Yes, Another Blog

The world can always use another blog.

Being a guy I will keep my thoughts on this movie to myself. I do not want to alienate any of my female readers with my XY Chromosome bias. So I am reviewing this from a  visual artist’s viewpoint.

The 2.35:1 AVC transfer looks very true to what was shown in theaters.  I was glad that they did not try to clean up the print by removing any grain since there are scenes that only work with the excessive film grain. I will say that I was blown away by the DOP’s use of all the frame throughout this film. There was heavy use of both shallow and very deep depth-of-field to relate emotions. Not sure if this was done post-production or not but it looked very natural. The muted (some may say muddy) colors for the first 75-80% of the movie work very well and, like I said before, the excessive grain really adds to the moodiness of the plot and characters.

The audio track was a mixed bag for me. The DTS-MA (24bit/48kHz) is very well done and mixes very well with surround systems. The use of the soundtrack (mostly moody rock) is the best I have heard since “Fast Time at Ridgemont High”. And that was a very, very long time ago. The one complaint with the audio mix is the use of volume raises in the suspenseful parts in order to heighten fear or emotions. There was various scenes where the volume shot up higher than really necessary. I found this to be a lazy ploy that would not be needed if the scenes were strong enough.

(click on images to see full sized version)

Tonight was probably the 50th or so times I have seen Con Air. Probably the 20th time on Blu-ray. A cinematic masterpiece it is not but there are some great characters and some of the best one-liners of any action flick. Popcorn flick all the way.

The AVC video track comes in at around 24-26mbps and it looks incredible. There are a few scenes where the blacks are a bit muddy but 99.9% of the movie looks incredible with some real saturated colors and nice contrast. I did find very few flaws but the film is so fun to watch that I don’t care so I won’t dwell on them.

The 24bit/48kHz uncompressed PCM English audio track is beyond words. The tracks comes in at about 4.5mbps and it surrounds you with tons of rear speaker action. The explosions and gun fire will come from every direction and you will definitely feel the surround effect and the deep LFE will rattle your windows and drywall.

(click on images to see full sized version)

Has any seen this rather creepy Quizno’s ad? Depending on the time of day you probably haven’t.

But what struck me is the subliminal flash of a periscope on the screen at about 6 seconds in.

Too funny.

I am a little behind on these reviews so here’s one of my all-time favorite Bond films.

The remastering job on these James Bond films is top notch. I seriously doubt that they looked this good when they were released in the theaters. The 2.35:1 AVC video transfer looks great in the majority of shots but I did notice a bit muddy look to the very dark scenes. The final space scenes did not have this look so I am guessing that it has something to do with film stock rather than the remastering process.

The DTS-MA English audio track is another top notch effort for pretty much all of the James Bond Collection titles. The older films are not as rear heavy as some of the newer titles but they still have some scenes that your rear speakers will get some workout.

(click on images to see full sized version)

This is my guide for ripping and remuxing Blu-ray disks. The main reason I remux Blu-rays disks is the fact that to get full HD audio using a HTPC you will either need to buy an ASUS Xonar HDAV audio card (over $200-250) or you have to remux  the disk into MKV and use FLAC as the audio.

You see, PowerDVD and TotalMedia Theater both downsample the HD audio to 16bits/48kHz no matter what the orginal disk audio specs are. So if your Blu-ray movie has 24bits/48kHz audio (DTS-MA or TrueHD) you will lose some of the quality as it is downsampled. The Xonar card will play the audio unmolested but only with their special edition of TotalMedia Theater.

If you remux the disk you will get the full video and audio quality without losing any little bits to downsampling. Not only that, but if you are like me and you hate all those trailers and commercials at the beginning of each disk this will get rid of them. You will lose the disk’s menu features but I can do without them. And this final thing is the biggest reason for remuxing; saving hard drive space. With a remux you will reduce the size of your disk by 30-60%.

