Customer Reviews

Battlestar Galactica - Season One [HD DVD]

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

First off, the show is 5 stars or more. Best show currently on cable TV as far as I can tell. But this hd-dvd leaves PLENTY TO BE DESIRED.

First, they reused the same menus as were used in Heroes season 1 on HD-DVD, this is fine with me, as that menu scheme is very nice. The interactive parts of this hd-dvd release (the U control stuff) is great, but I'll never view the show this way but once, if that.

I own the original dvd of this (season 1 and the miniseries stand alone dvd), I was highly looking forward to watching this on HD-DVD. But I was sadly disappointed!

The video quality on the mini series is horrible, looks like 480p! Watching the miniseries on dvd upconverted generally looks better, save a few scenes. Also the audio gets out of sync quite a few times during the show.

The TV shows look substantially better than the mini-series, with many scenes looking very good, but not as noticeable of an upgrade as say, heroes or smalleville, which I also own, and are also on HD-DVD. Those releases are/were fantastic, with pristine transfers. This looks like it was rushed. And pity that, I would be fine with spending 40 dollars, 50 max for this, but 100? or even amazon's low price makes me feel like I'm apart of some cylon conspiracy.

If the video not being up to standards is not enough, the case arrived crushed due to be shipped in an envelope (first time this has ever happened to me from amazon) and the discs were scratched (seems this is the default, not the exception from others reviews).

With that said, I whole heartedly recommend this series to any and everyone, it is amazing. The best thing about the HD-DVD is the phenomenal sound, this was a huge upgrade, I cant really applaud any other parts of this release.



In closing, this show is fantastic, the video quality leaves much to be desired, they should re-master the mini-series, as this looks very bad here. The HD-DVD is still better than the DVD, but not by much.

I hope universal will release season 2, 3, and Razor on HD-DVD soon. However, I will not be pre-ordering those until after I read more reviews. The dvd's I have look fantastic as is (upconverted) so if the picture quality is no real improvement, I have no real need to spend double the money.

I must note, I am not against spending 70 dollars for a TV show (I do have both sopranos seasons in HD, and they cost far more) on an High Def format, but I am against getting sub-par transfers, Heroes, and Smallville both on HD-DVD blows this out of the water in terms of picture quality, and packaging. This show deserves better, we deserver better.

So say we all!


PS, if you are having problems getting the discs in or out of the case, twist the disc's and they come right off or on, pulling will likely pull the glue off of the packaging.

UPDATE: Filling out a support request at universalhidef dot com (URL's apparently get deleted) for scratched disks seems to open up an RMA-replacement opportunity. I received an email saying they would exchange the scratched discs with new ones. Hopefully this works and hopefully they come in standard packaging. I'll let you guys know.

UPDATE2: I just returned the discs for a refund. I dislike the RMA process anyway, and the problems go beyond scratched discs.

I am not criticizing the show, but I am very disappointed with the packaging of the set. Placing the discs flat on paperboard does not jive with those who want scratch-free discs. Discs four and five have show-stopping scratches that the Toshiba HD-A2 can't read through, resulting in skippy playback.

I recommend you buy the set - many of the discs show no scratches. Move the discs immediately to standard DVD cases and COMPLAIN to Universal about the scratched discs. They should recall these and ship out new discs in adequate packaging.

I love BSG - what an amazing sci-fiction/drama epic. No complaints about the show, or their presentation on HD-DVD - they look wonderful.

But the packaging is ABYSMAL. Cheap cardboard flaps, little rubber nubs, and 6 very scratched discs is what I found when I opened my Amazon package. Thinking it was just a fluke, I went online to see other people's experiences. Nope, the forums are ablaze with complaints of scratched discs. Good job Universal!

Cutesy packaging is fine, but it needs to protect the discs first and foremost. These increasingly cheap boxsets with damaged discs are really getting old (I'm looking at you too Star Trek season 1 HD DVD....).

It truly hurts to give this a one-star rating. The last thing I want to do is turn someone off to a show as great as Battlestar Galactica, but the sad reality is that this box set should be considered a war crime. I won't get into the details of how disappointing the transfer is, the flimsy packaging, the stupid rubber nubs (hint: twist don't pull), the scratched discs, the audio-sync problems, the video skipping, or the lackluster extras; other reviewers here and elsewhere have done an adequate job of that. My real goal here is to add another voice to the growing chorus of people heartbroken by this travesty in the (likely deluded) hope that Universal issues a recall and maybe does it right next time. In the mean time, I'm returning this and sticking with my original DVD box set.

As reported by others, all of my disks arrived scratched. This does not seem to be the fault of Amazon as my set was securely packaged. In addition to the scratches, the Dolby TrueHD audio track on disk 2 is very noticeably out of sync with the picture. Since the problem only appears on that disk, it probably has something to do with the encoding. Hold off buying these and see if Universal corrects these problems. My set is going back for a refund.

