A Few Words About A few words about...™ Monsters University 3D -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

I've been a huge fan of Pixar from day one. Some of their work reaches the stratosphere of high art in animation. Monsters, Inc., at least to me, fits into that arena.

Monsters University, a prequel to the original, even with the extra added attraction of 3D, far less so. This one is a fun film for kids, but there's just nothing extraordinary about it. I recall David Lean's remark about the three most important things toward a great film.

"The script, the script, and the script."

'Nuff said.


What Monsters University has going for it, is brilliant animation, and even in this lessor state, a nice visit with some of our beloved monsters.

Did I mention that this is a great film for kids?

After viewing parts in 2D vs 3, I'm picking the 2 for its brighter cleaner colors, and the ease of not having to wear glasses. Give me a good reason to don the eyewear, and I'm all for it, but as what appears to be nothing more than a marketing addendum...

A beautiful Blu-ray presentation, and...

Recommended (for kids)

RAH

What did you think of the short The Blue Umbrella? I found the photorealistic animation to be amazing...

Steve Tannehill said:

What did you think of the short The Blue Umbrella? I found the photorealistic animation to be amazing...

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When we saw it in the theater I thought it was a combination of film and animation, only after watching the credits did I realize it was all animation!

I actually like the multiple positive messages in the film. As with Pixar fare there was plenty for kids and grown-ups to like.

I also thought the movie was fine. And I thought Nathan Fillion was perfectly cast as the frat jock.

Did anyone have trouble with audio dropouts with this title? We watched the 2D disc this evening on our OPPO BDP-93 and had quite a few dropouts when the player was set to bitstream. There were no dropouts when I set it to LPCM.

DavidJ,

I haven't viewed this disc myself yet but from your description it appears to have the same issues as Brave, Finding Nemo and a few other recent Disney titles containing a Dolby True HD track. I find it very disconcerting that they continue to crank these out despite the issues on several setups.

There was more info in an article @ TheDigitalbits. It referenced Sony's "Total Recall" disc, but the issue is the same. You can find it here.

I've read rumors that the "complex branching" that Sony referenced is in fact yet another form of copy protection that backfired but I've never seen a definitive statement that proves this to be the case.

Yeah David, same problem here with the same player. What up with that Disney???

I had the same issues on my OPPO 103 player also... never noticed this awful sound issue until now. I never noticed it on other DOLBY TRUE HD titles at all. The sound even clips once that I noticed on the Blue Umbrella short also! Really annoying the sound clips and goes out of sync so much on the film Disney needs to stop Using Dolby TRUE on their titles if their specs can't handle it with consumers equipment.

So, I guess I'm glad, it wasn't just me. I wonder if it something that can be fixed with firmware.

Oppo's statement (taken from their Facebook page) regarding the Total Recall disc was this:

"The Total Recall issues are not specific to the player. They are at this time specific to the release as the errors are repeatable on competitor products as well. We are working with Sony to see if there are any things we can address in our own firmware, otherwise it appears that this disc will likely need to be replaced in the future." I also recall other statements from Oppo (but can't find them anymore so take it with a grain of salt) where they mentioned that it definitely is a disc specific issue so while they could issue a firmware fix for that one particular title this wouldn't prevent the issue on the other discs.

The problem here is that once again, software manufacturers blame the hardware and hardware manufacturers blame the software, so I doubt a proper firmware fix is gonna happen. That's why it really pisses me off that they (i.e. Disney) still continue to make discs like that. It's not like there's no other options, and I for one NEVER had this issue with Dreamworks animated titles which also feature Dolby True HD 7.1 audio.

I finally got around to watching this last night, so far only the 3D version. I had one drop out, not repeatable, but at about 30:29 there was a digital snap on a cut and later on I heard some digital mis-tracking "grit" briefly. Both are repeatable. It's the second Disney title to have a digital snap that occurs on a cut (at least the 3D version). "Cars" was the other one and it also had an unrepeatable brief dropout. I'm using a Panasonic 310. I still have the 2D versions to watch so will have pencil in hand for any issues with those versions. I suspect something with the Dolby True HD but then I also had a repeatable dropout with "Pacific Rim" 3D only version that was DTS-HDM.

Watched the 2D version of this (MU) yesterday - had 3 instances of audio dropouts, short duration, but none were repeatable.

Watched it last night but didn't notice any audio dropouts. As for the film, i thought it was perfectly fine but nowhere the quality of Monsters Inc.

I noticed three audio drop outs....in the last 1/2 hour of the film.

DavidJ said:

Did anyone have trouble with audio dropouts with this title? We watched the 2D disc this evening on our OPPO BDP-93 and had quite a few dropouts when the player was set to bitstream. There were no dropouts when I set it to LPCM.

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Depending on your player this has been an issue for multiple Dolby titles. There was a FW update released last week on the PS3 and PS4 to fix this issue. Not sure about other Sony players. Hopefully other impacted players will get FW fixes too.