For proper ripping and remuxing you will need the following: (links provided for software)

• A Blu-ray drive (ROM or writer)
• A Blu-ray movie (duh)
• Media Player Classic – Home Cinema (MPC-HC)
• AnyDVD HD
• eac3to
• MKVToolNix
• madflac
• TotalMedia Theater
• Haali Splitter
• SupRip 

Now go ahead and install all the above software and we can begin the ripping and remuxing.

The first step of course is the ripping. AnyDVD HD will strip all the AACS and HDCP protections of the Blu-ray disk.

When you insert your Blu-ray movie into the drive you will see the name and size on the My Computer window. This disk is “Standard Operating Procedure” and it’s a 43GB dual layer disk.

To rip the disk to your hard drive you will have to right-click on the AnyDVD HD icon on the Task Bar and select “Rip Video DVD to HardDisk”. You will need to select a location for the disk rip that is more than the actual disk size (43GB). I don’t think you will have any problems since most of us have plenty of free space somewhere on our PC. Below are some of the AnyDVD HD options.

As the disk gets ripped you may want to go do something else. It will take anywhere between 45 minutes to a couple of hours depending on drive speed and disk size.

When AnyDVD HD is done you will have a perfect copy of your Blu-ray disk on your hard drive. You can playback this folder with either PowerDVD or TotalMedia Theater with the above mentioned audio limitations.

To be able to playback the full HD audio you will have to remux the video and audio into an MKV container with the audio converted to FLAC. If you are wondering about FLAC and any quality loss I can assure you that it will be 100% bit-perfect to the original audio. Not only that but you will retain all the multi-channels. The remux will also leave the video alone and will not degrade it in any way. In other words, you will have a perfect 1:1 copy of the original video/audio that will now be easier to playback on your favorite media player application.

Now comes the real nerdy tech part. We will be using eac3to via command line. Yes, you will have to launch command prompt and actually type your command manually. Oh, the horror.

More likely than not, when you launch command prompt it will default to your Users home directory so you will need to re-direct it to the location of your eac3to folder. I put mine on the root directory of my C: drive for easy typing. So, the command line would be this:

chdir c:\eac3to\

Now you are ready to see if your components are properly installed. eac3to has a “test” feature that will give a report of all the  filters and applications that are required and tell you if any are missing. Here’s mine:

eac3to v3.14
command line: eac3to  -test
——————————————————————————
eac3to (v3.14) is up to date
Nero Audio Decoder (Nero 6 or older) doesn’t seem to be installed
http://www.nero.com/eng/store-blu-ray.html
  CAUTION: You need Nero 7. Nero 8 won’t work with eac3to.
ArcSoft DTS Decoder (1.1.0.0) works fine
Sonic Audio Decoder (4.3.0.169) works fine
Haali Matroska Muxer (2009-01-10) is installed
  There’s a new version (2009-01-11) available
http://haali.net/mkv
Nero AAC Encoder could not be located
http://www.nero.com/eng/nero-aac-codec.html
  Copy NeroAacEnc.exe to the eac3to or to the Windows folder.
Surcode DTS Encoder doesn’t seem to be installed
http://www.surcode.com
MkvToolnix (2.5.3.0, release version) is up to date

Now, you don’t have to worry about all the needed stuff listed there. For the purpose of this guide you will only need the “Arcsoft DTS decoder” which is a part of the TotalMedia Theater installation, Haali Matroska Muxer, and MkvToolnix. As you can see I have all of these installed. Haali shows a newer version available but that seems to be a bug as I have the latest version.

To do the test feature the command is:

eac3to –test

If you noticed that the command is listed at the top of the “test” results.

After you have done the test and you have all the required components installed then you are ready to do your first remux.

