2015 Capital One Orange Bowl Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		2.5
Audio		1.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

2015 Capital One Orange Bowl Blu-ray Movie Review

An ESPN broadcast dropped onto Blu-ray.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman March 31, 2015

Team Marketing has released several college football games to Blu-ray, each covering the best and most important of the 2014 Bowl season. The games are presented without commercial interruption and are, essentially, the television broadcasts transferred onto Blu-ray. This one, the 2014-2015 Capital One Orange Bowl (the second Orange Bowl of the calendar year), matched the once top-ranked Mississippi State Bulldogs against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. The Blu-ray release is essentially identical to all of the other Team Marketing college football releases for 2015, featuring a few minutes' worth of pre- and post-game footage that's sandwiched around the game, presented without commercial interruption. From Miami's Sun Life Stadium, December 31, 2014.

Literally, the orange bowl.

The Mississippi State Bulldogs, a team that spent no less than five weeks at the very top of the rankings, limped into the Cotton Bowl having lost two of three, including a 25-20 defeat at the hands of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and, two weeks later, a 31-17 loss at Ole Miss in the Egg Bowl, an upset loss that bumped the Rebels up into the Peach Bowl and the Bulldogs into the Orange Bowl. But it was a glorious start to the season for State. The Bulldogs went unranked for four weeks until a win against LSU helped propel the team to a #12 rank in the nation. Wins against high-seeded schools Texas A&M and Auburn saw the 'Dogs jump to the top of the list and stay there with wins over unranked opponents Kentucky, Arkansas, and Tennessee-Martin before dropping to #4 after the Alabama loss where they would stay until Bowl Season, finishing the year at number eight.

The Yellow Jackets never achieved the same level of regular season success as the Bulldogs, but that, as they say, is why they play the (bowl) game. The Jackets, under 7th-year Head Coach Paul Johnson, opened the season at 5-0 and reached #22 in the rankings. But back-to-back loses to unranked Duke and North Carolina booted the team out of the top 25. Rebound wins against Pittsburgh and Virginia allowed Georgia Tech to creep back in at 24, and wins against North Carolina State, #19 Clemson, and #9 Georgia propelled Georgia Tech right back into the thick of things at #11. A loss in the ACC Championship Game to Florida State -- a 37-35 nail biter -- dropped the team to #12 and into the Orange Bowl to square off against the Bulldogs.

Georgia Tech kicked off Orange Bowl scoring with a Synjyn Days touchdown run to put the Jackets up 7-0. Quarterback Justin Thomas tossed a 41-yard score late in the quarter to put Tech up 14-0 at the end of one. Mississippi State clawed back in the second, sandwiching two field goals around a Dak Prescott touchdown run to close the gap to 14-13. The teams traded touchdown runs in a wild final minute of play, with Justin Thomas and Fred Ross putting the points on the board to enter halftime with a 21-20 Tech advantage. Halftime did nothing for the Bulldogs but Georgia Tech came out ready to seal the deal. The Yellow Jackets rattled off three touchdown runs in the third, including two more by game MVP Justin Thomas to take a commanding 42-20 lead into the fourth. Mississippi State tried to mount a comeback. De'Runnya Wilson ran in a score only seconds into the quarter, but Georgia Tech responded with another Synjyn Days run to reclaim a 22-point advantage. The Bulldogs' De'Runnya Wilson ran in a final State score late in the game, but it wasn't enough. Final score: Georgia Tech 49, Mississippi State 34.

2015 Capital One Orange Bowl Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

2015 Capital One Orange Bowl's 720p, 1.78:1-framed transfer looks like it was dropped onto disc straight off someone's DVR. It's basically serviceable but nothing more. Basic textures are fine. The field itself lacks any sort of nuance whatsoever, looking more often like a green glob with minor attention to detail in patches. Uniforms and helmets show some decent textural nuance but nothing approaching the level one would find in a professional staged production with higher end photographic equipment. Graphics are soft, crowd shots are undefined, mild compression issues rear their ugly heads from time to time. Even a stray black line with a blue edge randomly appears along one side of the screen during a pre game interview. Colors are decent, revealing basic shades but lacking much nuance in uniforms, on the field, or amongst the crowd. Black levels disappoint. All in all, the transfer is watchable but nothing more.

2015 Capital One Orange Bowl Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

2015 Capital One Orange Bowl features a bad DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. The most startlingly awful part of the track is crowd noise. At best, it sounds like crumpling paper. At worst, which is the majority of the time, it sounds like someone sticking a microphone against Niagara Falls. It's a mess of sonic junk that's not even recognizable as crowd noise, and if it weren't for context chances are nobody could recognize it for what it is in isolation. On-field whistles are sharp. Hits and other random sound effects are present but offer little realism. Commentary is passable, clear, at least, but hardly delicate or natural. On-field interviews sometimes cut out. The track gets the nuts-and-bolts part of the job done but shows no ability to go even marginally above and beyond its necessary duties.

2015 Capital One Orange Bowl Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

2015 Capital One Orange Bowl doesn't contain any supplements, per se, but it does include the post-game trophy presentation, which is listed as a special feature on the back of the box (which is a DVD case, not a Blu-ray case). It's simply an extension of the program beyond the game, beginning at about the 2:24:06 mark (there's still technically 40 seconds left in the game, but this is where Team Marketing placed the chapter mark) and lasting for about 10 minutes. The Nissan "Pregame Rush" is also included before kickoff, which lasts a little over five minutes. It simply encompasses a few pre-game comments and graphics, followed by the teams running out onto the field to that barrage of sloppy, undefined crowd noise. Interviews and commentator chatter are also included. From the main menu, viewers may choose a "play all" option or jump to the start of any of the four quarters plus the aforementioned trophy presentation. A DVD copy of the game is also included in the case.

2015 Capital One Orange Bowl Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

No fluff, no filler, and strictly for fans. 2015 Capital One Orange Bowl is nothing but the original ESPN broadcast dropped onto Blu-ray with team entrances featured at the beginning and the post game celebration added on to the end. There's no halftime show, no extras recounting the story of how both teams got to the game, and, most disappointingly, no look at the revamped bowl season playoff structure. Fans who want to relive the game time and again without worrying about it getting lost on the DVR are the target audience here. Picture is decent and reflects the original broadcast. Sound is awful. In terms of raw quality both score rather poorly. Recommended to fans who will watch it enough to warrant the buy which, at the end of the day, holds true for most every release but rings particularly accurate here.