Terrahawks Blu Rays

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Crash
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Terrahawks Blu Rays

Post by Crash »

Well, I can say the Terrahawks blu-rays are fantastic.
The picture quality is far better than the DVDs, which I think were just tape transfers.
They might have baked the tape a bit first but that's all they were.

There are a few shots and scenes that are a bit fuzzy but I think that's due to the focus or depth of field of the cameras used to film it.
I'm comparing it to the Thunderbirds blu rays (which look better) and I guess Terrahawks was shot on 16mm while Thunderbirds was done on 35mm (?).
There are also lots of scenes with black backgrounds such as in space and in the credits where the black is not-at-all uniform and washes out to grey on the right-hand side.
This is pretty noticeable on a 16:9 screen where you have black space on either side.

I would have figured that it would have been fairly simple to correct that issue.

The modelwork holds up very well against 1080p scrutiny.
The panel lines; especially on Battlehawk really come out on a lot of the shots and you can see much better how much energy went into making the hero vehicles (and the enemy ones).
Zelda's saucer ship has an interesting veiny pattern on its hull that's similar to that on the Alliance Astrofighters from Star Fleet.
That comes across much clearer in the blu ray.


The series itself is better than I remember it too. I finished the Sporilla episode and there hasn't been a dud episode up to this point.

Dominique was quite surprised at 'what awful person' Ninestein was.
I think he's just there as a series of buttons for Zero to push.
In the Gold episode, Zero knows that Ninestein will *demand* rock samples as soon as Zero 'assumes' that no rock samples will be needed.

The banter between Kate and Hawkeye is great.
- Give it a try, Hawkeye
- Just say when and it's 10-10!

Hawkwing is also one of the best vehicles in any Gerry Anderson series along with Battletank.
I think Hawkwing is so awesome because there's nothing conservative about it. The launch sequence is fabulous yet still believable. It's like they came up with whatever idea would be more impressive than the Thunderbirds launch sequences.
That it can transfer the upper cockpit module between the two vehicles, which can then separate, is clever.
There are lots of realistic weapons like rocket pods and missiles on the model as well as the main red laser.
It has lots of nice details such as the wings that fold down to fit the ship into its launch tunnel and the smaller swing-wings that open out at lower speeds.
Overall, the ship looks great as well, whether it's combined or separated.

The Battletank meanwhile succeeds because it is conservative. It's low profile and a simple wedge-shape overall.
The megazoid control modules are great because their appearance (down to the eyes and the placement of their laser guns etc) co-ordinates with the Zeroids.
It's a nice detail that the Zeroids feed telemetry to the tank and relay instructions from the human commanders.
The fact that it has two 'heads' is good too because it can see (and fire guns) in two directions at once and it has 'high-availability' in case one head gets destroyed.
The missile launcher on the back is also a great idea because it can fire while moving and presumably hit targets beyond its line of sight; especially if it has a Zeroid spotting the target.

There are no dud vehicles either. They all make sense and look the way they should do given what they do.

The soundtrack is brilliant too- it's really sugary and enjoyable. Listening to it's like drinking pink Calpol.
The other thing I noticed is that the incidental launch themes are re-arranged for subsequent uses, which is unusual in TV shows.
So the same exact version of the Hawkwing launch theme never seems to get used back-to-back so far.


So, I will be getting the 2nd and 3rd volumes once I've finished this one.
I remember that there's an episode where Battletank gets destroyed but it gets brought back for the next episode.
I can't remember which episode that is.
I guess they have a ready supply of Battletanks and Hawkwing upper wings back at the base.
In episode 2, Hawkwing had a replacement wing straight away after using/loosing it episode 1.
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Rachel
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Re: Terrahawks Blu Rays

Post by Rachel »

Like "drinking pink Calpol"? Mmmm...I vaguely remember calling purple Calpol "yum-yums"!
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Crash
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Re: Terrahawks Blu Rays

Post by Crash »

Then you got orange calpol which was the absolute worst.