Let’s say that you ripped your Blu-ray to your drive (J:) and the folder name was “sop_p2”. You will need to see what the Playlists of the disk are. You will need to tell eac3to to give you a full list of all the Playlists on your rip by typing the following: (Click the screenshot to see the full sized version)

eac3to j:\sop_p2\

Most Blu-rays have the main feature in Playlist #1 like this one. Some seamless branch titles will have multiple main feature playlists (most Pixar titles) and it will take some detective work to figure out which ones is the right one.

Since this one is clearly Playlist #1 we will work with this one to remux only this playlist. To isolate a single Playlist you will use the 1) command to tell eac3to that this is the one we want. Our next command then will be: (Click the screenshot to see the full sized version)

eac3to j:\sop_p2\ 1)

This will show you the full track list for this Playlist. You can see the video track (2:), the four audio tracks (3:-6:), and all the subtitle tracks (7:-18:). Now we can pick which tracks we want to keep or we can extract all and use whichever one you want.

There is two ways that I do the track extraction. The first is by far the easiest so I will show you that one first and then will show you the second one.

To extract every single track from this Playlist you will do the following command:

eac3to j:\sop_p2\ 1) c:\(destination folder)\(title).mkv

Mine looks like this:

eac3to j:\sop_p2\ 1) c:\bd\sop_p2.mkv

When eac3to is done you will have a folder that looks like this: (Click the screenshot to see the full sized version)

You will notice the mkv as the first file. This is the video track. Each of the TrueHD tracks have been extracted and converted to FLAC. The ac3 track is the commentary track. Each subtitle track will give you the information as to how many captions are in each track and whether there is any forced subs. The last file is the Chapters that you can add to have easier time seeking.

I will now give show you the other way to extract the tracks. This method only extracts the tracks that you tell it to do. Let’s say you only want the video track (2:), the English TrueHD audio (3:), the commentary track (6:), the Chapters (1:), and both English sub tracks (7: & 8:) you will do the following command: (This will be a long single command so there is no line break)

eac3to j:\spo_p2\ 1) 1: c:\bd\spo_p2.txt 2: c:\bd\spo_p2.mkv 3: c:\bd\spo_p2.flac 6: c:\bd\spo_p2.ac3 7: c:\bd\spo_p27.sup 8: c:\bd\spo_p28.sup

Each track is called individually by the track# and then the destination, file name and the type of file you want. Chapters can only be .txt files, video tracks can only be .mkv files, subs can only be .sup files, but audio files can be either .flac or .ac3 files.

Another reason to use the second method will be when there is two or more DTS-MA tracks on the Playlist. The Arcsoft DTS decoder can only handle one (1) DTS-MA track at a time so you cannot do a full track extract using the first method I showed you. You will have to pick the individual DTS-MA you want and use this second method to extract.

I have timed both methods and you will find that it takes the exact amount of time to do the second method as it does the first so might as well use the first (unless you have two or more DTS-MA tracks). Not only that, but using the second method does not give you the detail information of the sub track and you will not know if there is any forced subs.

Let’s return to the first method.

With all those files in your extracted folder it is time work on subs. If you are like me and do not care about subs then you can skip this step unless its a foreign language film and you will need this step to create subs for your viewing.

Each of the subtitle .sup files will need to be OCR’d in SupRip so they can be used in the MKV. This will be a bit tedious and may take some time. Another alternative method is to search the web for a .srt file for your movie that has already been extracted and synched to your disk. This will save you lots of time since each .sup file can take between 1-2 hours to get fully OCR’d and corrected. You will see in a minute what I mean.

Launch SupRip and open the English subtitle track and you will see this:

If you click on “Auto-OCR” the app will do its best to OCR all the characters. More likely than not it will only learn and replace an additional 5-10% so you will have to manually do the rest by clicking on each of the missing characters and entering the appropriate letter(s) and hit return to go to the next one. Like this:

After you are done you will switch to the SRT tab and see the timeline and when you are completely finish you will Save the .srt file and that can be used to add subs to your MKV. (The following screencap does not have the OCR complete but you can see what it looks like):

Now that you have all the files needed to make a complete MKV let’s get to the merging part.