I am a big fan of Battlestar Galactica, but not this HD-DVD set of season 1. I purchased the set and found that a couple of the discs had scratches on them, concentric to the disc. I returned to where purchased and they proceeded to open up a series of 4 sets, all with scratches on some discs. Clearly there is some manufacturing problem. Proceed with caution if you are purchasing this set and check your discs before it's too late to return. Just ended up getting my money back. Will wait until Universal cleans up their act with these discs...

I'm extraordinarily disappointed in the quality of this HD DVD set. Not only were half of my discs scratched due to the ridiculously cheap packaging, but the audio on disc 2 (the second part of the mini-series) was massively out-of-sync and therefore unwatchable. This is perhaps my favorite show on tv, and to see a transfer that looked worse than my SDTV broadcast in some scenes along with the sync issues and scratching (and subsequent video skipping) is beyond inexcusable. If you love BG, then you'll want to wait until Universal actually releases a quality Season 1 set instead of this tripe.

I rated this series 5*s on Netflix, and was really looking forward to seeing it in the true splendor of HD on my 71" Samsung DLP from a Tosh A30 over HDMI. This review is not about the BSG content, but about the HD boxed set.

What is wrong ? Well, really - everything !

1 - It's not a "boxed set". There is no box. The packaging is 6 discs attached to a flimsy fold-out card holder that fits inside a pathetically flimsy acetate sleave. If I had seen this in a store I would not have bought it.

2 - Disks are all scratched. Yes, every one of them. Perhaps not scratched exactly - it looks rather as if the discs could have been stressed in some way, so that the surface is fractured. It seems likely that the hopelessly inadequate packaging allowed the discs to be stressed in transit. Most of them were partially playable, but 2 would not even load.

3 - Awful mastering. The image quality was comparable with a poorer than average DVD. I just finished watching all 3 seasons of Lost on regaular DVD through the same equipment, and the image quality was FAR superior to the image quality on this set (to be fair, the mastering on Lost is excellent). Now, it is true that a 71" DLP will expose even small flaws, but I watch a lot of regular DVDs on this setup, including some fairly old ones, and there are few that look worse than this BSG set. The blacks are very poorly rendered, with lots of speckles of white, and all of the dark backgrounds are poorly reproduced. On top of that, I see a lot of compression artifacts - about the same as when watching from my ReplayTV through S-Video.

I want my money back. This product is simply not of merchantable quality. Even if the physical issues were reslved (scatched discs, non-box packaging) the video quality is so poor that to sell this material as "HD" is simply dishonest.

UPDATE

Well, they wouldn't give me my money back, but I got a replacement set. This time only 3 of the discs had the scratches, and they were all playable. These more minor scratches seem to manifest themselves as snow in some scenes, and some minor skipping and audio sync problems. The audio sync was resolved by pausing and restarting. Still not acceptable, but it did allow me to see more of the main season (as opposed to the miniseries). The Quality on the season varies from better than the miniseries to much better. The video quality in the scenes on the surface of Cobol, and some of the outdoor material of Boomer and Helo on Caprica, and on Clound 9 is truely eye-popping. Elsewhere there is plenty of good video quality, but also a lot of very mediocre footage as well. But this just makes the quality of the rest of the material all the more disappointing.

Even with a set of perfectly unscrated discs I could not rate this above 3 stars - which is a real shame given how good it COULD have been. I will be returning this set to see if I can finally get an unscratched set.

Wow. The shows great but... What's with he discs. 4 out of five were scratched and I bought SEALED in the box. I think I figured it out. The packaging is so bad with these little rubbery plasicky (knobs) that your supposed to stick the discs to are the culprit. I believe that whoever was the poor sap that got hired to make the discs stick to the packaging probably pushed and twisted and pushed like He!! to get them to work hence scratchng them. Too bad - I had to order another set/replacement. I sure hope those are ok..

-Terry

The transfer on the show is just horrible. There's quite a lot of static left on the screen to approximate the "film grain" look of the show. However, how much static and the extent that it successfully mimics the grain can change, scene to scene, moment to moment.

The opening sequence of the human negotiator meeting the Six for first time is amazingly bad. The bronze colored walls are practically popping with bright and dark flashes of static. This settles down as the show goes on and then disapears all together in some scenes, only to come back in others. There doesn't seem to be any sort of pattern to this as well. That is, dark scenes sometimes have lots of static, sometimes they don't. Scenes with a lot of visual effects are usually clean but then sometimes they don't.

The audio is great however. Low frequency sounds are portrayed quite nicely which makes the soundtrack, sound effects and edward james olmos sound incredible.

If you own the original SD set, this is a minor upgrade at best and hardly does justice to the show.

edit: Disc 2 does suffer from a very noticable audio/video synch issue.