2002 Live Action
BOX-ART
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MENUS
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AUDIO
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Two 24 Bit 5.1 Dolby TrueHD tracks are available, in English & Italian. Hidden/embedded within these are legacy Dolby Digital mixes at full bit-rate. Also available are three 5.1 Dolby dubs, again, at full bit-rate.
*Both commentaries are Dolby 2.0 Surround encoded at 192 Kb/s.
VIDEO
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Compression, contrast are fine, colors are rather dull but that's a stylistic choice rather than a transfer flaw. The film is decently sharp, maybe a touch soft. Film grain is present, having quite a thick granular look.
EXTRAS
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Two commentaries, along with a bunch of behind-the-scenes featurettes make up the bulk if the extras. There's also a music video, an alternate ending, and the Blu-wizard.
FINAL THOUGHTS
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N/A
TECH. SPECS.
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ASPECT RATIO: 1.85:1 (Original Widescreen)
VIDEO CODEC: AVC (25.8 Mb/s)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 1
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer (44.1 Gb Full Disc)
REGION CODE: Region Free
AUDIO: 24 Bit TrueHD English & Italian 5.1 (4 Mb/s English | 1.7 Mb/s Italian)
English, French, Spanish, Portuguese 5.1 (Dolby 640 Kb/s)
SUBTITLES: English, English SDH, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish
RUN-TIME: 1 Hour 41 Minutes
Apocalypse
BOX-ART
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The version I have is the Wal-Mart exclusive steelbook. I got it used, so I would assume it has some sort of slip cover, but I don't have it. The cover has a render of Alice & the films logo. The back has nothing but an intricate abstract design, which is why I assume maybe there was some sort of translucent slip cover that goes over it?
MENUS
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Atop a menu video of some Umbrella looking operating system are basic Blu-Ray pop-up options. This is one of those early Sony Blu-Rays where they loved to show off the Blu-wizard which is some sort of playlist type feature, I think? (I've never messed with & I'm not honestly sure what it is or does. I think they just made it to show off how much more dynamic & "on the fly" Blu-Ray menus are compared to DVD?)
AUDIO
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Like a lot of early Blu-Ray releases, the main mix here is a 16 Bit LPCM 5.1 mix. Accompanying the main track is a full bit-rate standard Dolby Digital version. I get that this was the early days of Blu-Ray and not everyone could playback DTS-HD MA or TrueHD, but LPCM eats up so much space on a single-layer disc!
VIDEO
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Like Silent Hill, which only came out a few years later, the black levels seem too bright making them look washed out. An example of this is in the image gallery below. Again, like the Silent Hill Blu-Ray, compression isn't great here due to using a single-layer disc with MPEG-2. AVC encoding could have cleaned up most of these compression artifacts, so it sucks studios made these decisions in the early HD days.
Clarity is decent, not razor sharp but fine. Grain structure looks rather murky, probably due to compression. There's a very obvious look to the film, with very few colors being used. Some scenes have things such as fire, lights, or blood to add some nice orange/red tones, but it's mostly dull blue.
EXTRAS
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The bonus disc has archival behind-the-scenes footage from the first few films, leading up to a preview of Resident Evil: Afterlife. There is no main menu and the, roughly twenty minute feature, just starts playing. The disc is labeled as "The Alice Project, " but it's really just a preview of what was, at the time of this Blu-Ray's release, the next upcoming film.
Most of the extras on the Blu-Ray are similar to the previous film, with featurettes and such.
FINAL THOUGHTS
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TECH. SPECS.
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ASPECT RATIO: 2.40:1 (Original Widescreen)
VIDEO CODEC: MPEG-2 (18 Mb/s)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 1
DISC SIZE: Single-Layer
REGION CODE: Region Free
AUDIO: 16 Bit LPCM English 5.1 (4.6 Mb/s)
English 5.1 (Dolby 640 Kb/s)
SUBTITLES: English, English SDH, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish
RUN-TIME: 1 Hour 34 Minutes
Retribution
BOX-ART
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The version I have is the 3D version, which uses the same artwork, but with some extra mentions about the 3D aspects. Also, it uses a clear white case instead of the typical blue one.
MENUS
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Atop a background video of some action sequences form the film, are basic overlay options such as play, scenes, extras, etc.
AUDIO
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The main mix here is a 24 Bit 5.1 DTS-HD MA track. Also included is a 16 bit French dub, and a Dolby Spanish one. Lastly, there is an English descriptive track, which is 5.1 Dolby Digital at full bit-rate.
VIDEO
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Colors & contrast are fine, as is the compression. The video isn't crazy sharp, and seems a bit soft. I'd image that this makes it easier to process with 3D elements? Some light grain is visible at times, I did note few spots that had a more noisy image. I can't really say anything about the actual 3D version of the film, since I don't have 3D capable equipment.
EXTRAS
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*Dolby Surround 192 Kb/s commentaries.
FINAL THOUGHTS
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N/A
TECH. SPECS.
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ASPECT RATIO: 2.39:1 (Original Widescreen)
VIDEO CODEC: AVC (24 Mb/s), AVC MVC (3D)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 2
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer
REGION CODE: Region Free
AUDIO: 24 Bit DTS-HD MA English 5.1 (4.8 Mb/s)
16 Bit DTS-HD MA French 5.1 (4.1 Mb/s)
Spanish 5.1 (Dolby 640 Kb/s)
SUBTITLES: English, English SDH, French, Spanish
RUN-TIME: 1 Hour 36 Minutes
3 Movie Collection (CGI)
BOX-ART
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A red banner at the top has a Resident Evil logo with, "3 CG movie collection, "underneath. The three films each have their own slot, with their respective logos, and enemy renders.
Like the front, each film has it's own spot with box-art, tech. aspects, and a brief description. Each slot has an alternating color or black or red.
MENUS
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AUDIO
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VIDEO
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With the films being all CG, they look nice and clear. It's not particularly sharp, but no super blurry either. There's some minor aliasing, suggesting maybe they were mastered at a lower native resolution than 1080p. Seems grain was added for a filmic look. The bit-rate was fine, and CG compresses very well.
FINAL THOUGHTS
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I'd like to note that, for whatever reason, Vendetta wouldn't copy onto my hard drive. Long story short: I couldn't get screenshots of it, sorry!
TECH. SPECS.
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ASPECT RATIO: 1.78:1 (Original Widescreen)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 3
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer
REGION CODE: A
AUDIO: (All) Spanish & Thai 5.1 (Dolby 640 Kb/s)
(Degeneration) English 24 Bit TrueHD 5.1, French & Portuguese 5.1 (Dolby 640 Kb/s)
(Damnation) English, French, Portuguese 16 Bit DTS-HD MA 5.1
(Vendetta) English 24/Spanish 16 Bit DTS-HD MA 5.1, French, Spanish, Portuguese 5.1 (Dolby 640 Kb/s)
SUBTITLES: English, English SDH, French, Portuguese, Spanish
Indonesian, Korean, Mandarin (Simplified), Mandarin (Traditional), Thai
RUN-TIME: 4 Hour 53 Minutes
