Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Anyone picking up Avatar on Blu-Ray today?

My wife's aunt, uncle, and three of her cousins are visiting for the weekend. Her uncle picked up the Avatar DVD at Costco and we watched it after dinner. My son (6yo) stood up and yelled "No!!!" at the screen when the (spoiler free version ahead) protagonist was in a particularly hairy situation early on, then decided not to watch any further. My 4yo daughter watched the entire thing.

I enjoyed it, but don't regret waiting to see it at home (even on my SDTV). The audio was fantastic and really gave the sub a workout. I think I was sitting in a particularly good spot because I could feel my pant legs vibrating during some of the air battle scenes.

Picked up a combo pack at Wally World today... I wonder if I've got a blown fuse in my sub again as there was not much in the way of LFE felt . I think the M80's were giving it all. The kiddies watched it, I only checked in once in awhile. Why is the housework never done?

I had to bump up the level on both my sub and Buttkicker a little to get the LFE I felt was appropriate for the action I was watching so I think it’s the way it was mixed.

I'm not using my AS-EQ1 right now, so certain frequencies are exaggerated, and I have the subs running slightly hot (calibrated to the same SPL as the other speakers on the Radio Shack meter, which means the subs are running hot due to less sensitivity to lower frequencies, correct?), so I was getting what I thought was pretty decent LFE. I love feeling the steps the mechs take.

I have a relatively light (weight) clock that sits on my EP-500. After watching Avatar, I noticed the clock had rotated about 120 degrees and had marched close to the edge of the sub. One of these days, I'm gonna find that poor thing on the floor.

Ya know, I can't remember exactly how long I've had the EP-500. Gotta be somewhere around 5 years or so. I've been a fairly observant follower of the audio products that come and go, and I've seen newer, highly praised subs appear on the market regularly. All I can say is, I am STILL completely happy with my EP-500. It delights me every day. There was a low frequency moment in the recent Sherlock Holmes movie where the EP-500 had me saying WOW!

Quite often, the transmission of a movie via cable TV doesn't stand up the DVD experience, LFE-wise. Well, I caught the tail end of Kung Fu Panda on TV the other day, and the way the EP-500 handled the "skadush" moment really impressed me.

The EP-500 is simply a consistently excellent performer.

Pisses me off that it's not 2.35. Other than that, quite enjoyable.

Watched for the first time last night. Good. I liked the original better - you know Dances With Wolves. The whole time I kept waiting for a blue Kevin Costner to jump out from a tree.

The visuals were very good, but really hard to compare to anything but animation. Some live actor shots are first rate, but some of the trees in the distance shots looked a tad less than perfect.

Overall, it was as good as Aliens and looks cool. Worth the $30 for a good demo set. But the load times suck. My PS3 takes a while to get comfortable before it will load up to the menu. After that, it purs along fine.

I just had a really atrocious load time on... Apollo 13, I believe? It was one of the catalog titles I just got, anyway. I don't know what it was doing, but I didn't even select the BD-Live functionality.

I had load problems with this one too. One time I had to shut off the player and start all over again. It just seems to get hung up.

While the young girl in Aliens brought down the movie a bit, I'd still say it was a lot stronger movie than Avatar, mainly because, as you said, it's basically a re-tread of past movies. The idea of the avatars themselves held a lot of potential, but to use that idea to simply remake Dances With Wolves? Such a wasted opportunity. And yeah, the message was uninspired, the writing heavy-handed. Of course, I liked The Abyss, and you could make the same arguments about it. Anyway, I like James Cameron's technical vision, if nothing else. It really was some decent fun for the senses, but I'm definitely feeling insulted by the writing.