'The Patriot' - High-Def Digest review

[jed]

Just in time for American Independence Day comes Kenneth's review of 'The Patriot (Extended Cut). Kenneth says this Blu-ray edition is a winner, turning in an "almost perfect" video transfer and a "spectacular" five-star uncompressed sound mix. The only disappointment is a few dropped supplements from earlier DVD editions.

Full review here:
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/patriot.html

[Patsfan123]

Dahh, I just searched the forum to look at early reviews and here it is!

[Brad1963]

I am planning on watching this tomorrow along with Born on the Fourth of July on HD DVD. It is great being format neutral.

[Pisto]

It's frustrating to see three foreign language tracks and more than two dozen subtitle options taking up valuable disc space that might have been used to give consumers more bang for their buck.

You may blame the use of PCM instead of Dolby TrueHD but, please, don't blame foreign language tracks. These are using only 2Mbps. Is the BD-50 full?

[Ken Brown]

Originally Posted by Pisto

You may blame the use of PCM instead of Dolby TrueHD but, please, don't blame foreign language tracks. These are using only 2Mbps. Is the BD-50 full?

No blame given -- unfortunately, even though they only use 640 kbps, that's over the course of a 165 minute film. Each foreign language track ends up taking a significant portion of disc space. When you consider that one of the major features missing from previous releases is an audio commentary track, it seems reasonable to drop a less-requested foreign language track (like Czech or Polish), keeping the commentary, and still retaining more-requested language tracks like the French mix.

And Uncompressed PCM tracks sound too good -- I would never exchange one of them for more features!

I assume the BD-50 is full if features were left behind -- otherwise, their absence is an entirely different problem that would frustrate me even further.

Thanks as always for posting. I hope this clarified my opinion!

[prophecyc2]

Greeeeeeeeeeeatttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt

[LembasBread]

Originally Posted by Ken Brown

And Uncompressed PCM tracks sound too good -- I would never exchange one of them for more features!

Amen, my brotha! I'm gonna have to use that quote in my sig.

I don't think that the BD-50 would be full. Pirates 1 was 2 1/2 hours with 24-bit uncompressed audio and healthy AVC video bitrates along with a 640kbps DD English, French, and Spanish tracks along with commentary and another hour (give or take) of high def video content with Scoundrels of the Sea. If they can fit all that on a BD-50, they could have at least squeezed a few more 480i/p supplements on The Patriot.

That's just my speculation. It just gives SPHE the opportunity make more profit off a double-dip down the line. But, personally, I don't have much use for supplements so I'll be more than happy to shell out for this reference audio/visual experience (yet another one from SPHE) and enjoy having it in my BD collection. At least they aren't like Fox and charging premium price for little to no supplements.

[JimboJohnson]

Don't quite understand the whole language track problem... Why don't they just burn/press four versions of the film, one for each language or even two versions? I mean they have region coding anyway right? I understand the cost implications but surely having four/two versions in existence wouldn't cost that much more? I personally think we'll see this film released as a special edition at a later date...

[Pisto]

Originally Posted by Ken Brown

[...]Each foreign language track ends up taking a significant portion of disc space.[...]And Uncompressed PCM tracks sound too good -- I would never exchange one of them for more features![...]I hope this clarified my opinion!

1) Well, that's right. 2 tr. * 640 kbps/tr. = 1.28 Mbps. 1.28 Mbps * 165 mins * 60 s/min / 8bits/byte = 1.584 Gb. It's not a lot of lost space, but it's enough to contain a few bonus features.
2) I thought Dolby TrueHD tracks were as good as PCM tracks.
3) Yes, your opinion is clearer now! Thanks.

[taygan315]

Originally Posted by Brad1963

I am planning on watching this tomorrow along with Born on the Fourth of July on HD DVD. It is great being format neutral.

I am neutral as well and could not agree with you more. Both these movies are excellent choices for the upcoming holiday. BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY was Tom Cruise best performance, imho. He should have won the Oscar for that one. I will be picking up PATRIOT on Friday.

[Blu-News.com]

Wal-mart has this for 19.99

[ajamils]

Originally Posted by SpartanJohnson

Wal-mart has this for 19.99

that's where I got it from

[Xtreem813]

Hm, it's a good thing this was only $19.95 at amazon and has outstanding marks in video and audio otherwise I'd return it. I liked this movie a lot and was hoping to replace the DVD with this but I guess that's not going to happen thanks to Sony ditching a lot of the special features.

Like Kingdom of Heaven, I can't excuse not even including the great commentary that was found on the DVD. It's so disappointing. Dubs almost always suck and really aren't even worth the disk space or anyone's time, for that matter, who might actually care about the movie. Almost all of the actor's performance is lost in translation and subtitles are the only natural way to go. They should have ditched the Polish and Czech tracks (this is a North American release anyway) and put on at least the commentary.

I guess this means that I won't be pre-ordering Final Fantasy for fear they might do the same thing.

I appreciate the care they're taking in releasing almost all of their releases with stunning video and audio quality but features everyone can enjoy should take precedence over audio tracks that only an extremely small percentage of the North American market would actually be interested in.

DAMN YOU SONY! You were doing so well there for a while

[ajamils]

Do extra features really make a difference ? I never cared about them. If they are there then good otherwise...as long as I enjoy the movie that's good enough for me.

[MovieMinded]

Originally Posted by ajamils

Do extra features really make a difference ? I never cared about them. If they are there then good otherwise...as long as I enjoy the movie that's good enough for me.

If you're paying a premium price for a movie, especially when Blu-Ray is being hailed for it's 50gb capacity, the Blu-Ray release should have even more features than the DVD release, it's not hard for a 30gb HD-DVD to fit all the features of a 2-DVD special edition on 1 disc why should it be hard for 50gb Blu-Ray disc to do the same. Either Sony is waiting to cash in on a double-dip or there is something else at hand here.