Well, I watched the end of the Terrahawks Vol 1 blurays last week on my days off.
The first episodes that had me slightly underwhelmed at the picture quality were the only couple of episodes out of 39, where the original 16mm footage couldn't be found.
That was mentioned in the inside cover.

So, the image quality picked up a fair after that.

The extras were good as well. They had interviews with some of the effects guys and with the soundtrack composer; Richard Harvey and those were interesting.
I plan on doing a series of timed screengrabs for xbomber.co.uk but for blu rays, I need a new bit of software.
Xilisoft DVD Ripper is no longer the answer :)
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Crash
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Re: Terrahawks Blu Rays

Post by Crash »

Well, I got Xilisoft's Bluray Ripper and pulled some screengrabs of disc 2 since that was what was in the drive:

http://www.xbomber.co.uk/?dir=Other/TV% ... %20Vol%201

I'm uploading these as PNG files so the image is an exact recreation of the still frame on the bluray.
I don't want to do it as JPEG because that's not a true representation of what the original picture looks like.

If I plan on doing this for the whole series, the total will run to 2.3GB and I'll probably need a hosting plan with a lot more disk space.

Does anyone know a good host where I could get say 50 or 100GB of space for about £50/yr?
For £100/yr, I see I can get unlimited everything rather than the 10GB that I have for £60.
So that seems like a good deal. I might just go with it.

Edit: All Volume 1 screenshots are uploaded. The whole lot is 746 MB, which is a lot until you consider that it's 278 lossless 1920x1080 images.
The annual billing cycle for this hosting plan comes up in February and I'm going to change to 3-year billing on their biggest consumer plan which gives me unlimited space as well as bandwidth.
When you switch over to 3-yearly billing and factor in that you get a free domain name with the new plan, it only costs £30 extra for the three years.
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Crash
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Re: Terrahawks Blu Rays

Post by Crash »

I got Volume 2 of the Terrahawks blurays for my birthday.
The screengrabs can be found here:
http://www.xbomber.co.uk/?dir=Other/TV% ... %20Vol%202

There've been some good episodes on this one but the episode quality hasn't been as consistent as on Volume 1.
Some of the episodes make you feel as though you're on drugs.

The picture quality is good. I think the focussing of the camera or the depth of field is sometimes off and it kills the detail off.
The model work is very good, the puppets; especially the humans less-so.
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Bladez636
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Re: Terrahawks Blu Rays

Post by Bladez636 »

The blu-rays aren't the greatest of quality, but they're definitely much better than the DVDs, even the upscales of Episodes 3-4. I just wish that the deleted scenes from Episodes 1-2 were still intact. I got the first volume late last year, and thank God for Network being kind enough to make their Blu-Rays Region 0.
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Crash
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Re: Terrahawks Blu Rays

Post by Crash »

I'm not sure how good the extras are on Vol.2 yet. On the first one, I thought they were very good.

I see that we get the third and presumably final volume at the end of March.
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Re: Terrahawks Blu Rays

Post by Crash »

The 3rd volume of Terrahawks arrived sooner than they said.
I haven't watched them all yet but the screenshots from the first disc are viewable here:
http://xbomber.co.uk/?dir=Other/TV%20Sh ... ahawks%203

These episodes focus heavily on new Terrahawks hardware; the lunar tank, hawklet and groundhawk.

The effects, camerawork and actual handling and movements of the ships is much better in this one than I remember from some of the earlier ones.
The interior of Battlehawk seemed to get an update with some small Star Trek TNG-style GUIs and displays as opposed to the usual buttons and switches.

The last episode I watched so far was First Strike with the space carrier. It's kind of sad how the Battlehawk model is so intricately detailed and life-like in the show and yet the launch catapults for the fighters in that episode were so wobbly.
It's odd how inconsistent the visual quality of the show is.

It also illustrates the pace of language shift when Zelda asks Yungstar whether he's 'deaf as well as mentally retarded'.
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