Angel R2 Season 1 Box set

[nsd3]

Having just bought the Angel season 1 (Region 2) boxset I'm appalled at how poor the MPEG2 encoding process has been carried out. The amount of digital artifacts on show is unbelievable. It's not so noticeable on shots where there's a lot of movement, but show up terrible on facial expressions. Literally, a slight change in a facial expression leaves the old one behind before it plays catchup. It's really off putting. Even my wife, who is much more tolerant of a poor picture commented on how parts of the images seemed to "swim" out of step with the rest of the picture.

My advice to anyone contemplating buying this boxset is not to bother. I'd like to complain to 20th Century Fox, if I could find a UK address to complain to.

[Werdna007]

I thought it was just me who noticed that effect, not only on the Angel set (I have R4) but also on the Buffy sets. I figured that it was my TV or DVD player causing it.

Maybe someon who has a lot more technical knowledge about these things could explain why. Have FOX screwed the cusomers again ??:confused:

[saigon]

nothing wrong with my Angel Season 1 box set.....except for the fact it's not widescreen

[JonLaidlow]

Was just thinking last night how much better the picture on Angel looks than on the tapes I recorded off Sky when it was first shown.

And how much better it looks than the Buffy episodes, presumably because it was shot on better film than the early Buffs.

You got a particularly big screen or something?

J

[nsd3]

Just a standard 29 inch 4:3 Sony TV. The motion artifacts are clearly visible, and if you can get past them, the picture quality is very good, much better than VHS or Sky.

I would think that basically, very little care has been during the encoding process, as far as I can tell, all the DVDs are single layer single sided, I would guess during DVD production, the bitrate for the MPEG encoding process was deliberately kept low so the maximum number of episodes could be crammed onto one side/one layer. A movie of the same length would be dual layer. My DVD player shows the bit rate at around 4.5 (from 0-10) compared to around 7-8 for a movie.

Steve

[Werdna007]

Just a question to ns3d, is your Sony TV a 100Hz version?
If so we may have the same model.

Coincidence on the artifacts?

[sbooth]

Originally posted by saigon
nothing wrong with my Angel Season 1 box set.....except for the fact it's not widescreen

Agreed. I thought the picture was pretty good. Certainly better than Buffy boxsets. Watched them on a Sony 24" Widescreen with Sony DVD player.

[nsd3]

Nope! Just a standard 50 Hz model. I'm now chasing Fox through their customer services. I'll let you what happens.

Steve

[ickle yoda1]

I was actually very pleased with my angel box set picture. The only thing that annoyed me was the fact that it wasn't in widescreen. After seeing the buffy dvds I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the picture.

Does anyone know if the picture of buffy season 3 is the same as the angel DVDs?

[rookx]

I haven't got the Angel season 1 as I am still sulking about the widescreen, but, the season 3 Buffy is certainly a lot better picture quality than seasons 1 and 2. Perhaps the next season will be widescreen.

[hookbeak]

My r4 Angel looks perfect on my tv. Not noticed any artifacts at all. And it's a big TV.

[Mr Nice]

Originally posted by nsd3
as far as I can tell, all the DVDs are single layer single sided
Ahem, complete codswollop. All the Buffy and Angel releases have been DVD9's. The simple fact that the total data on each one is in the 8-9gig area tells me that.
And I haven't seen any mpeg artifacts on any of them. Just soft and a bit smeary on early Buffy.