NOTE: The Blu-ray captures were ripped directly from the Blu-ray disc. The first three Blu-ray images below are linked to their full size by simply clicking on them.

As we are now linking to full resolution captures for Blu-ray discs (in this case the first 3), we thought it only fair to also show the SD in its native resolution (for this NTSC Single Disc disc - 960X540).

I was curious to see the visual gap and differences between 2-D animation in SD and Blu-ray. Expectantly the variance is small. Colors certainly look better as well as being marginally sharper (perhaps because of truer black levels) in Blu-ray. Whites and black are more pure. But as noise is never really a strong factor in straight digital-to-digital - neither edition hold any of those distracting artifacts and both look pretty smooth. To be fair to the Blu-ray, its superiority will be more noticeable the larger a picture is expanded - given simple mathematics - as, at double the size (resolution), it has such a strong advantage.

There are a few differences in audio options and subtitles but the Blu-ray offers much more in the supplements department - mirroring the two-disc CE SD available HERE. Both the single-disc and Blu-ray have the decent commentary and upcoming Wonder Woman promo (Keri Russell) but the Blu-ray offers another hour's worth of featurette / documentary with ‘Mirror of the Bat: The Evil Denizens of Gotham City’ running about 35 minutes and ‘Batman and Me, A Devotion of Destiny: The Bob Kane Story’ - which I highly recommend seeing. Plus, my son loved an additional four 4:3 ratio Batman animated episodes (‘Heart of Ice’, ‘I am the Night’, ‘Legends of the Dark Knight’ and ‘Over the Edge’), although these (as are all Blu-ray extras in this release) standard definition.

NOTE: Although listed on the box, the Blu-ray, suspiciously, has no Japanese DUB available.

Okay, bottom line is the visual differences are limited, but do exist and the audio and sub options are virtually the same. Extras lean to the Blu-ray which duplicate the Collector's Edition but the 1080P disc is only a dollar more. Fans should definitely get the single-layered Blu-ray - but parents simply placating their kids should get the significantly cheaper single disc unless they are interested in the further supplements. I don't see any point in getting the CE unless you don't have a Blu-ray player yet.

This was an interesting experiment in quality control of, this addictive, 2-D animation on two digital formats and we can definitely say we learned something. Well, I was interested anyway.