BOND 50 – 007

DVD Wholesale Quick Overview:

I was only 5 years old when “Dr. No” hit the theaters, and saw none of the Connery films in the theater. However, I’ve seen virtually every Bond film beginning with “Live and Let Die” in the theater. I saw all the early films many times on broadcast TV, and have seen ALL the films at various times on cable in normal resolution, and in HD where available. I saw many of the films on VHS, and have viewed them all on DVD … excepting the Craig films which were available on Blu ray and which I purchased in that format. In short, I have far more than an above average familiarity with all of these films in most of the ways a person could possibly have viewed them. There are more die hard Bond fans than me, but I haven’t missed many opportunities to see these films, and have seen each one many times, my favorites probably dozens of times.

I’ve sampled several of the films in this set with an emphasis on the earlier films, and those that were highly criticized in what is (at this time) the top spotlight review. I’ll have to say that these films look great. As I watch them, I’ll keep this review updated film by film to provide details of my reaction to each. I’m watching these Blu rays on an LG 7600 55″ LCD … a set which always delivers sharp images and stunningly beautiful colors to begin with.

The case holding all the Blu rays is beautifully designed. It is essentially a book of Blu rays with two discs presented per page.

– Brent Butler

Lets start with the good first. The movies themselves are all excellent quality, great picture and sound on all I have watched so far. I am about 3/4 of the way through the collection now. No problems yet with the quality of the discs themselves or with the picture and sound as others have said. If it was just the quality of the movies that influenced my rating, it would be a 5 star rating. But there are 2 other issues that bring the rating down, one of them a major issue for me.

The biggest issue for me with this collection is the on disc software that controls the playback of the movies. Unlike every other Blu-ray or dvd I own, this set will not let you stop the movie and then resume it later. You cannot pause the movie for too long, if the player times out and powers off from inactivity you lose your place in the movie. Every other disc I have, you can press stop once to stop the movie, but then press play and pick up where you left off, or press stop twice if you want to stop completely. If you pause any other disc and the player powers down, you can start it back up and resume where left off. But not with these. If you press stop, it stops the disc entirely and you have to start at the beginning and watch all the legal crap and preview and then try to navigate to close to where you thought you were when you stopped. And the chapter menu is not well laid out well, nor is it informative. The same if you pause and the player powers down, you lose your spot and have to start up fresh again and try to find your spot. I hardly ever manage to sit long enough to watch a long movie in one sitting, so this glaring omission with the disc software kills the whole set for me. It is a major pain to watch all the legal crap while the disc is booting up and then have to try to search the chapter selections for where I left off when all I should have to do is sit down, press play and watch the rest of the movie.

-Margolis

DVD Wholesale Main Features:

Format: Box set, Color, Dubbed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Language: English
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
Dubbed: French
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only.)
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Number of discs: 22
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
DVD Release Date: September 25, 2012