Ice Age: The Meltdown review

[Jeff®]

Ice Age: The Meltdown

"This transfer's most immediately striking aspect is how three-dimensional it looks. Just about every shot has a wonderful sense of depth to it, with excellent use of that foreground and background that really accentuates the lush arctic landscapes. Of course the "source material" is absolutely perfect, with a crystal-clear clarity not degraded by any uses of artificial film grain or other digital tweaks. Blacks are rich and pure, and the slightly high-contrast cast well-suited to a film whose primary color is white. Hues are still very lush, especially the vivid orange-brown animal furs and icicle-cool blues."

"...as of this writing no current Blu-ray players or A/V receivers offer DTS-HD decoding...there is no way to access the DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on this disc at full resolution. So what you are going to hear without DTS-HD decoding is the core, lossy DTS soundtrack at a healthy 1.5mbps. But no worries -- 'Ice Age: The Meltdown' sounds almost as good as it looks. The punchy sound deign and bright dynamics makes for a downright cheerful experience. I enjoyed the cute, chirpy discrete effects in the rears, and John Powell's upbeat music score nicely bleeds to the rears but never overpowers the action. "

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/iceagemeltdown.html

[Josh]

He really can't ever give a BD a 5 star rating, can he?

[phranctoast]

Ive been looking forward to this title

[Chris Beveridge]

The whole thing must have hurt to write for him. Interestingly, a few small comments about the film by Kris Deering at AVS indicated that this was a poor looking transfer.

I watch a lot of digital animation, so the things that both talk about are simply inherent in the source, such as the color gradiation issue. Where the higher resolution and bandwidth come in is when it stops it from blocking.

[JTK]

Originally Posted by Chris Beveridge

The whole thing must have hurt to write for him. Interestingly, a few small comments about the film by Kris Deering at AVS indicated that this was a poor looking transfer.

At this point, KD carries very little credibility with me for a whole slew of reasons, but the most relevant one being: His partner Stacy Spears works for Microsoft.

Need I say more?

There's nothing wrong with the transfer at all, believe me.

I watch a lot of digital animation, so the things that both talk about are simply inherent in the source, such as the color gradiation issue. Where the higher resolution and bandwidth come in is when it stops it from blocking.

See it for yourself.

[Chris Beveridge]

Oh, I intend to see it. I've got it on order. But it would not surprise me to see gradiant "problems" there but it'd be on any format.

[theknub]

got this on order... looking forward to it

i took my little cousins to see this and we had a blast. i wonder if my friends and i can come up with a good drinking game for it

[dobyblue]

I think on High Def they actually rate the BD on a 4 star point scheme and HD-DVD on a 5 star point scheme.
They've just forgotten to remove the 5th star from the BD side.

[phloyd]

I have not seen KD's comments but I will say this.

Both Ice Age movies seem to have this weird colour gradation effect especially in the blue of the skies. It must have something to do with the way they create the sky gradiants or is artistic choice. Sadly it means that Ice Age is not good demo material because it looks like there is something wrong with the display.

[ay221]

Originally Posted by Chris Beveridge

The whole thing must have hurt to write for him. Interestingly, a few small comments about the film by Kris Deering at AVS indicated that this was a poor looking transfer.

I watch a lot of digital animation, so the things that both talk about are simply inherent in the source, such as the color gradiation issue. Where the higher resolution and bandwidth come in is when it stops it from blocking.

Yeah If its from Kris, I won't read the review at all.

[4K display]

My favorite reviewers are eyeball 1 and eyeball 2, my own of course.

These online reviewers are nothing more than a slit of a slight guideline, at best.

[KenThompson]

Originally Posted by dobyblue

I think on High Def they actually rate the BD on a 4 star point scheme and HD-DVD on a 5 star point scheme.
They've just forgotten to remove the 5th star from the BD side.

Good one , I needed a good laugh. Your right though, he would know a good transfer if it fell on his head

[BTBuck1]

Chad at HTS is the only reviewer i tend to agree with more than not. He seems genuinely fair.

[PurpleAardvark]

Originally Posted by 4K display

My favorite reviewers are eyeball 1 and eyeball 2, my own of course.

These online reviewers are nothing more than a slit of a slight guideline, at best.

Yes some of these online reviewers have a hard time seeing, because they have their head up their butt. No names (caugh, caugh, high def mag). sorry about that bad cold.

[shamus]

Originally Posted by Brian@BBY

Chad at HTS is the only reviewer i tend to agree with more than not. He seems genuinely fair.

Michael from hometheaterforum too.

[Chris Beveridge]

I got this in today and checked it out on my Samsung (hooked up to a Toshiba 34" HD CRT set) with my kids. Yeah, there's some banding visible in some of the sky blues. But that's a source issue. And not really an issue, just a limit of the digital painting technology. It's simply a bit more visible because of the higher resolution.

[phloyd]

I don't even think it is a limitation of the painting technology - I think it is an artistic choice or an oversight. More likely the former since it is pretty obvious.

It is no problem to make smooth skies digitally.

[Deciazulado]

It's a problem of going from high-bit uncompressed digital files to 7.78 bit High Definition video with compression, and compounded by piping those 7.78 bits through 8 bit electronics, mostly. Hopefully with HDMI 1.3, dithering techniques, and minimal or more efficient compression in the future, the problem will be made unnoticeable eventualy.

[4K display]

Another stellar review:

Jeremy Frost (UpcomingDiscs.com)

Video - 4.5/5
Audio - 4.5/5

[Early Memphis]

Not about the review, but this seems to be the only thread:
Although it's not listed here, Best Buy has both Ice Age: The Meltdown and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs on sale for $9.99 (both with all 3 discs and a $5.00 Hollywood Movie Money sticker to see Ice Age: Continental Drift 3D). The Best Buy website only shows "Dawn of the Dinosaurs" on sale and has "The Meltdown" at $14.99 (on the phone, the local store claimed that "The Meltdown" was $19.99 ). However, I was in there this morning and saw them both so I went back and they both rang up at $9.99 - which is what the white sales sticker on the shelf said they should be (which was also true for the original Ice Age).