If you already installed MKVToolNix you will find an application called “mmg.exe”. This is mkvmerge and you will use it to put all those parts together (merge) and make your final MKV. When you launch mkvmerge you will have the option to select any of the parts that you want to include in your final MKV. In this example I will be selecting the video track (.mkv) and the English TrueHD audio track that was converted to FLAC. You will notice that I did not add any subtitles (.srt files) but if you wanted to add them this would also be the place to add them.

In this second screencap I am showing you where you add the Chapters to assure you have perfect scanning and seeking.

Make sure you have enough room in your destination hard drive and make sure you give the Output file the extension of “.mkv”. When ready, press the “Start muxing” to create your MKV. Depending on size of all the files you will be waiting between 400-1200 seconds (6-20 minutes). Any errors will be displayed in the Warning area but I seldom see any except when there is a subtitle timing error and those are easy to fix.

Now that the final MKV is done lets compare the sizes of the two versions. The original Blu-ray disk was 43.0GB and the final MKV without all that added “stuff” is a reasonable 22.5GB. That is almost a 50% savings in hard drive space. Not only that but now you don’t have to sit through all those bloody trailers, commercials, and previews that are crammed down our throats when the SKIP button is disabled. Not only that but now you can truly enjoy full HD audio on your HTPC without worrying about downsampling.

Now that we have a finished and playble MKV file lets set up your media player. To play the MKV you will need one of the many DirectShow media players out there. I prefer MPC-HC due to its filters that allow hardware acceleration of VC1 files with ATI 4xxx series cards. I have also found that the madFlac filter is by far the best FLAC audio decoder but it is a x86 only filter so if you are using x64 you will be better off trying ffdshow and tweaking it to play. I have no idea how to do it so I won’t even try to tell you how.

madFlac will convert the flac into a bit-perfect LPCM and output it either via HDMI or via any analog 5.1/7.1 connections you have. The audio quality of madFlac is incredible so if you have HDMI audio output be prepare for some audio candy.

My media player of choice is Media Player Classic – Home Cienma (MPC-HC). It is by far the easiest to set-up and it is not a CPU hog. The internal filters are awesome and if you have an ATI video card you can full GPU acceleration with VC1 files. The latest release version is 1.2.908 but there are various SVN nightly releases if you want to tinker.

Here is the screencap of the Blu-ray disk we just remuxed to MKV. (Click for full sized versions)

Here’s filter list during playback of the same file.

I think this is the longest blog posts I have ever made so I am going to end it here. I am sure there are lots of questions people will have so either post a comment, email me, or catch me on Twitter @yesanotherblog and I will try to answer them as best I can.

I thought it was about time to try a new WordPress theme. I am partial to dark themes so that style will remain.

Working on a Blu-ray ripping and remuxing guide. It’s taking me longer than I thought. Trying to make it as simple to follow as possible. Should be a step-by-step guide with detailed screencaps.

I’m going to start making these real “Mini Reviews” from now on. Picture and audio quality and lots of screenshots.

Quantum of Solace comes in a breathtaking 2.40:1 AVC transfer that I can easily refer to as “reference” in every sense of the word. After watching it two times I went back and looked in various scenes frame-by-frame to find anything wrong with this transfer. Sorry. Could not find it. Absolutely perfect transfer.

The main audio track is an English DTS-MA 5.1 24bit/48kHz track that will absolutely rattle your walls. The car chases, the gun fire, explosions, the planes, the helicopters, and incredible fights will make your audio system beg for mercy. This is another title that the rear channels are abused to no end.

(click on images to see full sized version)

Some people have asked about my HTPC and  Media Server so I figure I would do a little blog about it.

I will start off with the Media server. To me, this is the heart of my HTPC. I learned long ago to separating the Media from the actual HTPC is the greatest thing you can do. Keeping both in different places and/or different devices will make your life so much easier and you won’t be pulling you hair out with frustration.

