The movie won seven Oscars when it was released in 1970 and is one of Ara's favorites. He has seen it at least ten times over the years and it has a permanent place on his movie server. So with the recent release on Blu-ray, We wanted to see if the movie benefited from the new technology.

Key Tech Specs

• Blu-ray 50GB Dual-Layer/DVD-9
• Video: 1080p/AVC MPEG-4
• Aspect Ratio: 2.20:1
• English DTS HD Lossless Master Audio 5.1 Surround

Impression

The movie was every bit as good as we remembered it. The added benefit of HD just made it that much better. Fox did an incredible job with the transfer. Colors jumped off the screen. There was so much more detail to grab your attention. The movie was encoded in 1080p AVC and watching on Ara's 65 inch DLP was like seeing it for the first time. Fox either had a pristine print or did some great restoration because we did not see any film damage throughout the entire movie.

Audio was a bit of a disappointment. Every time we see the Dolby True HD or DTS Master Audio light up we expect great things. Patton has a DTS HD Lossless Master Audio 5.1 so the expectation was very high. Unfortunately the audio did not deliver. This is not a knock against next generation audio, its a knock against the audio on this disc. Very few explosions woke up the subwoofer and we never felt "surrounded" by the sound.

Other Features

There is an introduction by Francis Ford Coppola and the usual "Making of" content. One feature that we found interesting was entitled "Patton's Ghost Corps". It's a documentary about the soldiers he left behind when he went to assist in the "Battle of the Bulge." It paints a very different picture of the General. One that we found quite eye opening.

Conclusion

If you liked the movie when it was released in the theater or on DVD, you will love what they did with the Blu-ray version. Patton sets the bench mark for how to take a library film and bring it into the digital age!

Posted by The HT Guys, October 6, 2008 7:40 PM