A very late response, oh well...

> Are the quality much improved?  Are these worth getting?

Those are 2 very hard questions...  First, a short introduction; I too
am an Eva fan and got the Perfect Collection, 2 movies, 2 dc's. next to
some other stuff.

I gave it some thought but started to collect the platinum collection
and although I think its nice and decent I'd *never* consider selling my
Perfect collection. This series is nice, but nothing beats the original
IMO.

They have done a good job in remastering it; the picture quality is very
good, but sometimes I wonder if it is really 'remade' or just made a
whole lot brighter. Take a look for yourself, here you see a scene from
my favorite episode (Showdown in Tokyo-3):

http://www.catslair.org/files/attack.jpg
http://www.catslair.org/files/pl-attack.jpg


When you take a look at the pictures which were published in Newtype US,
on the DVD cover or the silvercoated box then I'm getting a feeling its
being overhyped. Those drawings look nice but don't compare at all to
what you're seeing on the dvds. still; the discs do contain extra
material, but some last for only a few seconds and as such are hard to
spot.

Then there's the sounddub. Its remastered and some secenes were redone.
Luckily the English dub still sounds very much the same. Although its
nice to be able to listen to some things in stereo some things are plain
out annoying. I don't like the exaggerated sounds when people talk in
closed spaces like helicopters or the eva entryplug. Apart from those
little annoyances its pretty good.

And finally; the extra's. Its nice stuff but now that we're at the 4th
release I think its becoming slightly boring. I can't help wonder if
this is about Evangelion or all about ADV.

For example; all disks have one or two audio commentaries on them. But
so far we've only heard the voice actor for Shinji, Hyuga and Asuka. And
we've seen Asuka (Tiffany Grant) coming back in all past 3 releases. I
mean; come on...  One commentary is nice, 2 is getting weird but 3 is
becoming boring. Where's Rei?!

The second disk had a nice animatic, the fourth continues the process
with yet another animatic. Apart from the voice actors we've seen Matt
Greenfield a couple of times too. And the last release (4th) now also
shows us Tiffany's Evangelion merchandise collection, mostly consisting
of Asuka stuff.

All in all fun, but not what I expected from a release like this, I'd
expected much more and its somewhat dissapointing to see the re-release
being re-run when it comes to DVD extra's. Its nice to have a clean
opening and ending, but its a little pathetic to dump these on all disks
IMVHO.

Last but not least the dvd booklet. Its fun, informative, and nearly
fitting ;)

> I have original DVDs, plus the two director's cut discs...  Are the
> platinum series just remastered versions of the original, or are they
> director's cuts?

They can be compared with director cuts. Some sound dubs have been
changed and some scene's have been slightly altered. As I said; some
extra scene's are hard to spot, but there nonetheless.


So to answer your question: is it worth it. Very hard to say; in my
opinion this is all nice stuff, but will never be able to compare to the
original release.

Its fun. The package is fun and its good eye candy in the overall. If
you're a fan I think its a good addition when looking at some of the
information you'll find on the disks. Unfortunatly most of this
information centre's around ADV and the work they've done to (for
example) add the English sound dubs. None of the extra's so far actually
focus on the series themselves.

So my guess is that die-hard fans will end up being dissapointed.
Perhaps being slightly cheered up by the 2 animatics.

Just my 2 cents.

-- 
Groetjes, Peter

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