Carlson2005 wrote:Well, having got the complete set now, I’m afraid that so far (I haven’t seen all of the films yet) I can’t share Andy’s enthusiasm for this set. Maybe the original US transfers were worse than the UK ones but I failed to see a huge leap in quality but couldn’t help notice that four of the films have been cropped – the first three films to 1.85:1 instead of their original 1.66:1 and that tight cropping on GoldenEye, a film that has a shortage of long shots to begin with. A couple have synch problems. Then there’s the loss of several extras (most pronounced on Die Another Day) to be replaced in some cases by very bland ones (not to mention the inexcusable loss of 55 minutes from the excellent You Only Live Twice episode of Whicker’s World).

Yes, some of the additional features are very welcome, and it’s good to have the slight trims back in OHMSS (probably the only title to truly be considered as a possible ‘ultimate’ edition), but this is a long, long way from deserving the ‘ultimate’ tag. Glad I got this set cheap.

AndyDursin wrote: Did you buy the Region 1 sets, or the Region 2? The R2 discs apparently have a good many more "issues" than the Region 1 discs, which were pressed later and were able to benefit by being corrected in several areas from what I gather.

I didn't see any synch issues on the R1 titles, nor have I heard of any -- the only big problem seemed to be GOLDENEYE's cropping, which I mentioned before.

As I wrote, I did see a gigantic leap in quality across pretty much every title. If you've got a big TV set these differences are going to be a lot more obvious, too.