Deep Impact (1998)

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General		Extras
Category	Action	Trailer-2 Booklet
Rating
Year Of Production	1998
Running Time	116:11 (Case: 121)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (57:45)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Mimi Leder
Studio Distributor	Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	Robert Duvall Tea Leoni Elijah Wood Vanessa Redgrave Maximilian Schell Morgan Freeman
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$29.95	Music	James Horner

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.40:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.40:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired Dutch Swedish Norwegian Danish Finnish	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Deep Impact hit the cinemas about two months before Armageddon (no pun intended). I happy went along to see it and I was mightily impressed. I rated it as great - 8.5/10. Two months latter I trotted off to the cinema to get my next fix of big rock hurtling towards Earth and was rather disappointed, relatively speaking. I still thought Armageddon was a good flick - 7/10, but felt it was not in the same league as Deep Impact.

    So, when Deep Impact was finally released on video, I rushed out and rented it and to my amazement it had lost most of its punch and really didn't do much for me at all the second time round. Several months later, while perusing the video library for some entertainment, I saw Armageddon and thought - "what the heck, I'm in the mood for some action". As it turns out, Armageddon has become one of my favourite movies and I've probably watched it around a dozen times now, which isn't a lot by my standards, but I always enjoy it. It's funny how some movies improve with multiple viewing and others don't!

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.40:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.

    The foreground picture is sharp and detailed, but the middle and background picture is much softer, which makes the picture look slightly soft on any wider-angle shots. This is not the fault of the transfer, however. The opening scenes are quite dark with very little detail in the black areas, so you may want to block out any additional light to get the most out these initial scenes - again this is not a transfer fault. Shadow detail in the brighter scenes is good and at no stage throughout the movie did I feel that the shadow detail was lacking. No low level noise was noticed.

    The colours were deeply saturated and natural looking throughout the entire film. There are a couple of scenes where the skin tones looked slightly over red, but this is really only a trivial point. At 64:31 there is some minor blue smearing around the jaw of Vanessa Redgrave.

    There is some trivial background grain present, which comes and goes throughout the film. Some examples are at 0:23 - 0:38 (Paramount logo), 5:45, 15:05, 70:30 and 70:49.

    Only two trivial instances of posterization were seen, at 87:53 - 88:03 and 99:13. Not a single instance of aliasing nor moiré artefacts were seen. There is one mis-aligned frame at 7:17, which causes the picture to jump noticeably. The Paramount logo wobbles vertically, which is quite noticeable and off-putting, but since it is only an introductory logo no marks were deducted from the overall video rating.

    There is a moderate sprinkling of film artefacts, which are infrequent and small enough not to become disruptive. The biggest of these film artefacts can be found at 35:03 and comes in the form of a black blob.

    This disc is an RSDL disc, with the layer change placed between Chapters 13 and 14, at 57:45 on a scene change. There is only a slight pause. Due to its good placement and the short pause the layer change does not disrupt the flow of the movie.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The dialogue was clear and easy to understand throughout the entire movie. At around 28:37, the dialogue seemed a little top-endy and edgy, but it is the same on the video version.

    No audio sync problems were noticed with this transfer.

    The musical score is by James Horner.

    The surround speakers are mostly used for musical ambience and subtle effects, although there are the occasional really noticeable effects that enhance the soundtrack enormously. Early on, there is a lot of dialogue, so much of the sound comes from the front soundstage. Thankfully, the surround speakers carried almost continual subtle background detail which kept the soundstage from collapsing to the front. After the first 38 minutes, the story starts to pick up speed and intensity, so there is an accompanying increase in surround channel use also.

    The subwoofer is continually being used to subtly add bass to most scenes, and is highly active during the dramatic sequences.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The Menu is nicely laid out. The Main Menu selections are; Play, Scene Selection (30), Bonus Material, Audio Languages and Subtitle Languages. One thing that I missed was the inclusion of a Scene Selection Index, which would have helped speed up selecting the latter chapters.

Theatrical Trailer 1 (3:24 minutes)

Theatrical Trailer 2 (1:59 minutes)

• Nothing

• 16x9 Enhanced transfer

    The R4 disc is an easy choice, due to the 16x9 enhancement and PAL's innate picture superiority over NTSC.

    The overall picture quality is great and is only limited by the original film quality.

    Overall the audio is great, with no transfer-induced faults

    The extras are very limited.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall