Season 1
BOX-ART
-_-_-_-
A render of some monster eyes within a slash of a metallic looking case. The History channel logo is on a banner at the top, with the text, "the complete season one," at the bottom. This season is the first, and only season, to be in steel-book packaging.
The back has a description of the show, along with an episode list in the center. The bottom has a blurb about extras and various logos & texts.
MENUS:
-_-_-_-
N/A
VIDEO
-_-_-
While true 16x9 would have been nice, these episodes are presented exactly as they were on TV with the widescreen aspect ratio letter-boxed within a 4x3 frame. Secondly, the video suffers from some ghosting effects caused by what seems to be footage at different frame rates. While this looks fine on a TV with coming filters, it's pretty noticeable on a screen up close. Black levels are good, as are the colors, a bit unsaturated to fit the style though. As a result of being letter-boxed the resolution is a bit lower than an anamorphic DVD, which causes some jagged edges if you crop the letter-boxing out and blow it up, but it's a minor inconvenience.
AUDIO
-_-_-
Stereo audio track at 224 KB/s, sounds fine to me, as good a you'll get with this type of show.
FINAL THOUGHTS
-_-_-_-_-_-_-
I don't understand why A&E didn't anamorphicly enhanced some History Channel shows. I'm not sure if the the show was produced in high definition, so maybe this is the best quality they could use? Or maybe they were just to cheap and/or lazy to return to better masters?
As for the interlacing issues, since the show is a documentary, some footage is at different frame rates than others which is bound to cause ghosting issues. A nice smooth progressive scan image would have been nice, but I guess this is better than nothing. Aside from these two things this is a pretty good release.
Lastly, the show is difficult to get a hold of on DVD since it's out-of-print. Season one as of writing (3/5/19) is floating around the net, but not always at decent prices. I managed to snag mine for about $25 on Amazon. iTunes and other online digital stores do have the entire series for MUCH cheaper than the DVDs. The quality a bit worse that the DVDs, they just cropped, compressed, and filtered the video, but for convenience and price sake, it seems to be most people's best option.
-As of 3/5/18 History Channel has a new subscription based service called History Vault, which has the entire series of Monsterquest! I'm unsure what the quality is like in relation to other sources.
-As of 8/23/19 I've seen some of the episodes for free on History Channel's You-tube channel, in full 1080p.
TECH. SPECS.
-_-_-_-_-_-
ASPECT RATIO: 1.78:1 (Original Widescreen)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 5
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer
REGION CODE: 1 / NTSC
AUDIO: English 2.0 (224 KB/s)
SUBTITLES: English Closed Caption
RUN-TIME: 10 Hours 11 Minutes
Season 2
BOX-ART
-_-_-_-
Continuing with the metallic looking material, we have a render of an octopus coming out of the opening. The rest of the box is basically identical, but with a longer description in the back. This set is in a slip-box rather than a steel-book, with each box within the box having the same octopus render, with episodes & extras being listed on their respective cases.
MENUS:
-_-_-_-
Each disc starts with an episode menu, where you choose an episode or the bonus on that disc. If you select an episode you can then wither choose too start at a specific scene, or play the episode from start to finish. Each episode menu has a render of the cryptid featured in the episode.
VIDEO
-_-_-
Again, true 16x9 would have been nice but these episodes are also presented, letter-boxed, within a 4x3 frame. The same minor ghosting issues occur as in the previous season.
AUDIO
-_-_-
The audio is identical to season one.
FINAL THOUGHTS
-_-_-_-_-_-_-
N/A
TECH. SPECS.
-_-_-_-_-_-
ASPECT RATIO: 1.78:1 (Original Widescreen)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 5
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer
REGION CODE: 1 / NTSC
AUDIO: English 2.0 (256 KB/s)
SUBTITLES: English Closed Caption
RUN-TIME: 15 Hours 40 Minutes
Season 3 Set 1
BOX-ART
-_-_-_-
Like the previous two set, an alligator is featured in the slash.
MENUS:
-_-_-_-
Again, same style, but with an alligator render on the main menu.
VIDEO
-_-_-
Like the previous two seasons, the episodes are letter-boxed and exhibit minor ghosting issues.
AUDIO
-_-_-
The same as the previous two sets.
FINAL THOUGHTS
-_-_-_-_-_-_-
The remainder of the series is unreleased on DVD in North America. In the UK & Australia there was a season four that included the remaining episodes but has also gone out-of-print and is hard to even find, let alone price! (Pretty rare actually.)
TECH. SPECS.
-_-_-_-_-_-
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 (Original Widescreen)
Number of Discs: 2
Size: Dual-Layer
Region Code: 1 / NTSC
Audio: English 2.0 (224 KB/s)
Subtitles: English Closed Caption
Run-time: 4 Hours
