Friday Night Lights / The Express Double Feature (2004)

For the price, go for this if the movies themselves are ones you enjoy. This combo comes with 2 separate Blu Ray discs, each for its own separate movie. Each film is the same Blu Ray as you would see if you bought the films as separate packages so getting a 2 for 1 deal is not a bad way to go.

THE EXPRESS

The Express, the Ernie Davis Story based upon the life and times of the great college football hero and an inspiration to a great many during the difficult times of the civil rights movement. I won't summarize the plot and acting performances, everyone else has already done that here, so I will only focus on the quality of the transfer to Blu Ray. It's a good movie, not great but never the less and enjoyable view.

Video...We have a fairly clean transfer though it is plain to see that it is not a remastering of the film. There are variations between warm and cool color grading. The colors are true and natural without that color popping you see in some of the newer movies out today. In fact, the colors tend to be a touch muted and soft. This is not a negative per se but it creates a more real image. Film grain is kept to a minimum without being distracting. The only place where film grain is highly noticeable is where archival footage is played and, of course, much grain would be noticed there. I saw no artifacting nor ghosting which is rare on blu rays anyway. Overall, the video transfer, with its high Mbps rate averaging in the upper 20's provides clean contrast and true colors.

Audio...The film defaults to lossless DTS HD 5.1 and dialogue is transparent and easy to understand. I do believe they got lazy on the audio editing as there is almost no panning or use of the discreet side and rear channels for directionality of foley effects. However, the great soundtrack comes through all channels and fully envelops you in the audio. Crowd scenes, while also using all channels sound as if they are the same in all channels without any directionality at all. Yes, there are a couple of pans from left to right but not many and certainly not as many as there could have been with good editing. The sub's job is simply to add to the ambience and that's about it.

Extras...Plenty of deleted scenes, none that would be better served in an extended edition. Lots of other extras about Ernie Davis and the 1959 Syracuse team he helped to the championship including very interesting interviews with many of his teammates and the famed Jim Brown, who had recruited him to Syracuse, and making of documentaries.

For the price, if you liked the movie, get the Blu Ray. However, since this is not a comparison of the blu ray and Standard Def DVD, I can't say just how much of an improvement there will be.

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS

I did not have this movie on a Standard Def DVD so it certainly will not be a comparison between the two.

VIDEO...the transfer is very clean with no artifacting or aliasing of any kind. There were no problems during playing the Blu Ray disc. The colors are deliberately desaturated and created a softer look, however, the contrast was really quite good and grain is kept to a minimum. I was surprised at how high the bit rate was, averaging in the mid 30's. There is some controversy over bit rates on Blu Ray as many believe that the higher the bit rate, the less compression there is done to the film. Others believe that Bit Rates are irrelevant and that there is no direct linear correspondence between bit rate and picture quality. In truth, bit rate is just a measure of how much data there is in a picture stream and certainly not all films need the same amount of data. I am on the fence and believe that the higher the bit rate, usually, the better the image since more data is reaching the screen.

AUDIO.... The lossless DTS HD 5.1 audio provided an excellent spread of the soundtrack across the front stage. Dialogue is very clear and transparent and there will be no need to play roller coaster with your remote's volume control. All audio levels are the way they should be. The rear channels provide much ambient crowd noise boosted by the LFE sub channel. There is not a whole lot of discreet directionality sent to the rear channels nor need for the sub to do more than boost ambient noise. Foley effects are mostly spread across the front stage but not much panning to the sides or rear. Never the less, the audio is really quite good, just not to be used for a demo disc to show off your system.

Extras...Plenty of deleted and extended scenes, none that would be better served in an extended edition. Lots of other extras about the original team this movie was based upon, and making of documentaries.

For the price, if you liked the movie, get the Blu Ray. However, since this is not a comparison of the blu ray and Standard Def DVD, I can't say just how much of an improvement there will be. Since the video on Blu Ray is as clean as it is, my bet is that there would be a somewhat significant difference and lossless audio, to me, is very noticeable on any Blu Ray as compared to a lossy codec. Lossless is always better.

All my reviews focus solely on the quality of the transfers to Blu Ray of both video and audio and I do hope that this review has been of some help to you in deciding upon your purchase decisions and that I am on the correct path with this type of review.

Thanks for reading.

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