Casino Royale (2006) on 3/13/07 (1 Viewer)

I didn't see a thread for this, but it looks like Sony will release Casino Royale on March 13th. Details and cover art at the link below.

http://www.dvdactive.com/news/releas...no-royale.html

Personally, the release sounds fairly weak. No commentary? Only 90 minutes of extras? Sounds pretty underwhelming given the Bond UEs and the fully loaded SE of Die Another Day we got a couple of years ago. The cover art looks fairly plain as well. But since it was my favorite film of last year, I can't wait to see it again.

Very Bad Cover Art.

It's essentially the same as one of the theatrical posters - isn't that what fans usually want?

Usually, but in this case i wish they had decided to stick witht the New Ultimate Edition look, or if not that something that just looked better.

Should we assume this will be accompanying a blu-ray release?


(btw I only skipped that article, if i missed something then I apologize....)

I was curious about that myself, even though I haven't made the jump to either format. The article does say Blu Ray will be out the 13th as well.

It is Sony we are talking about here, wich proably means Double Dip

Blu-Ray will be released the same day. Here is the text from the actual site:

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has revealed some early details on Casino Royale which stars Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Judi Dench, and Jeffrey Wright. The full details have yet to be revealed, although we can confirm that the two-disc collector's edition will include a Becoming Bond documentary that takes an intimate look at how Daniel Craig stepped into the role of the 6th James Bond, a James Bond: For Real featurette that looks at the action and stunts, a Bond Girls are Forever featurette that takes a closer look at Bond's leading ladies, a Death in Venice featurtte, and the Chris Cornell ‘You Know My Name’ music video. The film itself will receive an anamorphic widescreen presentation, and English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround track. A Blu-ray release will also be available from the 13th.

Surely there will be at least one commentary. I really enjoyed the Martin Campbell/Michael G. Wilson track on GoldenEye.

I received the 2-disc R3 Collector's Edition on Monday. Watched it with a friend on Tuesday. I must say that I am a little disappointed in the picture quality. There's one fairly major defect: softness. Most of the wide shots look slightly ill-defined. There's a bit of edge enhancement too. I'd probably give the image a "B" or "B+" out of "A+".

No complaints in the sound department. I choosed to listen to the DTS track, but didn't make any comparisons to the DD track. I doubt there are any major differences between the two. A+/A out of A+.

The extras were fairly informative, but surely there could've been more.


Viewing equipment: Sanyo Z3, Oppo DV971H, upscaled to 720p, 92" 16:9 screen, 5.1 speakers and a JVC receiver.

As I've long feared, I'm betting that standard DVD will be getting the half-ass treatment because the studios are gearing their immaculate presentations for the HD and bluray niche buyers. :rolleyes

I hope that's true, now that I have a BlueRay player.

However, this film had a rather soft look (for a Bond film) in theaters as well. At the time of its release, I attributed some of this to the fact that it was shot in Super 35 and was missing some of the inherent sharpness of anamorphic photography.

Nah, because then in another 10 years or less they'll be something called "Polka Dot Ray" which will make all your old BluRay discs look like crud by comparison!

Below are shots from my R3 edition.

Note that the transfer has particular difficulty in coping with the titles backed onto the blue in the second screengrab (where its largely a huge mess).

A lot of edge enhancement or haloing in some scenes.

Not exactly a "pristine" transfer.

The DTS track also has a dropout at around 135min.

I hope the R1 edition is better in these respects.

Thanks for the screenshots. Can't wait for the Blu-Ray!

is this the aspect ratio of the R3 disc..it looks like 1.78:1

Thanks for the screenshots, Ben. The images seem stretched in the vertical direction.

It's 2.40:1.

That's because they were captured in native DVD resolution, 720x480, or 1.5:1.

Yeah, its native res.

I just hope the R1 version is better, but perhaps having two 5.1 tracks encoded at 448kbps and a dts track at 768kbps took up too much disk space in what is a reasonably long film, thus the image quality suffers. The image bit-rate at times is quite low, dipping into the 3's at times (mbp/sec).

The extras on disk two are nothing really special. No Casino Royale trailers either, all we have are trailers for other films.

I would happily dump the dts track for better image quality, but thats just my opinion.

A shame.