New to Blu: February 17 – 23

“Crimson Peak is flawless on Blu-ray. Resolution and image detail are endless, giving viewers a window into skin pores, set textures, ghostly creatures, and costume fabrics.

“You could spend hours going over this Blu-ray frame by frame, and still miss some of these details.”

“Crimson Peak‘s digital photography pushes a little flat, but it beautifully captures all of the intricate details of both its opening act Buffalo location and its second and third act dilapidated mansion location.

“Of note is the transfer’s ability to precisely reproduce all variety of ornate details, whether fine fabric and stitching textures or very rough, yet elegant, interior details in the house, all of which are critical in shaping the movie’s very specific atmosphere and conveying important visual cues.”

“I happily discovered with Crimson Peak that the DTS-X track also doubles as a 7.1 DTS-HD track, which is good because I don’t have the ability to use this channel otherwise.

“All channels are fine choices, but this track is by far the best for a terrific surround sound presentation.”

“Shot on film, Black Mass appears wonderfully life-like and fluid, with light, resolved grain and excellent clarity. Skin tones are accurate and colors appropriately saturated.”

“Overall sharpness seemed strong. Only a little softness emerged, so the flick was usually accurate and detailed.

“No issues with jagged edges or shimmering occurred, and I noticed no edge haloes. Source flaws were absent, as the movie looked consistently clean.”

“Warner’s new releases continue to be more aggressively compressed than the studio’s catalogue titles, a practice that is facilitated by the lack of prominent grain but is still less than optimal.

“Black Mass has been mastered with an average bitrate of 23.90 Mbps, but at least Warner has used some of the remaining disc space to include over an hour-and-a-half of extras entirely in HD.”

“As for HBO’s Blu-ray presentation of Togetherness: The Complete First Season, it can be summed up by saying the 1080p transfer is typically excellent.

“Images are sharp and the overall the show does a nice job of looking naturalistic.”

“There’s a nice depth and texture to the visuals, though there are some deficits in detail and especially shadow definition due to the series’ tendency to have large swaths of virtually every episode play out in either very dimly lit or in many cases downright dark environments.”

Also new are Miss You Already, Drunken Master, Jarhead 3, Pokemon: Movies 1-3 Collection and The Jam: About the Young Idea.