Years 1 - 7
BOX-ART
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The sets that I have are the Target exclusive editions, which are just a repackaging of the original Blu-Rays & DVD singles. Each movie's cover has a render of something symbolic within the film, along with the year, title, and images of Harry, Ron & Hermione. It's a neat aspect to see how the cast ages with each passing film. The back is laid out similarly to the original Blu-Rays, just with a banner in the center talking about the digital copy.
This can also work as a review of the standard Blu-Ray 8 Film-Set & the original Blu-Rays, as they all us the same discs. (Minus the DVD copy.)
MENUS
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The first several films, as with a lot of WB's early Blu-Rays, rather lazily have no main menu. As such, the films begin automatically. To access extras, scenes, and languages you must open the pop up menu, which is overlaid on top of the film. The remaining films all have actual menus that have video backgrounds but, as is Blu-Ray standard, you can still open a pop-up menu during playback.
AUDIO
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The first five films all have 5.1 LPCM at 16 Bits, along with a Dolby Digital version. All films have various dub tracks as well. The first two films have Dolby EX encoding on the lossy track, therefor, your trade-off is a compressed theatrical mix or an uncompressed downmix. Newer releases of the film include a Lossless 6.1 audio mix, but the mixes on this Blu-ray are still very good. I'd also like to note that the films, by default, will play with the Dolby Digital track rather than the PCM. You'll have to manually switch to the uncompressed audio via the pop-up menu.
Film six is the only film with a 5.1 Dolby TrueHD tack, while the final two have DTS-HD MA. Much like the previous films, multiple dubs are available, but not quite as many.
VIDEO
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The first two films look great, with nice contrast, clarity and grain structure. The bit-rate seems a bit low, yet no major compression issues arise. There's nothing really to complain about here.
Similar to the previous films, the image on the third film looks great. Sharp and clear, with spot on contrast. This film is very dark, more so than the last two, but this is a stylized choice rather than a transfer flaw. Another change it that the color grading is more cold, as opposed to the, mostly, warm colors of the first two films.
Like Azkaban, the Goblet of Fire is also very dark, which would be ok if it weren't for a few issues this transfer has. Firstly, the black levels are off a bit leaving the, should be, inky blacks more of dark grey. Secondly, the bit-rate is set rather low for a 1080p presentation. At about 12 Mb/s there's a lot of color banding and macro blocking that pops up now and then. Some very fine grain is visible, no doubt a lot of it has been smudged out by the compression. Despite this, the film still looks decent, most probably wont notice anyway unless looking closely.
The remaining films all look similar to the third film, having no major issues.
EXTRAS
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All the special features, minus the interactive DVD games/DVD-ROM stuff, are copied from the original DVDs and are on the Blu-Ray discs. Similarly, rather than having whole new cuts of the film, the extended scenes from the first two films are simply added as deleted scenes. Some people may also be disappointed to know that the scenes are presented only in anamorphic standard definition. (480i)
On some of the later films some extras are Blu-Ray exclusive, such as PiP (Picture in picture.) Newer edition of the film include more and/or alternate extras. For instance, the Ultimate editions include all the original DVD & Blu-Ray extras plus an extras disc with some new documentaries. The most recent editions include only extras from the ultimate editions disc three but not the extras from these sets. (A rather annoying marketing ploy.)
FINAL THOUGHTS
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These releases are very good, but if you want the best possible versions of the films get the newer releases (or the UHD) as they are a bit better. Featuring lossless theatrical tracks, and the extended cuts in full HD.
If you want to experience the films in many different languages, only the original releases (Or sets that reuse those discs; like this one.) include them. The newer releases only feature English & Spanish audio. I really like that about this set, (it's rather funny hearing them call professor Dumbledore, Danburudoa Sensei in the Japanese dub!) but I completely understand why they were removed. Most people probably don't need or want all those languages, and the space can be better allocated to the original lossless English audio, as well as the extended cuts.
The extras being different for some editions is annoying, and makes if difficult to get everything.
TECH. SPECS.
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The Sorcerers Stone
ASPECT RATIO: 2.35:1 (Original Widescreen)
VIDEO: VC-1 (17.6 Mb/s)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 1
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer
REGION CODE: A
SUBTITLES: English, English SDH, Spanish
RUN-TIME: 2 Hours 32 Minutes
AUDIO: 16 Bit English LPCM 5.1 (4.6 Mb/s)
English & Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 EX (640 Kb/s)
The Chamber of Secrets
ASPECT RATIO: 2.35:1 (Original Widescreen)
VIDEO: VC-1 (15.4 Mb/s)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 1
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer
REGION CODE: A
RUN-TIME: 2 Hours 40 Minutes AUDIO: 16 Bit English LPCM 5.1 (4.6 Mb/s)
English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Catalan, Danish Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 Kb/s)
Dutch, Japanese, Swedish Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 Kb/s)
SUBTITLES: English, English SDH, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Cantonese, Dutch, Danish, Catalan, Finish, Flemish, Korean, Norwegian, Swedish
Prisoner of Azkaban
ASPECT RATIO: 2.41:1 (Original Widescreen)
VIDEO: VC-1 (19.3 Mb/s)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 1
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer
REGION CODE: A
SUBTITLES: English, English SDH, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Cantonese, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Flemish, Korean, Norwegian, Swedish
RUN-TIME: 2 Hours 22 Minutes
AUDIO: 16 Bit English LPCM 5.1 (4.6 Mb/s)
English, French, Japanese Dolby 5.1 (640 Kb/s)
Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Danish, Catalan, Swedish 5.1 (448 Kb/s)
Goblet of Fire
ASPECT RATIO: 2.41:1 (Original Widescreen)
VIDEO: VC-1 (12.9 Mb/s)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 1
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer
REGION CODE: A
SUBTITLES: English, English SDH, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Cantonese, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Flemish, Korean, Norwegian, Swedish
RUN-TIME: 2 Hours 37 Minutes
AUDIO: 16 Bit English LPCM 5.1 (4.6 Mb/s)
English, French, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Danish, Catalan, Swedish Dolby 5.1 (448 Kb/s)
The Order of the Phoenix
ASPECT RATIO: 2.40:1 (Original Widescreen)
VIDEO: VC-1 (17.93 Mb/s)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 1
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer
REGION CODE: A
SUBTITLES: English, English SDH, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Cantonese, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Flemish, Korean, Norwegian, Swedish
RUN-TIME: 2 Hours 19 Minutes
AUDIO: 16 Bit English LPCM 5.1 (4.6 Mb/s)
English, French, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Danish, Catalan, Swedish Dolby 5.1 (448 Kb/s)
The Half-Blood Prince
ASPECT RATIO: 2.40:1 (Original Widescreen)
VIDEO: VC-1 (17.93 Mb/s)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 2
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer
REGION CODE: A
SUBTITLES: English SDH, French, Spanish
RUN-TIME: 2 Hours 34 Minutes
AUDIO: 24 Bit English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 (1.5 Mb/s)
English Dolby 5.1 (640 Kb/s)
French & Spanish Dolby 5.1 (448 Kb/s)
The Deathly Hallows (I & II)
ASPECT RATIO: 2.40:1 (Original Widescreen)
VIDEO: AVC (17.30 Mb/s)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 6
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer, Single-Layer (II Extras Disc)
REGION CODE: A
SUBTITLES: English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese
RUN-TIME: 4 Hours 36 Minutes
AUDIO: 24 Bit English DTS-HD MA 5.1
Spanish & Portuguese Dolby 5.1 (640 Kb/s)
French Dolby 5.1 (448 Kb/s)
