Jurassic Park

ID: PA-HD82061

Price: 18,000 yen

Discs: 2

Sound: A-Mode / EFM

Running Time: 2:07

Released: Panasonic

from IMDb

Scientists develop a means of bringing dinosaurs to life using DNA taken from dino' blood, which has been

preserved inside insects encased in amber. Whilst Hammond is showing off his dinosaur 'theme park' to a selected

audience [a lawyer (Gerrano), mathematician (Malcolm), dino' expert (Grant), palaeobotanist (Sattler) and his

grandchildren (Tim & Lex)], Nedry (computer expert) disables the security system so that he can make his

escape with some stolen embryos. This enables all the dinosaurs to escape their enclosures... Look out the

dinosaurs are coming !

After the travesty of Top Gun, I was expecting this disc from Panasonic to also be below par. Shockingly, it’s quite good.

The transfer while good, is not great. The dark scenes are too dark and hide many of the shadow details. This is a bad mark considering the majority of the movie is in the dark. But it’s not bad, and definitely shows a bit more detail and saturated colors vs. the DVD version. How much better? Not a lot, and I’d be very hard pressed to recommend this disc over the DVD. But if a ~10-20% picture improvement is what you desire, then I do recommend it.

Many of the outdoor shots are sharp in detail especially shadow detail. Colors are very nicely saturated, however I did experience some chroma noisy picture in Hi-Vision format. A couple of the outdoor shots are disappointing, and they all involve CGI dinosaurs. The first Brontosaurus encounter, the dinosaur itself is a bit dark and lacking in detail. The DVD version didn’t have quite all the detail (about 85%) but since the dinosaur was lit up much more evenly, the picture looked better in this area. Also the scene shortly after where they see all the dinosaurs congregating around a lake, the picture appears a bit hazy and dark. But overall most of the outdoor scenes look good.

Is it at least better than the DVD versions? Yes, but not by leaps and bounds. But given the price this film will be most likely found, I just can’t recommend this disc over the DVD version unless you have to have all Hi-Vision discs.

There are compression artifacts, but they seldom get in the way of the picture, and generally go unnoticed.

The sound is much better produced than the picture, and sounds very similar to the NTSC laserdisc release. All channels are alive especially the surround channels and low frequency effects in the EFM mode. The A-Mode sound is a bit thin and tinny on the high frequency side, but has better front channel separation with a seamless soundstage.

Conclusion is don’t get this disc expecting a fabulous transfer, it just isn’t there.