Casshern (Italy - Dolmen) impressions and pics

[kannisto]

I ordered this title from www.dvd.it at the end of March with Piano 17. I received it yesterday after Piano 17 was cancelled from my order by dvd.it since it seems to be unavailable (at least up until now). For some reason dvd.it only offer 4 types of express shipping options to Japan (no standard shipping) so I ended up paying quite much for the shipping for a single title, but at least the shipping was fast (Friday shipment, Monday delivery). Other Italian online shops seem to have restrictions with shipping to Japan as well.

This was my first direct import from Italy, previously I got Bridge to Terabithia from Xploited Cinema and this is now my 2nd Italian HD DVD release.

Casshern (Italy - Dolmen ; Paramount)
dvd.it $31.60 (€19.99)
Warning: Italian and Japanese audio tracks, only Italian subtitles. Subs are forced with original Japanese audio.

Case pics:


Specs:
Video: MPEG4/AVC 2.35:1, target/average bitrate: 21.999 Mbps
Audio: A number of Italian dubs, including DTS-HD Master Audio, Japanese DD at 448 Kbps (16 bit)
Subtitles: Forced Italian subs with Japanese audio
Extras: Didn't check them yet but there are a number of extras

Disc: HD-30, 23.4 GB (25 148 882 994 bytes)

The Italian DTS-HD Master Audio track is reported as 1404 Mbps by PowerDVD, that's pretty low for an MA track (?) and the DTS core track seems to be 768 Kbps. It's unfortunate that the Japanese audio track is pretty low spec (DD 448 kbps, 16 bit) and comes with forced Italian subtitles.

I will try to watch this with Italian audio track selected and I will play my Japanese DVD with a better DTS ES 6.1 Japanese audio track in parallel in another player and will get the video from HD DVD and audio from DVD. This will help me get rid of the subs + I'll get better audio this way. I tried this a bit yesterday and I could get them synchronized well enough not to notice any gap between video and audio. I just hope any potential playback pause in DVD layer change isn't going to mess up the synchronization. I'll maybe also setup a laptop to play the DVD content at the same time with English subs so I can peek at the laptop's screen when the Japanese dialogue gets too difficult to follow.

I took a look at the PQ yesterday and I was happy with it. The original movie has some heavily processed visuals here and there and it contains a lot of CGI, so the amount of detail varies depending on the different types of scenes based on the source material. The movie doesn't have very consistent visuals because of this. I compared a bit to my DVD and the HD DVD's PQ is definitely much better. There was some noticeable grain in some scenes but it looked natural.

I'll try to take some screenshots later.

See also Blasst's great review in AVS forum:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1014340

[JEHUTHI]

I got mine too~
I agree with kannisto that the PQ is far more better than DVD version.

[jedi.master.dre]

Originally Posted by kannisto

I ordered this title from www.dvd.it at the end of March with Piano 17. I received it yesterday after Piano 17 was cancelled from my order by dvd.it since it seems to be unavailable (at least up until now). For some reason dvd.it only offer 4 types of express shipping options to Japan (no standard shipping) so I ended up paying quite much for the shipping for a single title, but at least the shipping was fast (Friday shipment, Monday delivery). Other Italian online shops seem to have restrictions with shipping to Japan as well.

This was my first direct import from Italy, previously I got Bridge to Terabithia from Xploited Cinema and this is now my 2nd Italian HD DVD release.

... edited...

I will try to watch this with Italian audio track selected and I will play my Japanese DVD with a better DTS ES 6.1 Japanese audio track in parallel in another player and will get the video from HD DVD and audio from DVD. This will help me get rid of the subs + I'll get better audio this way. I tried this a bit yesterday and I could get them synchronized well enough not to notice any gap between video and audio. I just hope any potential playback pause in DVD layer change isn't going to mess up the synchronization. I'll maybe also setup a laptop to play the DVD content at the same time with English subs so I can peek at the laptop's screen when the Japanese dialogue gets too difficult to follow.

I took a look at the PQ yesterday and I was happy with it. The original movie has some heavily processed visuals here and there and it contains a lot of CGI, so the amount of detail varies depending on the different types of scenes based on the source material. The movie doesn't have very consistent visuals because of this. I compared a bit to my DVD and the HD DVD's PQ is definitely much better. There was some noticeable grain in some scenes but it looked natural.

I'll try to take some screenshots later.

See also Blasst's great review in AVS forum:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1014340

I really like this movie and own a nice Thai 2 Disc Set, but you are taking it to a whole new level! That is a lot of hassle to get better picture etc.

My friends think I am crazy with my collection (85 HD DVD, 47 Blu-ray, 110 LD, 1375 SD DVD and 1000+ VHS) and my dedicated theatre room setup, your friends must think you are totally nuts.

Impressive collection and enthusiasm...

[kannisto]

Originally Posted by jedi.master.dre

I really like this movie and own a nice Thai 2 Disc Set, but you are taking it to a whole new level! That is a lot of hassle to get better picture etc.

My friends think I am crazy with my collection (85 HD DVD, 47 Blu-ray, 110 LD, 1375 SD DVD and 1000+ VHS) and my dedicated theatre room setup, your friends must think you are totally nuts.

Impressive collection and enthusiasm...

It's the first time I've actually tried taking audio and video from different discs like this and first time I'd use a laptop on the side for subtitle-support. Certainly a bit troublesome and it's not my normal way of watching movies for sure. Maybe it works so well I'll have to do it more often... I still didn't get around to watching this though as I've been quite busy on the evenings this week.

Your collection is pretty impressive too. I got rid of my old VHS and LD collections already but I still have about 1200 DVDs in addition to my HD collection, but I may need to get rid of some DVDs soon to make some more space (I already got rid of most of my DVD cases due to lack of space). And I don't have a dedicated theatre room setup, Japanese apartments aren't usually big enough for that... Would be nice to have one though!

[project-blu]

I saw the dvd version at Wal-Mart last week, but couldn't bite at the 20 price tag. is this worth a view or just wait until it's within the 10 range?

[kannisto]

Originally Posted by n8boss87

I saw the dvd version at Wal-Mart last week, but couldn't bite at the 20 price tag. is this worth a view or just wait until it's within the 10 range?

It divides opinions quite strongly so it's difficult to say if you will like it or not. I think some people like it a lot but some think it's utterly awful. At least from visual point of view it's very interesting and different.

I don't buy SD DVDs anymore except for my son (in fact I have too many of them - not enough storage space), and SD content kind of lost it's value in my mind so I can't really say if it would be worth $20 as SD to you. If you have an opportunity to rent it, that might be the best way to try it out first.

By the way, I tried to take screecaps of this the other day but it didn't really work out in my PC environment for this movie. For some reason the playback SW kept crashing when I tried to play the extracted video stream and when I did get some caps they looked pretty strange and bad, not what I see on the screen when watching it, so I didn't upload any...