Hi-Def Preview

The HD Scape Suite

DVD International

Release Date: 10/30/07

Review By: Joshua Noyes

Picture Quality – 4.5/5

Audio Quality – 4/5

Special Features - 1/5

Overall – 4.25/5

Comments: I was happy to receive the suite of HD Scape films several days a go from DVD International for review. The suite consists of 7 separate discs for both Blu-ray and HD-DVD featuring the following:

HD Window: Hawaii

HD Window: Great Southwest

FIREPLACE

Visions of the Sea

Antarctica Dreaming

Serenity: Southern Seas

Exotic Saltwater Aquarium

Each disc is encoded using AVC and offers a Dolby TrueHD soundtrack on the Blu-ray versions of the films or a Dolby Digital soundtrack on the HD-DVD versions of the films. Also, all HD-DVD discs in this set, with the exception of “Exotic Saltwater Aquarium” are in the Combo Format.

As far as picture quality goes, both suites use the same AVC encode. The bitrates tend to run in the teens and produce a nice picture. The colors are extremely vibrant and create a very nice “pop” in image quality as one would hope. The image is also in the 1.78:1 format so that it occupies the typical HD screen completely. This leads to a nice overall image effect. At times I did notice the image to be a bit soft. Objects generally in the foreground were in focus, where as the objects in the background were slightly out of focus. An example of this can be found in Chapter 3 of: “HD Window: Hawaii.” In the foreground there is an image of a tree standing in a field and in the background there is an image of a mountain. If you look closely, the mountain is slightly out of focus, causing a somewhat soft image. This type of scenario is repeated from time to time throughout the 7 discs in this set.

As mentioned earlier, all discs in the Blu-ray set are encoded using Dolby TrueHD (except Exotic Saltwater Aquarium) and all discs in the HD-DVD set are encoded using Dolby Digital. For the most part, the differences between the two sets in-terms of AQ were subtle at best. This is most likely due to the fact that the audio on these releases was not really pushing the envelope in that is was subtle elevator style music overlapped with the sounds of nature. When using my Onkyo TSXR-705 I could hear a bit more “fullness” on the Dolby TrueHD tracks of the Blu-ray releases. I also encountered the occasional sound output issue on some of these discs. In the audio section of the menu, you have an option to select audio with both music & nature sounds playing or an option of selecting just nature sounds playing. When selecting the option of playing just the nature sounds track, sometimes you would still get the music track playing. This happened on both versions of some discs. I tried multiple ways to correct the problem, but was not successful in doing so.

Each disc is sparse of special features. Basically all you get is a “Repeat Option” and a 10-minute trailer. The repeat option is nice as you can simply select it and it will loop the video continuously until you turn the player off. This could be especially useful if you were throwing a party and did not want to deal with the A/V equipment.

In conclusion, this is a very nice set of movies. I see them as a perfect solution when entertaining and you want to create some ambiance in the home. I do not however think many people will put them in their players and sit glued to the TV. If you are a fan of this sort of cinematography, I can highly recommend this purchase.