"The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes - Season 1, Volume 1" DVD Talkback (Spoilers)

[James Harvey]

Discuss this Two-Disc Limited Edition release available only in Canada!

The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes - Season One, Volume One
Studio: Vivendi Entertainment Canada
Release Date: April 26th, 2011

Synopsis: When the planet is threatened by super-villains, time traveling conquerors, mythical monsters or mad robots bent on the total destruction of humanity, when the forces of evil are so overwhelming that no single hero has the power to save the world, when there is no hope left… the Avengers assemble! Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Ant-Man, Wasp and The Incredible Hulk. Earth’s Mightiest Heroes must band together to protect the world from a break-out of Super-Villains the likes of which no one has never seen. Only the Avengers can stand against this threat, and the fate of the world rests on their shoulders.

DVD Bonus Features:
- Interviews with Cast and Crew
- Free Poster

Episodes Included:
#13. Gamma World, Part Two, #12. Gamma World, Part One, #11. Panther's Quest, #10. Everything is Wonderful, #9. Living Legend, #8. Some Assembly Required, #7. Breakout, Part Two, #6. Breakout, Part One, #5. The Man in the Ant Hill, #4. Meet Captain America, #3. Hulk Versus the World, #2. Thor the Mighty, #1. Iron Man is Born!

Please discuss the episodes in the appropriate talkbacks, links provided above. Please remember this thread is to discuss this DVD release only.

Discuss This DVD!

Related Threads:
-The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes - Season 1, Volume 1 DVD Review (Spoilers)
-The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes - Volume One DVD Talkback (Spoilers)
-The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes - Volume Two DVD Talkback (Spoilers)

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[Spider-Man]

Have any Canucks picked up this release yet? I read the review on WF DVD Report and I'm still on the fence. I may just end up getting this one and the Disney releases if I can get good prices on both. The menus look fine and the extras are a bit of a letdown but it does look like a good DVD.

[suss2it]

Have any Canucks picked up this release yet? I read the review on WF DVD Report and I'm still on the fence. I may just end up getting this one and the Disney releases if I can get good prices on both. The menus look fine and the extras are a bit of a letdown but it does look like a good DVD.

That'd just be a waste of money, since you'd have the exact same episodes twice. I haven't checked out either release since they aren't HD, and this show looks marvelous in HD, but I think you're better off getting the US releases since they come with more extras.

[Trevor]

I just picked up this set today, and while the show itself looks wonderful, there is digital artifacting all over the picture. I realize that my PS3 is upscaling it to 1080p, but still I've played other DVD's and I've never seen this much digital mess as I've seen on this. It almost looks like Vivendi was sent a file for each episode that had been rendered and output for Internet streaming on Marvel.com, than for broadcast/home video. In the pilot, when the SHIELD agents are facing down Iron Man, there are a couple of wide shots where the SHIELD people look good, but then Iron Man has all these pixels around him, as though that portion of the image had been blown up from a smaller digital image with less pixels. (Also, whenever Pepper is on screen, the area right around both her eyes also goes crazy with digital compression artifacts.)

I checked the MBPS on the disc, and it is ranging from 1.4 to 7.8, but for the majority of the time it is averaging between 1.5 and 3.9 MBPS. (I haven't popped the discs into my computer yet to see how the file sizes are.) I don't know why Vivendi had so much trouble with the compression (especially considering that the audio is in Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround).

Anyone know whether Disney's releases have any compression issues?

[Spider-Man]

Trevor - what rating would you give the video out of 10? Something tells me I made the right choice importing the Disney releases for Avengers: EMH.

[Trevor]

Trevor - what rating would you give the video out of 10? Something tells me I made the right choice importing the Disney releases for Avengers: EMH.

I've fast forwarded through some of the later episodes (Break Out 1 & 2, Living Legend) and the video improves a little bit, not much, but enough that I'm wondering if Marvel/Disney gave files (or videotapes) of the compilation episodes to Vivendi that were mastered from the files that were output for streaming on the internet. Why Disney would want to do that???? Maybe Disney really wanted to distribute this series in Canada, but found out that with the contracts between Marvel, Liberation and Vivendi, that, even though Liberation no longer exists, Vivendi still has "X number" of Marvel DVD titles to distribute. I'm just wondering if this has something to do with how Wolverine and the X-Men was released up here, since it looked like Liberation/Vivendi were going to release 5 volumes of the series (and then Vivendi was going to handle Super Hero Squad by themselves), but because of Liberation's bankruptcy, and the cancellation of WATXM Volume 4 and possilbe Volume 5, could Vivendi still be telling Disney/Marvel that they are owed 2 or more DVD releases, and because of this Disney is giving them the worst possible copies to release? I ordered the Disney discs last night, so next week I should be able to see if Disney used the same masters for the compilation episodes as Vivendi used, or if Disney used better masters for their releases.

Anyway, in terms of video quality, I would have to give it a 3.5 out of 10, since the video does improve in the episodes that were just made for broadcast, but not much.

And if anyone is interested in comparing the disc sizes, Disc 1 (7 episodes, 2.0 English surround) comes in at 4.82 GB's (so it looks like there was quite a bit of compression, considering that the Liberation/Vivendi WATXM discs, even in the Complete Season set and the seperate discs, with 4 to 5 episodes per disc and 5.1 English audio, the discs were usually around 5.20/5.30 GB's), while Disc 2 (6 episodes, 2.0 English suround) comes in at 4.31 GB's.

Also, another thing that I"m finding really odd with these discs are the menu's. The "Main Menu" is in 4:3 1.33:1, so when I first popped Disc 1 in, I thought that all the episodes were going to be 16:9 non-anamorphic. But then when you click to go into any sub-menu, the sub-menu's are in 1.66:1 16:9, but then the Bonus Features menu on Disc 2 looks like it is in 2.40:1 16:9. Why all the different aspect ratio's for the menu's??? I've got no clue.