A few words about...™ Alien Anthology -- in Blu-ray

I remember having problems playing the first alien movie dvd from the 9 disc set. my panasonic 80 could not play it in DTS for either the directors cut or theatre version.. the panasonic 85 plays fine, but without DTS audio.

Jacob

This is not a good sign. Many of us are having issues playing the Twilight Zone Season 1 blu ray set. Interesting thinking that the problems Mr. Harris is having could be caused by the anti piracy. 

It will be interesting to see what happens this Tuesday. Thanks for the heads-up.

The Digital Bits is supposed to have their review up tonight too.  If they don't have any issues, is it safe to assume that the problems here are hardware related?

My PS3 has been solid so far, here's hoping that it handles these discs when they arrive!

I just cancelled my order with Amazon until this problem is resolved.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carlo Medina 

My PS3 has been solid so far, here's hoping that it handles these discs when they arrive!

I bet it does.

Likely the firmware updates just aren't ready yet across various players. It is still pre-release after all. Discs have been out in the wild for weeks now, and this is the first issue I've read of.

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PS3's have always played everything you could throw at them. Having one as a backup player would be an excellent idea.

Thanks for the heads up Mr. Harris.

Jacob, I'm like you- I've always had problems with the first disc (Alien) of the 9-disc dvd quadrilogy set never playing correctly. That's a major reason why I can't wait to get my hands on the blu-ray- to be able to watch the first film in one piece! lol

Here's hoping these issues are resolved quickly.

The picture on Alien looks good in the screen captures I have seen. I'm not understanding something about the cropping. The first dvd release contained more picture than the second. And now the blu-ray has been cropped even further....why is there such a difference and why do we keep losing more picture?

bill hunt has his review up. he did have a problem with the oppo. he also had a solution to the problem as well.

glad to know that I was not alone with the first alien disc from the 9 disc set.

Jacob

I'm having a problem, when I play the alternate OST soundtrack audio tracks (or for that matter, the actual music separarated soundtrack) for Aliens, there's a title card on screen during all the movie with the indication of the track I'm listening. Right there full in the middle of the screen. It won't go away until the track stops.

Can anyone confirm this ? (My set is R2) 

I was going to order the egg set, then I decided that it was a waste so I was going to order the box set but after realizing the age of these I need to see and hear them first so I'm going to wait for the rentals. I just cannot drop a near Franklin on something sight unseen (and heard). The good news is while other players have had issues in the past both my Sony machines have never once had a single issue with ANY blu-ray disc. I'll guess the same will hold true with these.

The bonuses are reframed into 1.77 (original shot in 4/3). Since the PS3 does not upscale 480p from BD, the documentaries now look a bit ugly.

That's just the negative aspect, the movies look spectacular. I didn't have a reframing problem on the films as Mr Harris mentioned, on my up to date PS3 with latest firmware.

I watched "Alien" last night. I'm no expert, but the transfer was top class, particularly the audio - really immersive. The colour is a lot better than the dvds, and there is definitely an improvement in PQ in  terms of detail (you can see this even in the computer readout shots; also, I remember smiling to myself when I noticed a clear improvement in detail during Brett's search for Jonesy). I switched between the theatrical and director's cuts this morning, with no problems arising (using my PS3). Today, I am going to tackle "Aliens": if only Cameron's sometimes cringe-inducing dialogue was de-"grained" as well...

Fox seem to put BD+ copy protection on everything. I have trouble getting The Robe to play on my Kogan player, which I beleive was the first disc Fox released using BD+.

I've just had a look at Alien from the anthology set, thankfully no problems playing the disc on my Philips player. It's the UK Blu-ray release I have here, my nephew managed to get his already while I'm still waiting for my set to be shipped from Amazon UK. I'm a huge fan of the film, watched it a number of times at the cinema on it's original release and have never seen it look so good, I skipped to the "space jockey" scene and it looked amazing, so much detail on display, and the colours... oh I'm tempted to watch the entire film but I'll wait until my copy arrives this week.

Now for a peek at Aliens...

Can't wait for this to arrive!!

I'm really interested to see how Aliens looks now given that Cameron toned down the heavy grain. 

Despite Cameron saying Aliens has been "de-grained" there is still grain on screen, ironically grainier than Scott's Alien which had very little grain that I could see. Aliens looks fantastic but of the two I'd pick Alien as the better transfer. The only extras I've checked thus far were the isolated scores, perfecto.

