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Blu-ray Reviews: The Siege

Not previously published
Last updated 17 June 2011


The Siege
1998 - Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment South Pacific Pty Ltd
Director: Edward Zwick
Starring: Denzel Washington, Annette Bening, Bruce Willis, Tony Shalhoub, Sami Bouajila and Ahmed Ben Larby

Movie: Picture: TBA Sound: TBA Extras:


No printed review.


Facts
Running time: 116 minutes
Picture: 2.36:1, 1080p24, MPEG4 AVC @ 34.12Mbps
Sound: English: DTS-HD Master Audio 24/48 3/2.1 @ 4312kbps (core: DTS 24/48 3/2.1 @ 1509kbps); Spanish, German Italian: DTS 24/48 3/2.1 @ 768kbps; Commentary: Dolby Digital 2/0.0 @ 224kbps
Subtitles: English, Spanish, German, Italian, Danish, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, English (Commentary), Spanish (Commentary), German (Commentary), Italian (Commentary), Danish (Commentary), Finnish (Commentary), Swedish (Commentary), Norwegian (Commentary)
Extras: Documentary: 'Inside the Mind of a Suicide Bomber' (480i60, MPEG2, DD2.0 @ 192kbps - 42 mins); 3 Featurettes (480i60, MPEG2, DD2.0 @ 192kbps - 41 mins); 2 Trailers (480i60, MPEG2, DD2.0 @ 192kbps - 5 mins)
Restrictions: Rated (Australian rating); Locked to Regions B & C

The following video bitrate graph was generated by BDInfo 0.5.2:


Comparison: Blu-ray vs PAL DVD

Here are some comparisons between the Australian DVD and the Australia Blu-ray version of this movie. The Blu-ray was supplied to me by Twentieth Century Fox. I purchased the DVD some years ago.

At the top of each is the full frame (suitably shrunk down) used in the comparison, with a 250 pixel wide detail from the frame underneath. The left side is from the PAL DVD. The image was captured digitally from the disc, scaled up from its native 720 by 576 pixel resolution to 1,024 by 576 (to present in the correct aspect ratio) by the application. I then scaled it, in order for it to be comparable to the Blu-ray version, to 1,920 by 1,080 pixels.

The detail is from that last scaled version, and has not been rescaled again. The right side is from the Australian Blu-ray. This has not been scaled at all. Different applications were used to capture the two frames, so some caution should be exercised in judging colour and brightness.

For visitors from NTSC lands, generally the PAL DVD is just a touch sharper than the NTSC DVD.

Count those stripes on the tie:


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