Blu-ray Review: Lost: Season 3
By
Jon Liu
Video Format: 1.78:1 1080p
Audio Formats: English LPCM 48kHz/16-bit, English, French Dolby Digital 5.1, English, Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0
Starring: Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lily, Dominic Monahan, Naveen Andrews, Emile de Ravin, Jorge Garcia, Josh Holloway, Daniel Dae Kim, Yunjin Kim, Terry O’Quinn, Michael Emerson, Henry Cusick, Elizabeth Mitchell
Directed by:
Release Date: December 11, 2007
General
Oceanic flight 815 crashes on a mysterious island and the survivors are left on this mysterious island to fend for themselves. During this time the survivors discover that they are not alone. On this island there are inhabitants that the survivors label as “The Others.”
The survivors of Oceanic flight 815 continue their efforts to be rescued from this mysterious island and to dodge any encounters with “The Others.”
Tech Specs
Video: I have been used to the production of Lost being on the network TV channel, ABC, which broadcasts in 720p resolution and is not all that impressive. The extra resolution between 720p and 1080p makes a pretty hefty improvement on the overall quality of the video. This series is very detail-heavy, with the majority of the filming on location in Hawaii. With the Hawaiian backdrop, the costly affect of the incredible amount of detail I thought would surely pose a compression problem. Much to my surprise, the detail is retained even during fast motion, and I didn’t notice any compression artifacts while watching through the series. There is a certain amount of film grain, more noticeable in some of the darker sequences, but it never really distracts.
Note: shortly after finishing the last episode of this season, ABC re-broadcasted the last episode just before beginning of the fourth season, so I was able to compare the difference in picture quality. The decrease in resolution on the re-broadcast was simply astounding. Facial detail was lost and everything just lost its crispness. The show looked very soft. Also, the lack of a sufficient bit-rate on the re-broadcast produced compression artifacts, especially during faster motion sequences, which was to the point of distraction.
Audio: Unlike the video transfer, the audio transfer was less impressive. The show is broadcast in Dolby Digital 5.1 and while watching this season on blu-ray I was looking forward to hearing the difference between a standard Dolby Digital mix to the Uncompressed PCM 5.1 mix. Let me preface by saying there
is a difference, albeit not as big as one would hope for.
The biggest difference was in dynamics. During sequences of action and explosions, the difference in dynamics was realized. Aside from dynamics, the rest of the sound design remained very bland. In fact, I am somewhat led to believe that the master for the TV series is somewhat flawed. Speaking voices sometimes come across muted or slightly muffled. I noticed this while watching seasons one through three on regular broadcast, but I was anticipating a lot of that problem to be cleared up with the PCM track on the blu-ray, which it wasn’t. It did seem to slightly improve the intelligibility, but it never cleared it up. Also, for a show that takes place mostly in a tropical environment, you would think there would be a lot of ambient noises. Unfortunately, that’s not really the case, but I equate that to the time constraints of being a weekly one-hour television series. I had hoped to hear more from the PCM track, but I guess I can’t expect to hear something that wasn’t there in the first place.
Extras
Buena Vista really went all out for the release of Season three, and ramped it up just that much more for the Blu-ray release. Here’s a list of what was included:
Several episode-specific commentaries by actors and makers of Lost
Behind the scenes making-of video
12 deleted scenes and a bloopers video
A featurette on “The Others”
Orientation films for the 6 Dharma station
Features preserved in HD:
Terry O’Quinn knife throwing lesson
Documentary on a 14-hour workday on Lost
Crew tribute/introduction with Evangeline Lily
Inside the videogame featurette
Featurette on the influence of literature in the show
Featurette on creating Todd McFarland toy line for the show
Tour of the five sets
Interactive Q&A session discussing 20 mysteries of the show
Menus/Navigation
The menu system is straight forward. I liked the inclusion of specific scenes from individual episodes on each disc as a moving backdrop while in the menu system. This gave the main menu a unique look.
Another cool little feature that these discs implement is “Season Play” which works like a bookmark feature, but the impressive part is that after you finish a disc it’ll ask you to swap the discs and it will start the next disc on the next episode right away, completely bypassing the menus. The nice thing is when this happens, it remembers the audio track you have chosen and it will leave the subtitles on, if you have them enabled previously.
Overall Impressions
For fans of the series I can certainly recommend this set. For newcomers to the series I think that you may want to steer clear of this one, simply because the premium for this over the standard definition set is tough to swallow. Overall, the picture quality will be sure to impress while the sound remains nothing spectacular. Season three is a good addition to the series, but it starts off relatively dull and not until the latter half picks up does this season seem worthwhile. The season ends with a bang, so be patient while you are watching this season.
Linear Mode