It would be cool as people get this set this coming week if they could report what machines they are playing the discs on and if they have any playback issues. That way we might see if there are any patterns to playback problems. I'm really concerned after The Twilight Zone set is having issues with playback for a lot of people. That release I'm sure has not sold as many as this Alien set will. So we might be seeing a lot more responses to playback issues, if any. I hope it's not indicative of a new problem of recent new Blu Rays because of how they are encoded or authored or however they do what they do.

Had a few issues on a multi-region Sony BDPS470 here, latest 708 firmware installed. The movies initially seemed to load fine, as did the MUTHUR mode, but when I tried to exit the mode while watching Aliens I got nothing but a blank screen. Ejecting the disc and reloading had no effect, as the disc would not play past the Fox Home Entertainment logo. Not only that, but now the other movies in the pack were also refusing to load! (That's not a bad thing in the case of Resurrection, but I digress.) I had to turn my machine off at the mains and turn it back on to get the discs to play again.

The upper left quadrant issue Mr Harris had is also present on my copy of Rocky Horror Picture Show, but only on the deleted musical number for 'Super Heroes'.( so far ) No problems with the main feature.  I'm also using the Oppo.

This bluray firmware issue is really starting to become a deal breaker to people that I know, who'd buy into Bluray but are amazed that many people have to keep updating their firmware as/when new releases come out to make certain titles work. Who can blame them? Movie buffs are willing to go the extra distance to solve playback related problems, but the general consumer isn't and - understandably - expects a bluray to work on any bluray player.

I purchased an Oppo BDP-83 a couple weeks back believing it to be one of the best players out there (from reviews) and I find that several discs throw up problems with this machine. Not good. I was on the cusp of ordering the box set too, but will wait to see how this pans out.

What exactly IS the problem that demands that firmware is updated? Does anybody know? Is it the extra material that involves networks/internet connection (discs using BD Live)? I'm talking in general here not specifically to the Alien set only. It would be interesting to know if the problems can be narrowed down to one area in all instances/films/players.

Surely both bluray and hardware manufacturers and the studios need to come to some sort of agreed 'standard' so any disc is compatable with just about every machine? They're seriously going to lose customers (or potential customers) if these sorts of problems persist. Who wants to keep upgrading their firmware?!? I just want to get on and enjoy the damn films!

Such a shame as the screen shots look utterly marvellous and the work that Charles de Lauzirika et al have put into this set is nothing short of astounding - definately THE set to beat. Next years Star Wars set is going to have a LOT to compete with, and I hope people from Lucasfilm take a page from this sets content...

Hopefully if Oppo sort out the firmware problem I'll be able to pull the trigger on this one in a week or so - fingers crossed!

Will Alien and Aliens be available separately?  Sorry if this has been asked already.

oppo is a fine company. they are really good about doing the firmware updates compared to other companies. it should be fine.

Jacob

I'm half-joking here (I'll have the set soon enough) but would anyone care to post a quick 30-second clip of Alien 3's new ADR? Charles Dance's first scene ("An EEV's come down!") should do it.

I need something to tide me over till Tuesday.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AaronMan 

Will Alien and Aliens be available separately?  Sorry if this has been asked already.

No. Or rather, not yet.

I would encourage people to NOT wait if they want the set.  Based on Mr Harris's edited post the A/V quality is an A++  I would hate for anyone to miss out on first week preferred pricing that most retailers have while they wait for a possible firmware issue if their player can't handle some of the more advanced features on the disc.

Thanks to an unnamed retailer I was able to acquire the set today and do some testing tonight on an Oppo BD83 and a Panasonic BD50.  My experiences were similar to Robert's and Bill's in regards to the Oppo.  The good news is its simple to work around both discs.  Just hit the pop-up menu button, select top menu and then play.  It restarts from the beginning at full screen.  I had NO problems in the 2+ year old Panasonic BD50.  Load times were a respectable 2 minutes on the Panasonic for the first two films and they stated playing the Fox logo and the film in fully non-zoomed after the director intros.  There is a good chance that my Panasonic might not even have the most recent FW as I usually just check when I am having a problem or read about one. 

For what its worth the Oppo is a fantastic player, but I have had other "odd" issues in the past that FW updates fixed: (500) Days of Summer wouldn't play and on-screen subtitles for 2012 were displaying off screen are two that come to mind.

So based on fact that my 2 year old Panasonic played the discs with no issues and the only problems I have experienced and seen reported were Oppo based (with an easy work around) I think that the discs are fine and all of us Oppo owners will be getting a FW update in the near future to save us three button presses.

BTW the packaging on the book is incredible.  I love the thick "photo" pages and how the discs slide into the pockets.  Its much nicer than I thought it would be. 

 Based on RAH's recommendation and what I saw, this is going to be "the" BD set to buy this year.