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Balto has finally been released on Blu-ray as a Wal-Mart exclusive! Finally us fan can enjoy the classic in HD home video.


[Photo taken by Blu-ray.com user Cuphead]

Sadly there's no special features, but at least the disc is region-free, so any Blu-ray player can run this.

More info here in these links:
• http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Balto-Blu-ray/62689/
• http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=290493

Beat you to it bud finally-an-official-blu-ray-release-t36858.html But yeah its seriously about time this got done. Been way too long of a wait for this.

Oh my apologise. Didn't realise you posted about it here. ^^

Aye, Not a problem mate. I know this was probably gonna happen because it seems a lot of fans are hyped about this release finally happening after all these years. Me included of course as a die-hard of 19 years now lol.

Yeah when I saw the news on here. I freaked out and got super hyped. After several years of waiting. It's finally on Blu-ray and in widescreen for once. I'm so excited. I even told my class it. But they didn't care or didn't even know what Balto is.

Ok so I bought my copy, and this version of the movie is only at Walmart for a certain amount of time. Not sure if the distribution will be expanded, but who knows.

Anyways, the disc is a clean black with Balto's logo on it, and the thing is, the cover doesn't really look any different from the original DVD cover. OK I suppose.

Now, the thing that got me was the minute I popped in the DVD was that the movie started playing. There is no main menu, not a scene selection screen, or anything of the sort. The movie is translated into different languages, from English to Spanish, to German and Swedish. But that's pretty much it.

No special features or anything. Kind of a disappointment, but I'm just happy it's on Blu-Ray to begin with.

After watching most of the scenes, I have to say its looks great. The quality of the movie is much higher than that of the original, which does look dated as of now.

To me the quality does looks much better. Lines are more clear, and not too many look as blurry. At times it doesn't look too bad, but from my perspective it looks as clear as the HD version on Amazon or Itunes, which, like I said, isn't that high IMO.

The movie is in widescreen format 1.85.1, with 1080p in quality, the highest it will go. The sound does sound nice, and the voices are clear much like the original, same with the music.

So, all in all, it's a pretty decent version, but you'd have to buy it yourself to judge the quality, which to me, does look great but it seems it's not at the highest peak. The lack of special features (or a menu for that matter) makes me wonder as to what they were thinking.

However, it is a pleasure to own this movie on Blu-Ray, and I'm glad that it's come this far. Will it get better in the future? Let's just hope so.

I just saw this on eBay and was going to ask for confirmation!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/162465324247

I must be honest I was disappointed. The quality of the picture isn't in my opinion as good as the HD version that I downloaded from the UK provider "Sky" which I assume will be the same as the Netflix version. The blu ray disc shows it as being very grainy and I don't think that it is much of an improvement over the DVD unless of course you are not in the UK and you want the widescreen version.

Which brings me onto that... unless it is something in my player settings, the blu ray is not the full wide screen. Again the Sky version shows more detail to the edge of the picture.

I haven't done a comparison to the DVD yet but I will at some point. The audio however is fantastic.

I hope that if the sales go well, then a better version might be released...

I thought about buying this blu-ray last month, however my local Walmart doesn't seem to carry this edition of the film. But with what everyone else is saying about this release, it doesn't sound like it's worth buying. If Universal ever gets it right and releases a better version that's actually restored and has bonus features, then I'll reconsider purchasing it.

Talking about recent releases of the film, have you guys noticed how they seem more like a fail? The newest edition of Balto, in my opinion, is a ripoff. It was to be expected, but the back side of that DVD lists even more features than the original 2002 DVD does. Universal, on their website, even claimed that the DVD was in widescreen. Both were a lie. It's the same old DVD. While it's nice to see Balto back on the shelves, Universal needs to get their crap together. Either make a new DVD and include what was on the region 2 release, or remove the bonus features entirely and don't include them on the packaging. A true widescreen release would be nice as well.

I've just posted a screenshot comparison on both my Facebook and Twitter pages... Check it out if you like the difference in screen size is minimal but the colours and detail make up for it

https://www.facebook.com/BaltosVault/

I actually ran the blu-ray through some de-noising filters and it came out really well. It appears the grain we see in the blu-ray is just film grain from the actual film scanned. Here are my enhanced vs original blu-ray screen shots.
Originals:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByR8W ... DN4dGk4Qmc
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByR8W ... HZtWlFDcEU
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByR8W ... WY5Qi16OXc
Enhanced:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByR8W ... 3dBZEoxb2c
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByR8W ... UtzV1FLQ2M
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByR8W ... nFkT29OTHM

Should I buy this on Bluray if I already have the DVD? Just wondering.

Yes. Look at the difference...

DVD


Blu Ray

That is freaking sweet. I'm totally getting that. Thanks for the comparison.