James Bond Blu-Ray Collection 2 [US Import]

Let me first state that I was completely unaware of the problems with playing these movies until I browsed through the Amazon reviews. It is disturbing to constantly hear of people who paid good money for their expensive players not being able to fully enjoy movies that are expected to play on them. However, I have not experienced any problems playing a Bluray movie ever and this review is only discussing my personal experience with this specific package.

_____________________________________________
THE GOOD:
- Incredible video quality, better than what the audience saw on release date on some of the older movies.
- Lots of extras, most of them worth watching or listening to.
- Beautiful packaging.

THE NOT SO GOOD:
- The sound restoration not as good as the video.
- Some of the 'extras' sections would benefit from a 'play all' option.
- The box could be a bit slimmer.
- May require upgrades on certain players.
_____________________________________________

The overall impression is of quality, inside and out. The box could be a little smaller but the packaging is exquisite. There's a transparent plastic slide cover over a solid cardboard box holding a small binder on which the 3 individual movie disks are pages. Each movie comes on one disk, holding the movie itself and in incredible amount of extras.

The menu interface is well organized and there's is even some humor in labeling. For example, the option that plays the movie is labeled 'The Mission' while the historic promotional material is found under 'The Propaganda'. Depending on which section you may be, menu options branch into further sub-menus.

The extras are numerous and, for the most part interesting. The From Russia with Love disk, for example, has 3 fascinating interviews with Ian Fleming, including one where Fleming and Chandler discuss their work and their heroes, the Propaganda sections show contemporary trailers, even radio commercials.

The sound options include the original sound which, in the older releases is 'mono' but all movies have surround 5.1 as the default. The sound wasn't upgraded and improved to the degree that the picture was but, it's understandable. Going from mono to 5.1 surround would be the equivalent of upgrading from black and white to full-color 3-D in the world of images. The area where some of the older installments show their age is the sound.

When it comes to the pictures, the best that I can say is that you've got to see it to believe it. The restoration of the older movies started with the actual original negative, which is the one copy that's almost never touched. Once the copy was digitized as a 4000 lines resolution digital copy (Bluray is 1080) every frame was reprocessed to eliminate any possible defects from 'dirty optics', such as the proverbial hair that we sometimes see on the older movies to scratches, bad exposure, color brilliance. The restorers' goal for the end result, and this concerns the video only, not the sound quality, was to deliver what would appear to be a contemporary movie with a 60's or 70's theme rather than a 60's or 70's movies. In my view, they succeeded.

My overall rating is a solid five-stars. Just about everything in this release is superlative: the physical packaging, the interface design, the extras, the video quality. The sound is not so good on the older movies but, given the state of sound restoration technologies, I did not feel compelled to remove a star because the old movies sounded more or less like they did on release date.

Please note that and I am not factoring in player issues because, sooner or later, those are going to be addressed.

It was very disappointing to receive this excellent James Bond Blu-ray collection with 2 of the discs damaged during shipment because of the extremely poor packaging. Each disc is secured to a page with a small piece of foam, which easily breaks loose during shipment.

If you are going to buy this, then I would suggest you contact the seller and request that they add some additional protection for each disc.

This review is not based on the movie itself or the quality of the Blu Ray disk. Rather it is a warning to those considering buying this multipack of the absolutely horrible packaging of this expensive set. My three pack arrived today and I just open the box and was horrified at the package. I have purchased many multi packs of movies/TV shows and every other time the disks were held on a separate page in a plastic reinforced page with a plastic spindle in the middle. This set came in a "book style "package with a foam rubber type spindle to hold the disk in place. Well on disk two "From Russia With love" the foam spindle was missing!! The disk had bounced around so much it was scratched and looked like an old scratched disk !!!! Regarding disks one and three the foam spindles were half torn off and surely after one play the foam spindle will certainly fall off. Disgraceful - A pox on MGM.