Letters from Iwo Jima (2007)



Dolby Stereo Plus 5.1
Dolby Stereo TrueHD 5.1

Letters from Iwo Jima (2007) [Z1 Y11299]

Arrived today new/sealed

Again nice directed film from Clint Eastwood.

This sees the point of view of the "pacific war" from the Japanese soldiers that thought and died and some brutally abused by superiors.

Picture colour like Flags of Our Fathers is muted in colour and delivers nicely.

No snags or trouble with Warner HD-DVD it played flawlessly.

Sound ranges down to below 20Hz so won't disappoint.

The tunnel scenes when being bombarded works well with a matrix overhead surround but the martix can only decode what it sees and steers around as well as the below matrix surround in my home cinema.

A few odd rare dialouge pans at Left or Right now and then.

Gun fire attacks have a good frequency range way too many to explain and are often short scenes lasting a couple of minutes. The film story is mostly driven by dialouge/narration that is clearly understood in Japanese, with text subtitles that often appear in the black board or over the scope framing.

I do actually have this movie on HD-DVD too. Probably should give it a watch soon, haven't watched this one before. My experience is that Warner Bros titles are not as prone to rot as people claim. Have like 20-30 titles from WB, all work fine except one. From what I've read, it did sound like 90% of it would be frisbees by now.

Player I'm using is Toshiba HD-EP30 that is kept reasonable clean and rarely used, might play a HD-DVD once every few months. I think its down to maybe scratches on the disc and get all that pixel up and freezing and skipping issues. Keep the discs clean. I wipe with a simple optical cloth or smooth kitckem tissue wet one end small bit water and wipe disc in circular motion and then wipe it dry.

I might get another copy of Training Day on HD-DVD as the one used I have skips at certain point due to previous owner handing.

I'm in the same boat, I have roughly 300 HD DVDs. I have one Warner title that stutters in opening credits and all the others work fine. Initially I chalked this up to watching them on a Samsung BD-UP5000 primarily but I've spot tested a few on other players and I wonder how many weren't sent to some hot warehouse in less than ideal conditions after HD DVD died. Mine all ended up in my relatively dark living room and I keep my house cool. I've pulled titles here and there without an issue.

Since the UP-5000 has been playing without a hitch, if a title didn't work on another player, the "rot" presumably should be correctable with a firmware update should anyone be able to discern why it happens.

Good movie. Even though I mostly gave up on it, I'm glad to see other people still enjoying their HD-DVDs.