Asterix and the Vikings (French)

[tormond]

Ok watched this tonight all the way through and with one minor glitch (which I will get to in a moment) I enjoyed the movie.

PQ: This is animation in HD so it looks stellar as you would expect. No compression artifacts that I could see, colors were vibrant and there were several scenes where there was HUGE 3D pop! I would give the video 4.8 out of 5

Audio: Watched this through my TV speakers (I have my projector torn down awaiting the new one tomorrow) and the sound was fine. The movie is dialog heavy (Has French and English Audio and no forced subs) but the music etc was even and no overpowering elements that I could ascertain through the TV

The movie itself is a bit on the strange side but I (and my 4 year old and 2 year old daughters and my wife) all seemed to enjoy the movie. It has no bad language, no nudity and some VERY comic violence. I felt that the pacing was a bit slow at times but overall it was a fun ride

This has pop up menus (in french) and is very easy to switch to english audio with no subs.. It asks a question at the beginning of the movie that you can either answer yes or no to (I answered no) but the text is in French so I dont know what it was asking but it says that you can choose later from the menu if you like (that much I got). I didn't get a chance to go thru the extras yet.

Now for the glitch. I was watching this on a XA2 firmware 2.8 (hey I just got it in and needed to test it out) output @ 1080P/24 to a Aquos LCD via HDMI for picture and sound. My 2 year old at one point grabbed the remote and unerringly hit the eject button..I reinserted the disc and hit play, went thru the opening garbage etc and when I used the pop up menu to switch to a different scene I got a "Unable to play disc 8000bcetc error". I ejected the disc and restarted it again this time using chapter skip instead of the pop up menu and it played thru without a hitch. I am unsure if this was a glitch or an error in the authoring of the pop up menu but after the movie was done I played around and jumped to a few senes and could not reproduce the error. I just thought it was worth mentioning. This could also have been the player as I said I literally took it out of the box hooked it up and put the disc in so this was the first HD DVD I have tried in this player

[AllSport11]

Thanks for the review. Been wanting to get this one but didn't want to spend more than $20.00-$25.00 for it. Might have to pick it up now.

[REDBULL74]

Thanks for the review! I'll buy it eventually, but it isn't at the top of my list of imports I want still.

[kannisto]

I got this earlier when it became relatively cheap in Amazon France but I've yet to watch it. Nice review, tormond

[bruceames]

Yeah, great review. Seems like every animated title is guaranteed to have top tier PQ.

[tormond]

Originally Posted by bruceames

Yeah, great review. Seems like every animated title is guaranteed to have top tier PQ.

Well with my 2 kids they are also guaranteed to be heading to my house

[drgonzo369]

I still want to get this, even though I hear that the audio goes out of synch. Did it on your copy, and how bad if it did? A good priced deal on it would be awesome.

[drgonzo369]

I got this a few months back (from Christophles) and have watched it a few times (my girlfriend loved it). The audio synch issue is noticable IF you look for it. Since i knew it was there, it drove me batshit insane the first time I watched it. Now, however, I'm used to it. The colors are rich, and the movie itself is actually good. The english dub is excellent, and even in french it's a great film to watch. It's short, and most of the extra are in french, but it's well worth the $20 I paid for it. ^_^

[The BJD]

I didn't notice any audio synch issues. Watched it multiple times with the kids.