Remastered Fifth Element Blu-ray disc finally shines
by Darren Murph 
posted Jul 18th 2007 at 9:57PM
FifthElement posts
Fifth Element Blu-ray exchange program details announced
by Erik Hanson posted Jun 15th 2007 at 1:28PM
Considering what a mythical reference title The Fifth Element was when released on DVD (and Superbit, and Laserdisc!), it was surprising to see it reviewed as just another softly-focused, dirty, and scratchy launch title for Blu-ray. Many reviewers and fans complained about the lackluster MPEG-2 encoding, and the general poor quality of the transfer. Sony has announced details and contact information about a plan to exchange the first -- now discontinued -- batch of Blu-ray Discs for the remastered edition, due to be released in July. The new version is a new 1080p transfer from a different master, and includes Dolby TrueHD as well as uncompressed PCM audio. It will also be encoded in MPEG-4 AVC, which will hopefully show off the improved compression of the newer codec. Quite an olive branch from Sony for those who have already picked it up, and a show of good steps toward making Blu-ray titles the best they can be. Now the question remains, how many of the other initial MPEG-2 Blu-ray titles will be remastered like this?The Fifth Element on Blu-ray to be remastered
by Ben Drawbaugh posted May 17th 2007 at 8:24AM
Not even the most devout Blu-ray fanboy would argue that Blu-ray got off to a good start. Sony was responsible for the initial movie push and many of their titles looked like they were transfered from film in an alley. The one title that stood out among the rest -- as bad -- was The Fifth Element, because many of us had previously enjoyed this title on an HD movie channel and the quality was so good that it left an impression. When the title was announced on Blu-ray, many were very excited to own such a great looking HD movie, but then were very disappointed by almost every aspect of the Blu-ray disc. Well, it finally seems that Sony is ready to admit its mistake and re-release the title on July 17th, but hopefully they'll do it right this time. Of course this does nothing for everyone who bought the first version, but hey what do you expect? **There have been reports from a Sony insider that there will be an "informal exchange program", more details will follow when available.
