Yes, Another Blog

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[RAW][/RAW]2008 will definitely go down as the comic book hero movie year. Batman – The Dark Knight, Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk were the top draws at the box office.

I have been waiting for Iron Man to come out on Blu-ray since the opening day back in May. A few years ago we had to wait years before we saw a blockbuster movie come to home video. Now the turn around time is usually 5-9 months depending on how well the movie did at the box office. So when I got my copy of Iron Man Blu-ray I just had to watch it right away.

My reviews are very simple compared to other review sites. I watch the movie and I tell you what I thought. I won’t go too deep into the technical aspects but I will give you a personal analysis of what I saw and heard and throw in a few (OK, lots) of screencaps (click on any image to view the full sized version).

Iron Man Blu-ray is a double-layer 50GB disk that is a tad bit under 44GB in size. The movie is presented in its original aspect ratio (OAR) of 2.35:1 and the English audio is an incredible 5.1 Dolby TrueHD track. No other English tracks are provided but you get a Spanish and French 5.1 DD tracks. Sub-titles are in English and English SDH, French, Spanish, and Portuguese (Brazilian).

The interactive menu is very animated and a hell of a lot better than some of the menus I have seen in the last few months. Paramount is really going all out with their menu animations.

Chapter selection is a grid layout although I don’t know if its my player or the menu structure is wrong but when I selected a chapter I got the chapter before the one I selected.

The picture quality is absolutely top-notch. I would almost venture to say that it’s reference quality but there are a few a scenes that were just a tad bit too dark (either that or I just remember them a bit brighter in the theater).

These two scenes above were the ones where I thought the blacks were little crushed but then again it could be my bad memory.

As you can see in the wide angle shots, you can really see the detail of the background which is usually lost in less than stellar releases.

As you can see here, the Iron Man suit is very well detailed and the grain structure is not lost. There is not a trickle of DNR anywhere to be found.

The action scenes are very well rendered and not a single trace of compression artifacts or macro-blocking.

The colors were rendered exactly how I remember them so I was happy that they did not over or under saturate them from the theatrical prints.

OK, how about the audio? The only thing that could possibly top the picture quality is the audio and that is putting it mildly. I rarely lower my volume from my standard 65 on the Onkyo 606 (and that is very loud) but this track was so powerful that I had to reach for the remote in a couple of scenes fearing that I would get the cops called by my neighbors.

So what’s the verdict? I say go out and pre-order (buy) this Blu-ray as soon as possible. It is very much worth it.

Review Equipment list:

Sony VPL-VW60 projector
Screen Da-Lite High Power 106″
Sony BDP-S350 Blu-ray player
Onkyo TX-SR606
Front speakers Polk Audio RTi12′s
Center Polk Audio CS2
Surrounds Polk Audio RTi4