Apollo 13 (Anniversary Edition)
May 2005 Reviewed by: Doug Blackburn Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

The story of Apollo 13’s life-threatening problems during the aborted 1970 moon-landing mission is well known to almost everyone. This movie documents that mission with just a little Hollywood spin. The drama is riveting and the performances are all excellent. Apollo 13 was one of the largest grossing movies of 1995.

This Anniversary Edition -- 10th anniversary of the movie, 35th anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission -- puts onto its first disc the original DVD transfer with 2.35:1 theatrical aspect ratio and Dolby Digital 5.1. It includes the same special features that appeared on the original Apollo 13 release. There is an okay "making of" feature, an interesting director commentary, and the most captivating feature, a commentary by former Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell and his wife, Marylyn.

The second disc contains a transfer of Apollo 13 from the large-format IMAX version originally shown in 1.66:1 aspect ratio with DTS 5.1 sound. Two new special features appear on this disc: "Conquering Space: The Moon and Beyond," a look back at 45 years of space missions, and "Lucky 13: The Astronauts’ Story," a closer look at the Apollo 13 mission from the astronauts’ perspective. Both of these are worth watching, but are not the sort of thing you’ll be compelled to view many times.

The back of the box proclaims "All New Digitally Remastered Picture!" -- which may be only half right. The first disc, with the 2.35:1 original theatrical version runs 2 hours 20 minutes and looks very unimpressive. Viewed on a calibrated HDTV monitor, the image quality is dark, flat-looking, muted, grainy and loaded with MPEG compression artifacts that cause smooth flat midtones and lighter areas to squirm from frame to frame and detail to alternate sharp and soft from frame to frame. The transfer looks "old" as if done at a time when DVD transfers could not equal what is possible today.

The second disc is the gem. Its images are clean, bright, color-perfect, sharp, and almost completely free of MPEG compression artifacts. This sort of image quality is what customers expect when the package proclaims "new transfer," right up there with the best image quality you can get when film is transferred to DVD. Only direct digital-to-DVD transfers look better. IMAX projection equipment has a limit to the amount of film it can feed -- reels cannot be changed on the fly. The original version had to be shortened to 1 hour, 56 minutes. The shorter playing time means MPEG compression on the DVD can be less than that on the longer theatrical version. Using less compression improves image quality.

The Dolby Digital 5.1 track on the first disc is typical -- good but nothing special. The DTS 5.1 track on the second disc is better in every way, bringing reference-quality sound to the movie. The spatial characteristics are convincing, detail is good, the music is natural and rich, and the demo-quality launch sequence is far superior to that in the original widescreen movie.

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