Mexican DVD edition on february 19th

[Roman]

You know I was just comparing the sound from the website http://www.myspace.com/alizee2006 (which I am assured by RMJ is not official or by Alizée) and it is really better than the cheap ass mp3 files I got from a bittorrent. I am going to be really happy to get real CDs with the music. I would think the CD quality would be the same from any legitimate source. So, if you get the CDs from Mexico or where ever, I'm sure you will be happy with them. Oui?

[RMJ]

All the CDs are at equal quality really. They don't need to change the songs and since the CD specification is what it is, there's no need to change the format since it's the same everywhere in the world.

DVDs are whole another case due to different image formats.

[Cooney]

Well, while I'm obviously delighted that Lili is spreading even now, I'm pissed they would chop the quality so badly.

Oh well, I'm a collector, I must have it!

[Sir Wood]

Well, for those who can't play PAL format this is a good alternative solution for them.

[Zack -Alizee Lover-]

Its just an add for ur collection....

[CFHollister]

Originally Posted by RMJ

Here is comparison with the video frames of NTSC and PAL version. It's shocking... (click the image to get full version)


I can get more comparisons after I get this NTSC DVD myself.

So the international/german release is essentially the same product as the french release except for packaging, right RMJ?

[RMJ]

Yes, French has slipcover, German (aka International) doesn't.

[RondasX]

here scanns of the deluxe edition CD+DVD:

[Ben]

Thanks RondasX. We'll know more once my copy of this arrives, but as mentioned on AF, I suspect that our previous technical comparison may have been off a bootleg.

[RMJ]

Some observations I did write on another board about this release...



This DVD-only release has full booklet.

With content, it's equal to German booklet (and to French booklet, which has only different product code printed).

There's one minor technical difference tho. the color of the booklet is clearly more bluish. The booklet is printed with different printing method. It causes more bluish shade for it, and it cause it to be extremely sharp. I first thought that it actually was better quality than the original, but then I noticed some errors due to that bluish shade. It's simply too blue. There is some blue artifacts in her skin for example in couple photos. So, the blue is way too over saturated. Especially visible in center fold, on the left side, in the big picture. Her face has blue lines, which are supposed to be shadows of hair. It's like blue blood veins going over her face... Very, very, very unnatural looking... I can later show photo of it...

Another minor detail, for fans who has no life, the graphics (photos etc.) of booklet shows 1mm more material than the French booklet in every direction (which btw pretty much proves that this can't be bootleg! You'd know what I mean if you'd see it... ).


The disc itself is almost exact copy. Color is same, but it has Spanish texts instead of French (both talking about some juridical points...). It's also missing the PAL text (funnily enough, it doesn't have NTSC text in place of it). Other than that, it's about the same.

The disc is DVD-5 instead of DVD-9 as said. This means it has almost 4GB less space to use. Which obviously means that something had to be changed on the disc. The original disc had over 7GB of data (don't remember exactly and I'm too lazy to check) this has roughly 4.3GB (it's almost full filled DVD-5).


The disc is region free. Or to be more exact, it's encoded to regions 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and 8. It does not have any kind of copy protection.


The disc content ? Well, it's exactly like said before:
- The video is letterboxed NTSC (720x480 @ 30FPS)
- The audio is 2.0 Stereo (Linear PCM, 48kHz, 16 bits)
- The main menu graphics is slightly changed. The background videos seems to be about the same
- The chapter menu is reduced to one screen (Mon Maquis on background)
- The audio menu is missing (since there is no optional soundtracks)
- The bonus menu has slightly different "underlining" on the selection options (this new style is nicer than the old btw. So this is ONLY positive thing I can think of this release)



I will make more detailed compare of the video quality later.


Here is photo that shows pretty well the difference in booklet's color (and changes in the disc, compared to German release). The upper one is Mexican release, the lower one is German release:






Some photos of it:


Here's French, German and Mexican releases side by side (in the right most pic, the French release is out of the slipcase):









Short summary:
This is the WORST release ever during Alizée's career. It is sad to see Universal Music just trying to make money with her fame. The DVD (and the DVD+CD combo) was clearly released just to suck out money from poor lil fans.

It's definitely not the quality Alizée deserves.

If you can choose between French/German release and this shit, go with with the French/German release. It will make you just sad to see this.












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