Aeon Flux DVD on HDTV Review

With HD-DVD and Blu Ray hitting the market, you don't have to worry about investing thousands more dollars in new players. Regular DVD players with HDMI outputs now do such a good job with the line doubling that you can enjoy your whole collection on your new HDTV.

I'm using a Toshiba DVD player that sells for $100 and I've been enjoying new releases on the JVC HD-56G786. With 56 inches of HDMI goodness, I've been seeing more color than I ever did on a Sony Wega, and even the sound blows away my clunky Dolby Digital setup. This model is only 720p, so if DVDs look this good, imagine how awesome they look on a full 1080p.

I thought Aeon Flux would be a perfect DVD to demo the JVC's range of colors, and indeed the pseudo-utopia scenes are glorious. You'll see minute detail in the white concrete cell walls but most of the movie's locations are muddy. Particularly disappointing was the razor grass.

Aeon's pure black hair and costume looks sleek and shiny, though her definition gets blurry in some of the wide shots. The best scenes to demo in Aeon Flux are the more intimate ones. A glowing orange bedroom scene has more color than most of the nature shots. And you can see all the wrinkles and stubble in everyone's close-ups, except for the perfect Charlize Theron who has no such flaws.

There are some nice sound effects for the JVC's Dolby Digital speaker. You may be distracted from the less than stellar grass as the sounds of darts whiz by creating a full sound from a single front speaker.