James Bond Blu-ray Collection Six-Pack (Dr. No / Die Another Day / Live and Let Die / For Your Eyes Only / From Russia with Love / Thunderball) (Amazon.com Exclusive) [Blu-ray]

I've purchased so many versions of the BOND series(LaserDisc, VHS, DVD) and it keeps getting better! The new transfers to Blu-ray look amazing, sound incredible, and feel brand new. It's like I'm seeing these movies again for the first time. So much detail comes thru, it's eyepopping. Any BOND fan with a Blu-ray MUST own these. The Blu-ray titles are the same as the 'Ultimate' version that came out in 2006. It has the same menus and extras but that's where the similarity ends. BUY THEM!!

[I do not know if everyone is going to get this promotion but my 6-pack came with a 'free tickets' promo through Dec. 31. As you remove the wrapper, you will notice a sticker that announces the promotion. Do NOT trash the wrapper because the web site and the code you need are actually on the back of that sticker. There is one sticker on each of the two volumes.

Once you get to the site and enter the code, you will be asked for a name and email address and some other items. Then, you are presented with a page that you must print and take it to the movie theater and it is good for two free Quantum of Solace tickets. On the Six-pack you get two of these, or 4 tickets. Just to be on the safe side, I entered 2 different names and email addresses and, it worked. I took the whole family to the movies and 4 of the tickets were free.

If you enter a real email address, you are going to get an email that has a link to a site where, if you enter a ZIP code you get a list of the participating theaters in the area.]

Let me first state that I was completely unaware of the problems with playing these movies until I browsed through the Amazon reviews. It is disturbing to constantly hear of people who paid good money for their expensive players not being able to fully enjoy movies that are expected to play on them. However, I have not experienced any problems playing a Bluray movie ever and this review is only discussing my personal experience with this specific package.

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THE GOOD:
- Incredible video quality, better than what the audience saw on release date on some of the older movies.
- Lots of extras, most of them worth watching or listening to.
- Beautiful packaging.

THE NOT SO GOOD:
- The sound restoration not as good as the video.
- Some of the 'extras' sections would benefit from a 'play all' option.
- The boxes could be a bit slimmer.
- May require upgrades on certain players.
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The overall impression is of quality, inside and out. The 2 boxes could be a little smaller but the packaging is exquisite. There's a transparent plastic slide cover over a solid cardboard box holding a small binder on which the individual movie disks are pages. Each movie comes on one disk, holding the movie itself and in incredible amount of extras.

The menu interface is well organized and there's is even some humor in labeling. For example, the option that plays the movie is labeled 'The Mission' while the historic promotional material is found under 'The Propaganda'. Depending on which section you may be, menu options branch into further sub-menus.

The extras are numerous and, for the most part interesting. The Dr. No disk, for example, has a very informative HD documentary on the restoration process and we get to learn who did what, why and how. Then, we see 1962 trailers, a contemporary documentary on the making of the movie, a 1960's interview with a gun specialist discussing the various James Bond handguns, even radio commercials.

The sound options include the original sound which, in the older releases is 'mono' but all movies have surround 5.1 as the default. The sound wasn't upgraded and improved to the degree that the picture was but, it's understandable. Going from mono to 5.1 surround would be the equivalent of upgrading from black and white to full-color 3-D in the world of images. The area where some of the older installments show their age is the sound.

When it comes to the pictures, the best that I can say is that you've got to see it to believe it. The restoration of the older movies started with the actual original negative, which is the one copy that's almost never touched. Once the copy was digitized as a 4000 lines resolution digital copy (Bluray is 1080) every frame was reprocessed to eliminate any possible defects from 'dirty optics', such as the proverbial hair that we sometimes see on the older movies to scratches, bad exposure, color brilliance. The restorers' goal for the end result, and this concerns the video only, not the sound quality, was to deliver what would appear to be a contemporary movie with a 60's or 70's theme rather than a 60's or 70's movies. In my view, they succeeded.

My overall rating is a solid five-stars. Just about everything in this release is superlative: the physical packaging, the interface design, the extras, the video quality. The sound is not so good on the older movies but, given the state of sound restoration technologies, I did not feel compel to remove a star because the old movies sounded more or less like they did on release date.

Please note that and I am not factoring in player issues because, sooner or later, those are going to be addressed.

Does not play on my Samsung BD-P1200 Blu-Ray player with the latest (June 2008) firmware.

I have a Samsung Home Theatre player that is brand new with no firmware updates available. I could only get bits and pieces of the 007 blu-ray to play. This is the first blu ray DVD I have bought that hasn't played. Rambo, Hellboy II, some wife flicks have all worked fine. This was a bad day of adventure.

I gave this set 5-stars not only because I experienced no problems playing them (unlike slightly more than half of the reviewers here) but also because the pciture quality for these 6 Bond films was the best I've ever seen. These also play on my PS3 fine with the latest firmware update. I highly recommend this set if you enjoy watching Bond films at their finest. This was also not a bad buy for me since I was able to get all 6 films for just about half this current price from Amazon.com (thanks Amazon for occasionally having really great sales and to blu-ray.com for letting me know about it).