September 26, 2007 - It is likely that hundreds of thousands of people bought the Halo Legendary Edition on September 25. Many were happy to get the replica Master Chief helmet and, of course, the game itself. But many fans who checked out the second bonus DVD included with the $129.99 set were left disappointed.
The Legendary set includes all cinematics from Halo 1 and 2. While the back of the Legendary box claims the movies are "completely remastered, hi-res versions," this doesn't appear to be the case. The cinematics are poorly compressed, with washed out colors and considerable artifacting. It wasn't long before irate fans who were expecting something better were on the Internet complaining.
Today, Bungie Writing Lead Frank O'Connor responded to the concerns:
"The cutscenes were remastered, the pop-in reduced and they were output as as high resolution TIFFs one frame at a time to improve the quality over the originals
They were not, contrary to popular internets remastered in "HD" and this was always advertised as a DVD disc, which obviously can't play HD content anyway.
Apologies to folks feeling ripped off, but the false advertising claims are well, false.
Watch the remastered ones side by side with the originals to see how much they've been improved.
And hopefully folks can see past our old school graphics and listen to the commentary, which is the important part of that content anyway."
The issue, however, is not that people were expecting HD-quality graphics, but an overall improvement in the video quality. It is true that there is less pop-in in Halo 2 cut-scenes, but this is negated by the generally poor quality of the compression.
We ran both Halo and Halo 2 side-by-side with the videos and, while there are some improvements to the remastered cinematics, there are also many new issues. Overall, the visual quality of the Legendary Edition is, in our opinion, inferior to the originals.
It should be noted that the two-disc set offers a number of top-notch features. It is only the set of remastered cut-scenes that have displeased consumers.
The Legendary set includes all cinematics from Halo 1 and 2. While the back of the Legendary box claims the movies are "completely remastered, hi-res versions," this doesn't appear to be the case. The cinematics are poorly compressed, with washed out colors and considerable artifacting. It wasn't long before irate fans who were expecting something better were on the Internet complaining.
Today, Bungie Writing Lead Frank O'Connor responded to the concerns:
"The cutscenes were remastered, the pop-in reduced and they were output as as high resolution TIFFs one frame at a time to improve the quality over the originals
They were not, contrary to popular internets remastered in "HD" and this was always advertised as a DVD disc, which obviously can't play HD content anyway.
Apologies to folks feeling ripped off, but the false advertising claims are well, false.
Watch the remastered ones side by side with the originals to see how much they've been improved.
And hopefully folks can see past our old school graphics and listen to the commentary, which is the important part of that content anyway."
The issue, however, is not that people were expecting HD-quality graphics, but an overall improvement in the video quality. It is true that there is less pop-in in Halo 2 cut-scenes, but this is negated by the generally poor quality of the compression.
We ran both Halo and Halo 2 side-by-side with the videos and, while there are some improvements to the remastered cinematics, there are also many new issues. Overall, the visual quality of the Legendary Edition is, in our opinion, inferior to the originals.
It should be noted that the two-disc set offers a number of top-notch features. It is only the set of remastered cut-scenes that have displeased consumers.