The Media Server does not need to be a powerhouse PC. You can get away with a slow Pentium 4 (P4) or a slow Core 2 Duo (C2D). If you are going to do Hardware Raid 5 or 6 then you may want to step up to a faster C2D. If you stick to JBOD (just a bunch of drives) then you don’t need anything fancy. I prefer JBOD since having a massive hard drive failure will not take out your entire server.

The most important things about a Media server are:

• The method of storage (hard drives).
• The method of storage transport (SATA cards or Motherboard SATA)
• The case, the case, the case.

Let’s start with storage. Start with the biggest hard drives that you can afford. Drives should and will be updated every 3-5 years due to lifespan and storage size increments. In 3-5 years time the drives will be 2-4X bigger than the ones you had before. I started off with 250GB drives 5 years ago and now I am using 1.5TB drives and soon will be using 2TB drives.

Also, look for Green drives if possible. I know people will say that Green drives are not fast but you really do not need fast drives if all you are doing is Media streaming. Most Green drives will easily do 75-90MB/sec in JBOD set-ups. Even the best Blu-ray will not top 4-6MB/sec if the total bitrate is 40-45mbps. Green drives will help keep your Media Server cool (Green drives do not produce a lot of heat) and they run at very lower power so that will save not only in power usage but you can use a smaller PSU in the server.

Storage transport is the method that you use to get the data to-and-from your drives. Most motherboards have anywhere from 3 to 6 SATA ports on them but if you are building a Media Server you will find that you fill those up real quick.

SATA cards (or SATA RAID cards) will expand your storage capacity and will probably also increase your transfer speeds depending on interface used. If at al possible, use PIC-e SATA cards in either 4x, 8x size. If you have a PCI-X mother board then you can use PCI-X cards that are just as fast as PCI-e but since PCI-X is a legacy port you will find them harder to find in modern motherboards other than server boards. PCI-X is also backwards compatible with plain PCI but the speeds will be a bit slower but again in a Media Server you will not really notice too much difference.

Last but not least is what I consider one of the most important thing about a Media Server. The case. If you want to expand your server then you really need to think about a case that will allow you to expand as much as you can possibly want to expand. This may sound weird but if you don’t think this through you will reach a point where you will not have any more room to expand your server.

Look for a case that can hold AT LEAST 8 drives. I would even say that 10 drives is probably mandatory but that’s me. I am currently using a NORCO RPC-4020 case with 20 hot-swappable bays. You can find this case for under $300 and if you outgrow this case then you have bigger problems than I can help you with.

You probably noticed that I did not mention or include anything about motherboards or PSU’s. When it comes to motherboards that is a very personal preference that is so varied that I could not even come close to covering properly. The only advice I can give you is that you make sure the motherboard has at least a single Gigabit NIC built-in or add an Intel PCI-e 1x NIC card (by far the best NIC card ever made). When it comes to PSU I would say that you find the biggest PSU that you can afford that will power up all the drives that you want to have. Any server over 10 drives will need a real good PSU with over 500-600watts. If you intend to one day upgrade to 15-20 drives then you really want to look for a quiet (not an easy task here) in the 750-1000watt range.

Now for the HTPC portion.

My HTPC is quite simple. A slow E4300 C2D with an ASUS motherboard, an Intel PCI-e 1x NIC card, an ATI 4670 native HDMI video card (don’t get the ones with DVI-to-HDMI adapters), a small 80GB drive for the OS, and a whisper quiet 300W PSU. That’s it! I could have gotten away with a P4 but I had the E4300 laying around in an old PC that was not used anymore.

I will tell you that the 4XXX series of ATI video cards are the best thing that happened to HTPC. You get full 7.1 HDMI audio pass-through and all AVC and VC1 video is decoded via hardware in the card. The audio and video is passed via HDMI to my HDMI receiver and then the video is passed to my projector or TV (I have both) in beautiful 1080p.

