Adventures of Tintin, The: Remastered (Blu-ray) (1990)

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General		Extras
Category	Animation	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1990
Running Time	840
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered Multi Disc Set (5)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Stéphane Bernasconi
Studio Distributor	Madman Entertainment	Starring	Colin O'Meara David Fox Susan Roman Wayne Robson John Stocker Vernon Chapman Dan Hennessey Maureen Forrester
Case	Standard Blu-ray
RPI	?	Music	Ray Parker Jr. Tom Szeczseniak Stéphane Bernasconi

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Pan & Scan	English Linear PCM 48/24 2.0
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	1080p
Original Aspect Ratio	1.33:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

     Some time ago (more than 5 years actually), I reviewed one disc of the DVD release of this Canadian television series, The Adventures of Tintin which was made in 1991 and is considered by many fans to be the best adaptation of Tintin, certainly for television. Subsequently, I purchased the full box set of this series, encompassing all 21 adventures which were made. Now, with the release of the new computer animated feature film from Stephen Spielberg and Peter Jackson, this series is being re-released on Blu-ray, which I am reviewing here.

     As most fans would already know this series covers 21 of the Herge graphic novels, leaving out three with questionable story lines. There have been other Tintin stories written for movies and then subsequently released as books however this series sticks to the original books by Herge. Most of the stories are told over two episodes of approximately 23 minutes each, however three contain only one episode. Therefore the total series is 39 episodes telling 21 stories. On these discs the two episode stories are selected as one title from the menu (although you can get to the individual ones through scene selection). If you haven't seen this series before it is a good telling of the stories but the Canadian accents may be off-putting for some viewers. The set is packaged in one slightly expanded Blu-ray case, housing the five discs.

     The content then is essentially the same as the DVD set with some important differences, namely;

• The image has been cropped to fill your 16x9 television (I will discuss this more in the video section below)
• The credits starting each episode are different than they were on the local DVD set
• The minor extras available on the DVD set have not been repeated here

    A decision to purchase this set if you already own the DVDs will probably hinge on your view about cropping of originally 4x3 material to fit a widescreen television. Personally, I hate it and therefore find it hard to unreservedly recommend this set despite some improvements in colour, video clarity and audio.

Video

     The video quality is a step up from the DVD version however has been cropped to 1.78:1.

     The feature is presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio which is NOT the original aspect ratio. It is 1080p, encoded using AVC. The image here has been cropped top and bottom losing quite a bit of picture information in order to fill the screen of a widescreen television. My opinion is that this is just as bad as taking a widescreen film and pan and scanning it to 4x3 as happened in the bad old days of early DVD. This deserves a one star reduction in overall video score as per our site policy.

     The picture was nicely clear and sharp throughout only restricted by the source material I would guess. We cannot expect hand drawn animation from 1991 to look as good on Blu-ray as the latest computer animated blockbusters.

     The colour was generally excellent, a big improvement over the previous DVD release. The only issue I noticed was that sometimes Tintin's face was quite orange but I would guess this is a function of the source rather than the transfer.

     Despite improvements in video quality over the DVD as mentioned above, there were still quite a lot of white specks, however, this would be due to the condition of the source I would guess. There were also a few moments where the image jumped a little, probably telecine related.

     There are no subtitles available, which is a shame for the hearing impaired.

     There are no obvious layer changes during playback.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

     The audio quality is a good improvement over the DVD release.

     This disc contains an English soundtrack in LPCM 48/24 2.0. Dialogue was very clear and easy to hear and understand, an improvement over the DVD release (even though that was pretty good for DVD).

     The music sounds better on this Blu-ray release, really driving the excitement of the stories.

     The surround speakers and subwoofer were not used.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menu is very simple and silent. Even the DVD menu had some music.

    This set is available in the same format in the UK.

     A re-release on the 1991 Tintin television series in high definition.

     The video quality is very good but only has been cropped to widescreen.

     The audio quality is very good.

     No extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall