E.T. coming soon... - Page 4

Watched this on Sunday with my family and it was a wonderful family experience. My kids loved the movie, and my wife and I remarked on how well the movie has held up over time (minus some of the special effects). IMHO, this is a true classic. I also agree that the transfer was very solid, especially for a Universal transfer. This is what Blu is all about!

It looks fantastic on the big screen. We'll probably be watching it tomorrow night with a bunch of people. Family-friendly, Halloween-related. I'll have to be sure to pick up Reese's Pieces.

It looked great on my 125" screen, and funny enough I went out and bought Reese's Pieces the day after watching it

Does anyone know if there are any minor differences between the UK/US release as far as presentation goes (IE: Does the US transfer have a slightly better encode/higher bitrate)?

No, no differencies, same encode and also for the English languaje DTS-HD Master Audio.
I tested it. I have the US digibook and the Spanish steelbook (which is the same sold in the UK, they just added a sticker on the rear and part of the front so it reads E.T. El Extraterrestre and the specs in Spanish, once removed, everything is in English and on the steelbook itself reads A Steven Spielberg's film on the fron E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and the same on the spine).

I was as curious as you, so I did the following: ripped both US and European BDs with DVDFab, selecting only the video and the English DTS-HD Master Audio. Both of them took the same space, I don't remember how many gigas, I did this as soon as the E.T. BD was out. As I still had both versions ripped, my curiosity went further. I used a program called (it's free) tsMuxer. Among other things lets you convert an MKV file into a Blu ray, add or take subtitles, languajes etc. It also lets you separate audio/video files, like m2ts found on BDs into different streams. This is what I did with both US and European ripped BDs, separate audio and video into two diferent files. Guess what? Same result, same space for video file on US and European BD and the same for the DTS-HD Master Audio track, they took exactely the same, so this leads me to think they use the same video and audio (for the English track) encode for both US and European releases.
Just out off-topic, I bought the Universal Gladiator digibook a month ago, 'though I have the "good" US Paramount Saphire series of the same title, and did the same, as I notice the picture on the US Paramaount BD to be more defined, clearer but not edge enhanced, the European BD looked fuzzy next to it. It's not only that the results were different, both audio and (English) DTS-HD Master Audio and video took less space, so the encodes are different.

Thanks a lot Eddie, glad someone had already looked into it to that depth!

I was curious and E.T. is one of my favourite films.