All my Blu-ray movies are remuxed to MKV using eac3to with the HD audio in FLAC format. Playback is done with MPC-HC and madflac as the audio decoder. Absolutely flawless playback. The remuxing is done without any conversion so there is absolutely no loss in picture or audio quality and you will save anywhere from 30-60% of the storage space from the original disk.

What can I say about The Princess Bride that you all already don’t know. This is by far one of the best movies of the late 80’s and it is so well made that it will be a timeless family classic.

The Blu-ray has a beautiful AVC transfer in the original aspect ratio of 1.85:1. I remember seeing this in theaters and still have vivid memories of the experience. This transfer brought back all the same emotions and even with its small flaws it is a great transfer. Shadow detail is quite good and there is no signs of DNR or EE anywhere to be found.

The DTS-MA audio track is quite good when it is used to its full effect but since this is a dialogue driven movie your speakers will not get a full workout. The dialogue sounds quite good and I did not find any spots where it was lacking detail.

After my rant about import Blu-ray titles I figured I would do a Mini Review of one of the Import titles I recently watched.

To tell you the truth, I don’t remember Half Light at theaters when it originally came out in January of 2006. I can’t find any information if it was a straight-to-DVD release either. Either way when I saw the Blu-ray being released in Spain I had to get it as a blind buy.

Demi Moore stars as novelist Rachel Carlson who moves into a small secluded Scottish cottage 8 months after the tragic death of her son. Her son’s death is still heavy on her mind and she has been unable to write so she hopes that the solitude and beautiful landscape will end her writers block.

After meeting and falling for lighthouse keeper Angus McColloch (The Tudors’ Hans Matheson), several events make Rachel doubt her sanity and recurring visions of her dead son do not help her mental state.

This is a very intellectual thriller with a very well played plot twist. Demi Moore does a wonderful job as the grieving mother but an even better job as the mentally confused woman that is not quite sure what is real.

The 1080p AVC transfer is very well done but some will find the grainy texture a bit distracting. I am not sure if the original print was this grainy but it does give it some character. It is a testament to the quality of this Blu-ray transfer that all the grain is very visible. Dark scenes are very well rendered and do not lose any fine detail. I am also glad that they decided not to use any DNR on any scenes.

The audio on the Spanish Blu-ray is dubbed in Spanish with a DTS-MA track but the English track is only a plain 648kbps Dolby Digital. I decided to watch the film with the DD English track and forgo the English subs for the Spanish DTS-MA track.

Since this is mainly a dialogue driven movie I did not mind the plain Digital Dolby audio but there are a few spots that the suspense kicks in and the rear channels get a good jolt. The musical score is absolutely beautiful (I love Celtic music) and it surrounds you very well.

(click on images to see full sized version)

For the life of me I do not understand movie studios and their crazy method of releasing Blu-ray movies in some countries and not in others. I bet a lot of you do not know that there are a lot of movies, and real popular movies, that are not released in the U.S. but are released in other countries.

The first title that comes to mind is Fight Club (IMDb). This is a somewhat cult favorite flick and was exceptionally popular when released in the US in DVD. What would you say if I told you that you can get an exceptional copy of Fight Club in Blu-ray right now. OK, there is one catch. You have to be in Germany. Yes, the Germans can get their hands on a Blu-ray copy of Fight Club that looks incredible.

Another title that comes to mind is Sin City (IMDb). Canada, Japan, and Denmark have had their hands on the Blu-ray for months and here in the US we have to wait till the tentative date of April 21st to get our hands on it.

There is also the mysterious Spain releases such as Hostage (IMDb), Half Light (IMDb), and Passengers (IMDb). These Blu-ray titles have been released only in Spain (and a few other European countries).

Then you have The Chronicles of Riddick (IMDb) that has been released on Blu-ray in Germany, France, Denmark, the UK, Sweden, and Italy. Not even announced in the US.

