NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Geneon Entertainment Premium Blu-ray December 08': - I suppose it is possible that my computer equipment is not capable of visually discerning the differences between these Blu-ray releases - beyond the technical aspects. I'm not sure. What I usually do in a comparison is watch both (or more) on my system, make notes and go about seeing if what I saw is supported using the computer generated screen captures. Well... here I cannot. It may be a matter of the moving image representing itself differently than stills, or it could possibly be the stills that both Kevin and I have chosen are not the most indicative of improvement. OR I could have even have made some gross, fatal error with multiple copies and dual-versions of this film sitting in front of me. I'm going to have to rely more on the technical results and my own visual observations than the screen captures this time around.

The new Japanese Geneon Blu-ray Premium Edition contains 2 Blu-ray discs - a dual-layered Special Edition (longer version) Blu-ray and dual-layered Theatrical edition Blu-ray. It comes in a sturdy tin case about the size of a standard Blu-ray box. Both discs are over 48 Gig and use the MPEG4 AVC codec. Both have bitrates in the mid 30's. This alone indicates that the image quality should exceed the MPEG2, LionsGate, single-layered theatrical Blu-ray, which we saw was only a marginal improvement (but still an improvement) over the best SD-DVD rendition. The Japanese Geneon transfers are smooth and tight with less artefacts. It is the closest I have seen to replicating my, overwhelming, theatrical experience 17 years ago.

This package is what fans in North America hoped for when it was first rushed to Blu-ray in 2006 by LionsGate with only the theatrical. With the extensive extras and commentaries (repeated) on the Geneon plus the stellar image and TrueHD sound for both editions it makes for the best T2 release ever. Menus have both English and Japanese (when selected.)

I can endorse this as a fine, complete and competent Blu-ray package which patient fans can finally obtain. It's still not like viewing in the cinema but its not far off.  

Gary Tooze   

***

ADDITION: LionsGate Blu-ray August 07': - The SD editions contain both the, 15-minute longer, 'Special Edition' and shorter theatrical versions of the film where the Blu-ray has only the 'cut' theatrical.  It's a single-layered Blu-ray and the MPEG-2 encode T2 film takes up 22.8 Gig on the disc.

I've done my best to match and frame the exact scenes that Kevin meticulously did in his comparison of the SD renditions a couple of years ago... but I am surprised in that I don't see a dramatic improvement. I mean, the Blu-ray looks fair, but not great and so does the 1440x816 HD/SD Extreme edition. Obviously, those resized captures don't tell the whole story (when expanded on most systems the Blu-ray will retain more of its detail) and we've added a few larger resolution (clickable) captures at the bottom that may emphasize that.

As an experiment, I did some toggling back and forth on 2 different players and I could see the slight visual improvement of the Blu-ray, but I don't think it was as vast as most fans would hope. Skin tones are definitely redder and detail is only a moderate notch higher on my system and the Extreme edition had a minor greenish cast to it. This was an early 1080P offering from LionsGate and I suspect it could definitely be improved in many areas with dual-layering, addition of an upgraded soundtrack (and further supplements) - plus inclusion of the longer version. In overall terms this Blu-ray is weak.

This Blu-ray contains only the two commentaries as found on many of the SD counterparts - as supplements.

This minor comparison was just a short footnote to signify that fans may wish to hold off on the purchase of this Blu-ray despite how reasonable it is being offered ($12.95 at the writing of this comparison). We hope a more competent and complete 1080P version will come along soon - and I anticipate it will with the extensive fan-base expecting a much better job.

Gary Tooze   

******

ON THE SD EDITIONS: Three video transfers are involved in this comparison: the transfer for the T2 Ultimate DVD edition, the non-high-def video transfer of the new T2 Extreme DVD edition, and the high-def video transfer of the T2 Extreme DVD edition.

The high-def (HD) transfer on T2 Extreme is viewable only on a Windows PC, as the video is stored in WMV files, not VOB files. These WMV files have a video resolution of 1440x816 (as reported by Windows Media Player 9). All my screenshots were captured at a monitor resolution of 1600x1200. In order to provide proper comparisons, the screenshots of T2 Ultimate and T2 Extreme non-HD transfers were also captured at 1600x1200. No re-scaling of the images was done after capture. To help Gary conserve webspace, I chose not to show the full-size images, but only a smaller area within each image. The dotted rectangle on the first image of each comparison shows the area that is being compared.

A note about system performance while playing the HD version. My PC (Windows Me, Intel P4 2.4GHz, 256MB DDR RAM, 128MB GeForce4 AGP card) is significantly below the recommended spec, and yet, I got smooth playback at 1600x1200 and 32-bit color depth. The CPU utilization was near 100%, however. Only when I time-searched or skipped chapters did I notice momentary choppiness. If I copied the WMV files to the hard disk and played them there directly, it would not be as choppy.

In order to capture the screenshots for the HD version, I had to lower the video acceleration setting in Windows Media Player 9, thereby disabling video overlay, in order to use the Print Screen button to capture screen images, since the Windows 9x/Me version of WMP9 has no DVD capture ability (the XP version does, however). Screenshots for T2 Ultimate and T2 Extreme's non-HD version were captured using PowerDVD 4.0.

The screenshots below clearly show that both T2 Extreme transfers are a vast improvement over that of T2 Ultimate. The HD version clearly looks the best. But one should keep in mind that the primary reason for the HD version's much-improved quality is due to the fact that it was made from a restored high-def video master, the same master that was used to make T2 Extreme's non-HD transfer. Over at the Home Theater Forum (which received a thank-you from Van Ling in the Extreme DVD's credits), someone posted screenshot comparisons between T2 Ultimate and T2 Extreme's HD version. But such comparisons do not answer two questions. How much of the improvement is due to the re-mastered video source? And how much of it is due to the HD presentation? To answer the first, we should really compare T2 Ultimate with T2 Extreme's non-HD version, since they have same resolution of 720x480. To answer the second question, we should compare T2 Extreme's non-HD version with the HD version, since they came from the same video master. After looking at dozens of screenshots (only a few are shown here for web space consideration), I observed that the difference between T2 Ultimate and T2 Extreme non-HD is much more dramatic than that between T2 Extreme non-HD and T2 Extreme HD. Therefore, to me, the re-mastered source material is the primary reason for the improvement that we see.

The first set of captures below are typical of most deep-focus shots in the film. The HD image shows the greatest clarity in the distant objects (cars, sprinklers, child, etc.). On the non-HD image, they are less sharp, but still recognizable. On the Ultimate image, the child and the sprinkler are hardly recognizable.

In the second set of captures, the expression of the girl (a young Nikki Cox) and the word "Subway" on the soft drink cup are much clearer on the HD image, slightly less clear on the non-HD image, and downright blurry on the Ultimate image.

 - Kevin Yip