Blu-ray Movie Reviews

All the clichs are in place. New coach with a checkered past and something to prove. Down-on-its-luck team. Hostile, meddling townsfolk. The big game. You've seen it all before.

But that doesn't mean that it isn't worth seeing again, particularly when it's done as well as it is here. And chances are you saw it here first, anyway. While the little sports-team-that-could plot goes back a lot further than Hoosiers, first released in 1986, it has never been done better. High school and collegiate basketball is a near-religion in Indiana, and this story of a small town high school, with barely enough players to produce a team, hits all the right notes.

Technically, the disc is competent. There's nothing particularly eye-grabbing about the MPEG 2 picture. But for this type of movie, and one 20 years old to boot, there's really nothing to complain about. It's a clean, clear, edge-enhancement-free picture that you won't notice at all once you're pulled-in by the story.

The same goes for the sound. It's about average for a non-action, mid 1980s flick. While it's recorded on the disc in DTS HD 5.1 Master Lossless Audio, the only sound that can be pulled from the disc with current Blu-ray players is the (lossy) core DTS track, recorded at 1.5Mb/sec. But that's more than enough to do justice to this modest soundtrack.

Picture: 7.0 (out of 10)…Sound: 6.5…Film: 9.0

(Reviewed on a Pioneer BDP-HD1 Blu-ray player, Panasonic PT-AE1000U LCD projector, 78" wide Stewart Studiotek 130 screen, and Arcam AVR350 receiver. Speakers: Energy Veritas v2.8 L/R, Mirage OMD-C2 center, Mirage OMD-R surrounds, and Revel B15 subwoofer.)