Three big no-nos are worth mentioning when it comes to the transfer: it's
a very poor NTSC-to-PAL conversion that shows its faults easily when someone
moves, particularly with close-up faces, as they judder onscreen; it's not
anamorphic and that leads to the third - whoever put the subtitles onto the
disc didn't place them within the 16:9 centre frame, treating the screen as
a 4:3 canvas, so when you zoom the picture in on a widescreen TV, not only
do they get cut off at the bottom, but when you raise the picture, as can be
done on some widescreen televisions, it's still not possible to get the picture
AND the subtitles onscreen. D'oh!
The average bitrate is 5.39Mb/s, occasionally peaking over 8Mb/s.
Dolby Surround is as far as the soundtrack goes. Vangelis have put
together a decent score, but none of it really delivers anything in the
striking fashion you'd expect for such an epic tale.
The only extra is a 100-second Trailer in 4:3 pan-and-scan, which is
not worth a great deal either. There are 30 chapters to the film and the
menus are static but play a short looped part of the film score.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
