Buy Low Price From Here Now
Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 11/11/2008 Rating: Pg
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Technical Details
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By Captainbob (Texas)
No frills packaging, delivered on time, as advertised, good price for collectable set of dvd's
By J. Parra (Tucson, AZ)
I picked up this set along with the Dirty Harry Box (*tee hee*) Set, so the two have been kind of bleeding together in my mind. Like Harry Potter? Like Blu Ray? Then get the set. If you haven't formed an opinion on either by now, you probably never will.
Do keep in mind these come in thinpak cases, and as such may not match future purchases of the last three films.
By A. Dent (Minas Anor, GD)
Briefly
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When I ordered the Years 1-5 Blu bundle I already had years 1-4 on DVD and year 5 on Blu. My expectations were to get significantly better picture quality and improved sound. These being at least for years 1-4 original DVD re-releases, I did not expect a lot of Blu 'special treatment'. My expectations, both the positive and the negative ones were generally met with a few disappointments on the special features treatment.
Physical delivery
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We get a small bundle. Each individual movie is delivered on one Blu disc inside a Blu slim case. There's nothing inside the case but the disc itself. The carton box lists the special features for each of the 5 movies on the back.
Video
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Movies are all presented on 1080p and a 2.4:1 aspect ratio. The picture quality is excellent even by Blu standards.
Sound
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Linear PCM 5.1 sounds amazing. It's a clear improvement over the DVD's Dolby 5.1 which is also available as the default audio option.
Special features
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This is where, surprisingly, the Blu edition offers 'less' than the DVD.
- All the DVD ROM features present on the DVD releases are missing. This is understandable and not unexpected. There are very few computers with Blu drives these days.
- All the 'interactive' features present on the DVD releases are missing. This is not understandable or expected because greater interactivity is one of Blu's selling points.
- All the other DVD features are present on the Blu releases but they are all unchanged - the same low resolution.
- No new special features were added to the Blu releases. Not even the invitation to access the movie's Web site wasn't translated into a hyperlink and there is no BD-Live.
Rating
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The bundle is a definitely recommended to anyone who hasn't bought the Harry Potter movies on DVD already if one can't wait for 2 more years to get the complete 7-movie pack that MIGHT benefit from a special Blu facelift.
For someone like me, who already has the DVD copies, it's a 'maybe'. I took advantage of a deep discount opportunity at Amazon and I don't regret my purchase. I will probably try to resell my single 'Order of the Phoenix' Blu copy and the individual years 1-4 on DVD.
Overall, this bundle can't get the 5-star 'exceptional' rating but earns a solid 4 stars because, while the movies themselves are presented well, nothing special was done to add to the original DVD special features, to enhance the existing ones or to take advantage of any Blu-ray specific capabilities.
By Ford Ka (Edinburgh, Scotland)
Harry Potter is a wizard in many more ways then one - his magic apparently transcended what happened in the books and enthralled the readers, especially the young ones. It was the first book in years which managed to pull the trick (and bearing in mind that most kids these days find reading tedious, it may well be the last) so it was quite obvious early on that such a success must be transferred on the screen and, at the same time, there were fairly obvious fears that doing it successfully would not be possible. The movies prove that although the task was enormous the directors of these five movies coped with it more then OK. No expenses were spared, the casting was more than impressive, the directors were found who knew their job, the locations are formidable (there are few places quite as picturesque as Scotland, aren't there?), what else could you ask?
If you don't have these DVDs already get them for your kids and you will have some fun as well. The price is more than appealing (let's face it, you're getting a movie in Bluray - uneven to be frank, don't hope for perfection with the first movies - for the price of a cinema ticket!) so why wait? If you play it right you can get quite a few free evenings while your kids will sit entranced in front of the TV ;)
PS There is also something for tech-savvy adult viewers - the movies are a great way to see how special effects developped other last few years. Just watch closely!
By Jason C. Dean (South East USA)
My focus here is more on the Blu Ray and this package than the 5 movie plots.
First off the package physically is small. Each movie comes in a case that is about half the size of a normal Blu Ray case. I like the smaller cases so much that I wish all Blu Rays came in the small case. It is such a space saver and we REALLY appriciate that aspect alone.
Each movie has loads of special features and behind the sceens content. So even though we have a smaller case for rach disk, they are packed full of goodies.
Coming from the normal DVD's another aspect we really liked was not having to have multiple disks for each movie. Call me lazy but I hate to be interupted in the middle of a film to have to insert a new disk. So we really appriciate that as well.
One thing lacking was each case was rather plain on the inside. The first two movies on DVD had a lot of nice decoration and such but their Blu Ray counter parts were pure business with no thrills or even a sceen selection index. I personally enjoy that type of thing but it is a minor detail really.
Picture quality which is what REALLY counts here is 110% amazing. The detail is jaw dropping to the point it grabs you and pulls you into the film leaving the feeling that you are there. We watched them on our Samsung LN52B750.
If you like this series and want to know if the jump from DVD to the Blu Ray is worth it then I would highly recomend this set to you assuming you have a TV to take advanatage of the quality.
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