Downton Abbey The Complete Collection vs. The Complete Series

[cherbert]

Originally Posted by James Luckard

I would assume the UK BDs of Downton run at the native 25fps, but I haven't looked into it. There are, occasionally, British BDs that are slowed down so they can be 1080p.

I only wish that were true and in the case of most stuff you are right. But with Downton they really messed up. Season One in the UK is 1080p 24fps with no pitch correction. It sounds god awful!

Season Two is slowed down but has been pitch corrected - so it's watchable. S3 onwards are 1080i/50. I think there maybe one or two 1080i/60's I can't remember since I last checked.

But the 1080i/60 discs (including the region A S1 of Downton) they look great and sound great. I don't see any noticeable pull down or anything. I believe with 1080i/60 they double up the frames or something.

When the US boxset came out apparently they reverted to 1080p as they had too many complaints of consumers not able to watch the discs due to incompatibilities with certain equipment. Namely PS3 I believe.

Like I said before - the individual S2 US release is also 1080i/60 but they messed up something as it has a lot of judder.

There are lots of releases throughout Europe but it's so hard to find out if any of them are in the proper framerate. Even the UK iTunes releases are sped up!! But apparently the US iTunes versions are the proper speed.

Downton on physical media is a bit of a mess. The best I can recommend is the individual Season One from the US with the rest of the UK seasons. That would be as perfect as you can get if you can put up with the UK S2 being pitch corrected and slightly slowed down. One side note is that the individual S1 from the US lacks the Audio Commentaries of the UK discs. But as op says, looks like this has been rectified with the re-pressing of the Universal release.