Then you have this year’s surprise action hit Taken (IMDb). It was released on Blu-ray in France back in December of last year and in the UK last month. Did I mention that Taken was not even released into US theaters until 1/30/2009.

So what can you do to get your hands on these Blu-ray titles in the US? Well, that’s a tough one due to several reasons. The first one, and the hardest one to overcome, is the silly (ok, STUPID) Region Codes that some of these titles have. Some of these Blu-rays will not play in US Blu-ray players but some are Region Free. You could try to get your hands on a region-free player but that is not so easy. You can also send out your player to get the Region Code restriction removed but this only works on certain players and its an additional expense. You can also buy the disk and then remove the Region Code yourself but you will have to rip the disk to your computer and play it back with that. Yes, there is an additional cost for AnyDVD HD and some of you may feel morally opposed to doing that.

Then there is the second hurdle. How do you buy these Blu-rays? Actually that may depend on which country you are trying to buy it from. Japan stores are very lax on exporting disks to the US. Germany and Denmark are not so friendly. The UK titles are as easy to get as going to the UK version of Amazon and buying it and paying the extra shipping and sometimes Customs.

Or you can do what I do. I buy from the places that will ship to the US and/or I make friends abroad (the Web, Facebook, and Twitter has made the world a very small place) and I arrange them to buy me some titles and have them ship them to the US. Of course I pay them for the shipping and an additional few dollars for their help.

But what I want to know is why I have to go through all these hassles to get movies from other countries? And don’t even get me started on why some foreign Blu-rays have better features (lossless audio, better bitrates, better features) than the same US titles. That will be a bitch/rant for another day.

When it comes to action movies I have a very twisted rating system. I take the body count multiply it by the cars blown up and the F-Bombs dropped and the results are the proportional result of my rating. Using this scale, Death Race (2008) definitely gets an 11 in the 1-10 scale.

Do I even need to explain the plot of this movie? Jason Statham’s character gets thrown in jail for a crime that he did not commit and is forced, by the Warden (perfectly casted by Joan Allen), to be a driver in a 3-stage Death Race for a PPV internet audience. There are a few mindless plot twists that are as transparent as glass but the main draw of this movie is the blow-em-ups, shoot-them-ups, and body count that is quite high by the time this 111min film is even half way through.

The 1080p AVC transfer is sharp and spotless and even in the most action packed scenes there is not a single sign of blocking or tearing. The colors are quite muted once the character reaches prison and you might even say that most of the race scenes are borderline duo-tone. Lots of dark colors and lack of brilliant colors make this film quite moody. Other than faces and all the explosions I challenge to find many colors.

The DTS-MA 5.1 (24bit/48kHz) audio track is by far the most active track I have heard in a very long time. The rear channels will get an intense workout with this film. There were several times were you will turn your neck to see what that noise was behind you. The wrap-around effect is intense and fully active with several scenes using the full rear-to-front and front-to-rear effect to really put you in the middle of the action.

(click on images to see full sized version)

There are popcorn flicks and then there are “leave you brain at the door” flicks. Jumper is definitely the later. The story had a great premise that fell short in execution. The plot holes are so huge that you could drive your proverbial Mac truck through them. The storyline was overly explained but never quite developed properly. There was a lot of potential to give the story some moral strings but they were quickly thrown out for the “good vs. evil” but I still don’t know who was the good and who was the evil.

But aside the main plot problems, this flick is just fun to watch and kill about 90 minutes of your life.

The 1080p AVC video track is almost perfect. Almost is the key word since I was often distracted by the over CGI look of this film. There are scenes where the CGI background was blatant and outright funny looking. Look for the scene where Rachel Bilson is standing in a snowy field in front of a River and you will see what I mean.

The audio track is DTS-MA (24bit/48kHz) that is good is some scenes and weak in others. I never got that “wrap-around” feel that I get from other films. There were occasional rear channel action but I seldom got the feeling that something was jumping out from behind me.

(click on images to see full sized version)