Anybody getting the Appleseed DVD?  

Although I missed it in the theaters a couple months back, I saw it at a friend's place and was very impressed with the cgi/anime look of the movie. According to DVDfile.com the dvd has great PQ and SQ.

I'm probably getting the 2-disk version, I like the idea of the metal case, should go well with my T2X, Akira, and Halo2 Limited cases :)

PQ is a bit soft sometimes but overall good and very clean. The animation, however, is fantastic!

SQ is a mixed bag, it doesn't have the punch that you would expect, the bass is often lacking, the DD is a bit flat, and the DTS doesn't seem to be mixed correctly. The DTS track sounds too rear heavy and center light, very light. I had to turn up my center channel +10db to get it to sound decent, even then it lacked definition. It was so bad I had to get up and put my ear to the center channel to make sure it was working. Overall the English DD lacked sonic impact and the Japanees DD and DTS mixes were even worse, which made this very disappointing since it is such an action heavy movie.

On the good side, the sound mixing does sound more complex than most anime I've heard with nice spacial/surround effects here an there. The DTS track is very open and more detailed than the DD track, but the poor DTS channel volume levels is really distracting. Voice acting was not bad.

Haven't had the time to watch the extras.

The collectors edition case is very nicely done. It uses the same type of tin case that the Halo 2 Limited Edition came in, but with very nicely done full color artwork on the front and back.

Overall, great animation, good PQ, so so story, and poor SQ. Too bad too, since this would have made a great HT demo disk.

I heard Walmart has it for much cheaper ($6 less for the CE), don't know if it's true, don't shop at Walmart.

JR, I know, I've read reviews from DVDfile and DVD Talk that both rave about the disk's PQ and SQ, but it's really not up to snuff, at least my copy isn't anyways :(

In looking at the PQ in more detail tonight, it has some problems with flagging, macro blocking, and banding. I saw this with 2 different DVD players and my HTPC :(

After watching the intro again this morning, it sounds like the music is too loud and the SFX from the fronts are too soft on the DTS cut, the DD version has the music mixed softer so it makes the sound effects sound louder but even it is still too soft for an action movie IMHO. There are some effects I can barely make out . Although this may be intentional with the mix, however, if it is it is doing the movie an injustice.

I'm going to try replacing the DVD to see if that helps (worth a shot since BB is so close to my office).

I got a hold of the Japanese release of Appleseed and can hear a distinct difference in the sound mixes. The sfx on the Japanese version sounds as you would expect, high impact action has highly dynamic effects, while the same scene on the US release sounds compressed. In fact, that's exactly the problem I've been hearing, all the sound effects have been put through a dynamic range compression filter...at maximum setting. This difference can be heard on the DD, DTS and 2-channel tracks.

Sometimes I use my Sony ES's dynamic compression when watching action movies at night to not wake the kids, this is just what the sfx track sounds like on the Appleseed DVD. The problem initially threw me off because the music track does not sound compressed.

From depeche's and l.hatt's comments I would hope that this is a problem only on some pressings of this disk. mode101 and l.hatt do you guys have the 2 disk or single disk version?

According to Dan from DVDFile who did the Appleseed review, he was given a pre-production NFR copy which may explain why he didn't see these problems. As stated earlier, these problems do not exist with the R2 release so we know a "good" version exists and that these problems are not intentional.

If you have dynamic range problems with the sound effects on the Appleseed DVD's audio, especially on the Japanese language tracks, email or contact the following:

1. Geneon/Pioneer @ 310.952.2406
2. info@rightstuf.com

They have privately aknowledge the problem, but unfortunately, will not/cannot do anything about it.

It might be a long shot considering the size of the publisher, but hopefully enough interest can get them to re-press the disk with corrected audio.