First Look: Pokemon Collection Blu-Ray

Neil Lumbard, frequent reviewer at DVDTalk.com, sent us his first impressions of the recently released "Pokemon Collection" Blu-Ray compilation of Pokemon movies four through seven:

Pokemon 4Ever is easily the weakest transfer on the set. It looks barely better than DVD quality from what I viewed. It is a disappointing transfer but it is at least in widescreen with 5.1 Dolby Digital audio*. It should still be a minor improvement over the widescreen DVD Echo Bridge released.

Pokemon Heroes seems to be the same transfer as the earlier Double Feature release. It's a clear improvement over the DVD release, but still not as amazing a HD transfer as one would hope for. It is still better than the transfer given to Pokemon 4Ever. Echo Bridge only gave 2.0 Dolby Digital audio and it sounds inferior to the LPCM version on the first BD release. I also noticed a slight, tiny hiss from one of my speakers (not sure if this is because of the audio-track or if I need to fix something, it is probably a fault of Echo Bridge).

Pokemon Jirachi Wish Maker is the best transfer of the bunch. Finally in widescreen. Definite improvement over DVD. Looks like real High Definition and it is not even a weak transfer. 5.1 Dolby Digital audio sounds nice.

Pokemon Destiny Deoxys is the same video as the Double Feature release. It is the second best transfer included. It's not quite as impressive as Wish Maker but still a good HD effort. Again, Echo Bridge went from a 2.0 LPCM to a 2.0 Dolby Digital. The sound is slightly inferior. I did not notice any hiss issue on this film as I did with Heroes.

The menu designs are actually somewhat nice. Echo Bridge designed something pretty decent in that regard.

The cover art bugged me by being out of order in presenting the four films but then I realized they likely intended it to be like a right to left manga presentation -- sort of a neat if unnecessary design idea. Some might consider this a "cool" aspect.

The disc itself lists the films out of order (which is irritating), and it has a generic disc label. Nothing interesting about it at all. Blue background with white text. The actual menus used for the release present the four films in chronological order though.

All of the films are in 1080p 1.78:1.

None of the short films have been included.

*The disc is ls listed as having DTS sound, but Neil confirmed that the 5.1 is in fact Dolby Digital.