Earth 2100 Blu-ray

Earth 2100

Animation | Documentary



For more details about Earth 2100 on Blu-ray, see the Earth 2100 Blu-ray Review

Earth 2100 Blu-ray, Video Quality

 


While the actual Earth may look bleak at the beginning of the next century—let’s hope not— Earth 2100 looks excellent, with a 1080i/AVC-encoded presentation that’s clean and colorful. The talking head interviews are filmed on high definition video, and they appear fairly sharp, with strong facial detail and bright, realistic colors. Skin tones can look a bit ruddy, but hey, some people actually are ruddy. The real highlight here is the fantastic “motion comic” animation. The artwork is frequently arresting—so much so that I currently have one of the screencaps set as my laptop wallpaper—and it’s superbly reproduced on Blu-ray with bold watercolor splashes overlapped with detailed line drawings. It’s a very vivid and stylized look, and it works perfectly in conjunction with the storytelling. And though some of the lines in the animation are very fine, I didn’t notice any overt aliasing or stair-stepping. Blacks are appropriately inky and there’s a great sense of contrast, depth, and color separation. The program also uses footage from a variety of sources—clearly, not all of them high definition—and so the quality here really varies. As such, you will notice some of the usual up-convert culprits—ringing, aliasing, etc.—but there’s nothing truly distracting here. For a documentary commissioned by a nightly news program, I was really impressed by the aesthetic and production level of Earth 2100.

Earth 2100 Blu-ray, Audio Quality

 


While I always experience a slight twinge of disappointment when a film or TV program arrives on Blu-ray with a lossy audio track, the truth is, Earth 2100’s Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 mixes are more than adequate considering the nature of the production. First and foremost, all of the dialogue—from the talking head interviews to Lucy’s narration and journalist Bob Woodruff’s interludes—is clear, prioritized, and easily understandable. The message comes through, so to speak. The rest of the audio is subtle, but occasionally surprising and even impressive. During the motion comic sequences the rear channels are frequently occupied with ambient noises and impressionistic flourishes. All of this plays second fiddle to the narration, but if you actively listen you’ll pick up on some moody sound design. The music sometimes reminded me of John Murphy’s haunting, appropriately post-apocalyptic score for 28 Days Later, and though it’s rather low in the mix, it’s panned nicely into the surround speakers and sounds full and detailed, all things considered. The 2.0 mix is also nicely balanced, for those that don’t have a surround set-up.