meh.

must be me but those covers do nothing for me..

i'm happy with my $42 quad set..

Not everyone has a membership to Costco

Those covers are pretty awful, but I don't like the films enough to totally replace my Legacy set, so I'm just going to watch for used copies of 2 and 3 for the Cameron commentary and new cut of 3.

If you're interested in Ridley's old commentary on the 20th anniversary edition, the sudden availability of these discs has dramatically reduced the prices of the OOP discs on eBay. You should be able to pick one up easily enough, now. (I got a copy of the 20th a few weeks ago for $12.00, and ordered the new 2 disc a day or two ago.)

And some of us that do didn't even know about the sale price.

Ending up watching Alien last night and I have to say this is the best looking 1979 movie I have seen on DVD. It's virtually reference quality. It's video restoration is even better than Raiders, Jaws, Superman, and every other movie from that era (and that's saying a lot as all of those look quite good for their age).

I was less impressed with the audio. I think Alien still sounds a bit harsh and flat too often. Overall, it's not a bad soundtrack though. Given the effort that went into the video, I'm sure this is the best it could sound.

But that's my whole point! The commentary for the extended cut is THE SAME as the commentary for the original cut (plus the added 10 minutes for the 10 minutes of extra footage in the extended cut).

They should only count the commentaries as being 2 hours of extra features. Not 3 hours and 50 minutes of extra features.

Well, I was at Costco yesterday, had the set in my hand for $61.99, but decided that I'd rather get the individual movies.

Those look nice, almost as good as the Quadrilogy art.
Must have been the same designer.

i agree.
Raiders was a disappointment for me, though.
the opening titles aren't rock solid on my display, and the opening jungle sequence displays splotchy blacks, and in general has a less resolute quality than other areas of the film.
its a good transfer, but not worthy of the film, and no way justification for the long time this film was in coming to disc.

in fact, if you compare the video of Alien (20th ann), Alien (quad set remaster) and Raiders, you'll see that Raiders has more in common with the old Alien disc quality (video wise) than with the new one.

Alien (new set) is video reference all the way (i have a hard time taking issue with the soundtrack of a film from 79, while not spit-out-your-coffee astounding, it sounded quite acceptable to me).
unfortunately, i chose to watch the DC on my first viewing with this set, so i was concentrating more on the seemingly mindless changes Scott made to the film, moreso than the audio.
the video however grabbed me by the throat right away and never let go.
its a remarkable improvment over what looked to be a decent disc to begin with .

I saw Alien: Directors Cut in the theater, it looked absolutely awesome.

Scott has been quoted as saying he prefers the originally released version of the film to the DC since it maintains the tension better.

In the Alien 2-disc set, there is a little pamplet with several paragraphs of writing from Scott. To the effect, he's says the Director's Cut is BS and just a marketing scheme to get people back in the theater. He says the original cut is "perfect" and just what he has always wanted.

Are there any problems with these new 2 disc sets with skipping? I saw them at the store over the weekend and really wanted to grab "Alien" and "Aliens" but decided to wait since there seemed to be a lot of issues with skipping in the quadrilogy.

I wasn't even considering buying any of these until I pulled out my 20th anniversary edition of "Alien" around Thanksgiving, which had never been watched, and it started pausing and skipping like crazy. Tried a couple different players and it turns out it has rot! I looked at it and it definitely has the blurry-looking "coffee stains". Sorry to go off-topic...

Those stains are probably layers.

If you want to know more about the video quality of Aliens, with these new versions watch it with the commentary right around the part where the Marines first land and enter the colony complex. At that point Cameron talks about why he thinks the film/video quality looks so much worse than Alien did (basically because of the way he shot it).

for those who missed it the first time around [and would be interested]..

according to THIS thread, the Quad is back on sale for $42.