The Alien Legacy (1999)

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General		Extras
Category	Documentary	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1999
Running Time	66:54 (Case: 68)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	None Given
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Ridley Scott Nick Allder Mia Bonzanigo Bob Burns Ron Cobb Leslie Dilley H.R. Giger Brian Johnson John Mollo Dan O'Bannon Ivor Powell Ronald Shusett
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Dual
RPI	Box	Music	Jerry Goldsmith

    The disc itself is packaged inside of the Alien DVD case, utilizing an insert-type mechanism which is ugly but functional. The insert mechanism is hinged along the inside spine of the Transparent Amaray case that Alien comes in, and turns like the page of a book within the case. The net result is that the Transparent Amaray case is physically the same size as an ordinary Transparent Amaray case but significantly heavier. Aesthetically, this looks good from the outside, but is quite clunky and unpleasant on the inside. Overall, this seems preferable to making the case twice as wide.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio that varies between 1.33:1 and 2.35:1, but is mainly framed at 1.33:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced.

    The image was acceptably sharp and clear, though a lot of the archival material is quite blurred and distorted. It never descends into the realm of unacceptable quality, however. There is a surprising amount of motion blur apparent in the recently shot footage. Fortunately, the majority of this footage comprises talking heads with very little movement, so this effect is not often noticed. The brightness level of the transfer tends to vary up and down slightly for no apparently good reason. This is, fortunately, a subtle effect. The shadow detail is variable, depending on the source of the video material, but it remains acceptable at all times. Low level noise is not a problem for the recent footage, but some archival footage is quite noisy, as is to be expected for 20 year old footage.

    The colours are also somewhat variable, with the recent footage being impeccably presented in this regard whereas some of the archival footage is variable in its presentation of colour, from quite undersaturated to quite oversaturated.

    There were no MPEG artefacts detected in the transfer. Aliasing was not a problem with this transfer, although video artefacts were somewhat problematic at times, even affecting the modern footage to an unexpectedly significant degree. There are a significant number of analogue video dropouts during this documentary, more than I would have expected given the recent nature of the majority of this footage.

Audio

    There is only one audio track on this DVD, an English Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack.

    The dialogue was always clear and easy to understand. There was little in the way of audio distortion, and there were no audio sync problems. The archival footage was inferior in quality aurally to the contemporary footage, but this is to be expected with this type of material.

    Jerry Goldsmith's Alien score was frequently present, underscoring much of the dialogue. This helped with the overall atmosphere of the documentary.

    The surround channels and subwoofer channel were not used.

Menu

    The video transfer is acceptable.

    The audio transfer is acceptable.

    The whole disc is an extra!

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall