I’ve spent the past three – four weeks having weekend Marathons, I’m up to season four watching Disney’s recently release Lost Blu-ray sets. I’m not a huge fan the show, I first discovered it on DVD a few years ago, watched the first season in a single weekend marathon and enjoyed it, but never got around to watching the Season Two DVD set. That’s not to say that I don’t like the show, I do, I just don’t love it. The only way I would put up with a show like this is to watch it in big 8 episode chunks. Especially season two where I had to put up with Michael screaming Walt! every few minutes. Walt!
I have to say Disney Home Video has done a fantastic job on their recently released Lost Blu-rays, if, for no other reason than their way cool SeasonPlay option that gives you the ability to pick up your viewing where you left off whether you take the disk out or not. One of the things I’ve been complaining about lately is how the Java BD breaks the caching on most Blu-ray players, namely my PS3. Walt!!! Whenever I accidentally hit the stop button (which is frequently) on the PS3’s crappy remote control my place is completely lost and I’m stuck going through 10 minutes of startup crap before I can even fast forward to my last spot. Well the folks at Disney have figure out a way around this with SeasonPlay. Walt!!!
SeasonPlay is so good that if you forget where you left off and put in the wrong disk, it will tell you exactly which episode, the time and prompt you to insert the correct disk. If multiple people are watching the Season, you can set up different profiles for SeasonPlay to track. I’m guessing what SeasonPlay is doing is creating a tracking cookie so it always knows who is watching what and where you are in your viewing. Walt!!!!!
But beyond that the new Lost Blu-rays are a perfect representation of what makes Blu-rays “special.” The full 1080p, 1:78:1 picture transfer is stunningly beautiful. There’s no letterboxing on my 46inch Bravia. The grass is lush, the water looks gorgeous, there’s a new depth of field that makes you go wow, you can see the shine and fluffiness of the actor’s hair, if you are going to get stuck on a deserted Island this is probably the one you’d want to be stuck on. Walt!!! It includes 5.1 Uncompressed Dolby Digital Audio. Menu navigation on the Bonus disk is annoying because you have to put up with a video clip from the Dharma scientist before you get anywhere.
I’m not going to go into all the extras on these sets because they are pretty extensive, and all include Flashbacks, deleted scenes, bloopers, SeasonPlay, episode specific commentary tracks with the cast and crew and more. Walt! The menu navigation on the episode are pretty smooth and easy to use, but you have to first select whether you want to watch an Episode with SeasonPlay turned on or off.
Conclusion
The Lost Blu-ray releases set a new bar for how you do TV on Blu-ray and is definitely a new standard for Blu-ray Reference disks. The only slap that I have against these sets is that the Producers got lazy or cheap; all the bonus featurettes are in Standard Def, while curiously the dumb Dharma intros into each bonus section (at least on the Season Two set) are in Hi-Def. Walt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Grades
- TV Show – B
- Video Quality – A+
- Audio – A
- Features – A
- Menu/Navigation – A-
Final Overall Grade – A
EM Review by
Michelle Alexandria
Originally posted – 7.10.09
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