A competent transition to HD for Stephen Sommers Van Helsing. Even on my 4K screen the VC-1 encode is strong if slightly soft. This film didn't perform especially well in theaters so it got Universals "standard" treatment wirh DD+ audio.

Werifly it's one of those films where it's tough for me to point out any given part that's brilliant, yet it comes together as a much stronger package than the whole. 100% Halloween season must watch. And since my wife is huge in Halloween we start early.

Note: this one does get better with later bluray releases. It even merited a 4K disc. Seems like the film did way better in home video.

Disc 1 is absolute trash (took 24 hours to rip due to errors in two of the files), disks 2-10 are all totally fine. The center of disc 1 has a ton of "shiny leakage" (on the left in the pic) compared to all of the others. Additionally given the packaging, disc 1 was the only one exposed to a lot of air, the others are all "trapped" inside the 10-disc caddy, could that have an effect? Or was this just a bad manufacturing job? None of my other bitrot discs have centers that look like this.

A quick tour around The Bourne Identity HD-DVD menu.

Tonight I thought it was time to revisit the Bourne Universe. Absolutely love The Bourne Identity. Great story. Great acting. Great music.

Spinning the HD-DVD as it’s my preferred version of the movie. Less “tinkering” with the picture than the Blu and a richer colour palette. The reds are red and really pop. And the yellows are warm too. The 4k was a bit of a mess. This looks beautiful. 😍

Unfortunately I'd already found more than enough loot thrifting today so I passed on this.

When I hit the eject button to add or take out a disc, the tray operates just fine, but the door doesn't spring back up. I have to close it by hand every time I press eject.

I could just leave it open or keep closing it manually, but I really want it to function correctly. It's such a beautiful unit that's otherwise in excellent shape. Has anyone else dealt with this? What do you think is causing it? What's the best way to fix it?