 6. Not sure why they did that.

Brad

well that's good but basically it sounds like it's the same thing as many of us already have. Maybe called bluray but if it is no better than the existing would you bother to buy any future bluraay releases?