7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Three episodes from the sixth season of The Universe are presented in 3D.
Narrator: Erik ThompsonDocumentary | 100% |
Nature | 80% |
History | 42% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 MVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English, German, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Swedish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Three-disc set (3 BDs)
Blu-ray 3D
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
A few years ago the Sci-Fi Channel underwent one of the most ridiculous rebrandings in television history, becoming Syfy. This prompted me to joke at the time that it sounded like some of my Jewish New York relatives talking about the Americanized names some of my more assimilated kin have assumed through the years. If you can muster a good Long Island accent as you say this, it will help: “Yes, I know he was born Seymour Feinstein, but he thinks Sy Fy is going to get him more work.” I’ve long wondered why History Channel continues to insist on its own name, when for all intents and purposes it could easily rebrand itself as Doom and Gloom, Impending Death, or (if it didn’t bring to mind Mel Gibson) the perhaps more stylish Apocalypto. History does fantastic work a lot of the time, but some of their regular series focus too often and too relentlessly on doomsday scenarios that just grow tiresome after a while. (I mean, don’t we all have enough to worry about without getting jittery over asteroids wiping out all life on our planet?) Probably the worst in this regard is The Universe, a series which had a really strong first (and maybe even second) season, but then has more and more just gone to the well of disaster, over and over again. Now History is jumping on the 3D bandwagon and releasing three episodes from The Universe: The Complete Season Six, post-converted to 3D with some surprisingly spectacular results. But guess what: two of the three episodes are fraught with danger, death and destruction, and even the third flirts with cosmic disaster on an almost unbelievable scale. Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be an extremely bumpy interstellar flight.
The Universe in 3D is presented on 3D Blu-ray with MPEG-4 MVC encoded 1080p transfers in 1.78:1. (For the record, 2D AVC encoded versions of all three episodes are also included, as is the norm on these History releases.) Fans of The Universe know that great swaths of the series are built out of CGI, which one assumes is inherently easy to convert to 3D, and in fact a lot of all three episodes look really excellent, with some impressive depth and really finely gradated fields which allow the viewer to feel at times like they're in between huge celestial bodies. Perhaps most surprising about these 3D conversions is how good the talking head segments look. Foreground objects (usually but not always the main speaker) are clearly placed forward and once again excellent depth of field is on display. All of this said, there are some curiously flat moments as well, including some sequences that would seem to be custom made for the 3D treatment. A look at Saturn's rings, for example, doesn't really pop out at the viewer the way one would expect it to, and some of the purely graphical elements are pretty much flat as a pancake, with absolutely no depth added. The general video quality here is quite good, albeit with perhaps a very slight added layer of softness due to the 3D conversion. Depending on your equipment, you may be prone to some ghosting here and there, most noticeably on some of the text that accompanies some of the imagery. Colors remain surprisingly robust throughout the 3D presentation, with some really beautifully lustrous hues adding to the visual allure.
Perhaps surprisingly, the three episodes in The Universe in 3D have been given a surround sound upgrade from their original LPCM 2.0 presentations (and which the specs on the disc inserts state are still being offered) to DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mixes. There's some decent surround activity in some of the more "likely suspect" sequences, such as huge asteroids hurtling through space, and scenes of the dinosaurs meeting their fate. As should be expected, talking head segments and narration are still anchored resolutely front and center. This isn't the most consistently immersive track History has ever done, but it utilizes enough basic discrete channelization to make it interesting most of the time. One noticeable improvement here is in the low end, especially with regard to the bombastic LFE that dots all three episodes. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range is appealingly wide.
No supplements of any kind are offered on any of the three discs in this set.
History might also want to rebrand itself as The Repackaging Network, for it has once again gone back and culled a kind of weird selection of previously released episodes and then "gussied them up" by putting them each on separate discs and sticking them all in a lenticular slipcase. Is it worth the money? That will be up to the individual consumer, though as this review goes live, the set can be had for 50% its somewhat exorbitant MSRP, which probably makes it more appealing to many potential customers. The good news here is that the 3D conversion has been rather artfully handled. The CGI elements look really great, with planets, plumes of gas, exploding boulders and all sorts of celestial phenomena moving through a beautifully deep visual field. Even more surprising is the amount of depth in the "real life" talking heads sequences, which generally look excellent. Balancing these positives is the occasional negative of weirdly flat rendering in sequences that really should have popped more impressively. The lack of supplements is also distressing. 3D-aholics may well want to check this out, but my hunch is History will be releasing complete seasons of The Universe in 3D, so prudent consumers may well want to wait for a bit to see what happens.
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2013
IMAX 3D
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IMAX Enhanced
2002
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IMAX
2010