Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: The Fifth Element (1997) Blu-ray

This is topic The Fifth Element (1997) Blu-ray in forum The Afterlife at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 12-23-2008, 11:37 PM:

Of the [only] three BD movies I've watched so far, this one has the best video quality. It might be reference-grade. It's very impressive visual eye candy. The Dolby True-HD audio is pretty good too.

What a shame that the movie is no good. Everyone in it tried so hard too.

Did I mention how good the video looks though? Honestly, this is a bad movie that looks really really good on Blu-ray.

Tip: For maximum enjoyment, turn on the text commentary popup feature! Also, partake liberally of your substance of choice (mine is Bacardi)! It does help!

Did you know Bruce Willis threw a fantastic wrap party at the end of shooting The Fifth Element? What a guy!

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-24-2008, 03:12 AM:

(Since we're talking about bad movies, wonder how "Judge Dredd" would look like on BR..)

It's even interesting on how "5thE" looked great on my daughter's PSP coming from those UMD discs of Sony.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-24-2008, 03:35 AM:

Supposedly there are two versions of Fifth Element on Blu-ray. The first was supposedly horrible and in an unprecedented move, the studio actually listened to customers and released a new version which is the good-looking one.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-24-2008, 02:57 PM:

The version of The Fifth Element with the Dolby TrueHD audio track (in addition to LPCM 5.1) is the newer release. It's one of the few pieces of information you'll find on the product packaging to tell the difference between the new and old version.

The old version was released in June of 2006. It was on a single layer BD-25 disc with video encoded in MPEG-2. The disc had LPCM 5.1 and lossy DD 5.1 audio tracks. This image quality on this disc was trounced by a lot of critics.

The new version was released in July of 2007. That disc is a dual layer BD-50 with video encoded in MPEG-4 AVC. Dolby TrueHD and LPCM 5.1 audio is included. Many consider the imagery on this version to be at or near "reference quality." I will at least agree this version looks great and liked the movie enough to include it in my Blu-ray movie collection. I've tried not to go nuts with buying lots of movies like I did after buying my first DVD player. Still, I have only had my PS3 for 11 months and already own close to 40 movies on Blu-ray.