I always enjoyed watching The Flintstones cartoon series on television, but I passed on seeing this movie at the theater when it was released mainly because of the negative reviews I saw. When it was released on laser disc a few years ago I decided that I would give it a try... and you know what? I liked it! Unfortunately the laser disc version suffers from the rolling lines problem (it was THX certified too!) and was never repressed to correct this defect. I was quite thrilled and surprised that Universal decided to released The Flintstones as a "Collector's Edition" considering it wasn't the big box office success everyone envisioned it to be, but it did do well enough to prompt a sequel currently titled The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas for release sometime in May 2000.

The image quality on both the Dolby Digital (Collector's Edition) and DTS versions is very good and appear to be from exactly the same master. The film is properly framed at 1.85:1 and the content appears to be well balanced. The colors are extremely clean with vivid color saturation, excellent contrast and black level throughout the entire movie. The sharpness and detail level achieved on this DVD is fantastic, no film grain, motion artifacts or blurryness (softness) appear anywhere on this DVD that I can see - with the 30% increased vertical resolution 16x9 enhancement provides this is about as good as DVD can look - definitely demonstration quality.

The Dolby Digital version starts with a montage of clips from Universal's DVD library, this montage is missing from the DTS version but you do get the opening DTS logo.

The image may appear to be the same but when it comes to the audio that's a completely different story. The Dolby Digital 5.1 English soundtrack is quite good, in fact if it wasn't for the DTS version you would never know how much better it can sound! The DTS version has more of a "natural" overall sound quality across the entire soundstage that the Dolby Digital soundtrack is lacking. Dialogue in both versions was clear without any harshness. However the DTS version's sound effects and directional effects placement is outstanding there is definitely some difference in the mixing between these two versions. On the DTS version the .1 (LFE) effects channel has much more depth/punch and the musical soundtrack also seems to have greater dynamic range.

Spanish subtitles and a Dolby Digital 5.1 French dub track appear on the Collector's Edition only. The DTS version contains no additional language tracks on this disc. Also there is no Closed Captioning (CC) provided on either version.

The main menu is quite simple and easy to navigate. There is no background music or animation to the menus on either versions. When you insert the DTS disc the main menu comes up with the Dolby Surround audio selected as the default, you actually have to select the DTS soundtrack if you want to hear it, since there are only two choices on the main menu it's a little hard to determine at first which color is the highlighted or selected color. Why the DTS DVD version doesn't default to the DTS soundtrack is a mystery to me. Once you select which soundtrack you wish to hear there doesn't seem to be any way to get back to that menu without reinserting the disc in the player.

The collector's edition disc includes a nice array of supplements: a running commentary track by director Brian Levant, an original documentary "Discovering Bedrock" on the making of the film featuring interviews with the director and cast members (43 minutes), BC-52's "Meet The Flinstones" music video, production photos, it also contains a teaser trailer and the original theatrical trailer. Sadly the DTS version doesn't even include a trailer.

When doing an A-B comparison between the laser disc version to the DVD it's simply no contest and reveals the limitations of laser disc image - the DVD's image is sharper, cleaner, has more contrast and resolution, which should come as no surprise since the DVD is also 16x9 enhanced.

FYI - Dolby Digital vs. DTS by the numbers:


The theatrical version of Dolby Digital is 16 bit resolution (as is theatrical DTS and SDDS) and runs at 320 kb/s. Dolby Digital on laser disc is 384 kb/s and Dolby Digital 5.1 on DVD is either 384 kb/s or 448 kb/s.

The theatrical version of DTS is 16 bit resolution (as is theatrical Dolby Digital and SDDS) and runs at 1.44 mb/s. DTS on consumer CD and laser disc runs at full 20 bits/44.1 kHz sampling at 1.44 mb/s (PCM's data rate). All consumer DTS DVDs are using a newer algorithm which is true 20 bits/48 kHz sampling at 1.536 mb/s (running at DVD's top audio data rate).

For comparison Laser Discs that have a Redbook PCM track (Digital Audio) has a resolution of 16bits, 44.1kHz and the bitstream is 1411 kb/s. DVD PCM track has the capability of 16bit 48kHz, 1536kb/s bitstream slightly higher resolution than standard Redbook PCM of 44.1 kHz. PCM on DVD is not limited to 48kHz, 16-bit audio, it can be up to 24-bit 96kHz.

The DVD and LD (consumer) versions of both Dolby Digital and DTS are better then their respective theatrical versions.