The Simpsons: The Complete Twentieth Season – Blu-ray Disc Review
January 16, 2010 – 5:33 AM - Posted by: Justin SlussTags: Bart Simpson, Dan Castellaneta, FOX, Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, Homer Simpson, Julie Kavner, Lisa Simpson, Maggie Simpson, Marge Simpson, Matt Groening, Nancy Cartwright, Pamela Hayden, The Simpsons, Yeardley Smith
has an average rating of 9.2 on IMDb
1080p in AVC on TWO 50gb discs
DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio
are pretty much NON-EXISTENT!
– 
– 2008 – 2009
– 456 minutes
– FOX
– 
Overall Verdict – Fan Will Be Somewhat Pleased
Buy it for $42.99 @ Amazon.com
— Review written by: Justin Sluss —
The Show Itself was created by Matt Groening for FOX‘s television broadcasting network and originally premiered back in December 17, 1989. The show has been on the air now for 20 years (and counting) and continues to be one of the most watched sitcoms on television.
Writing a synopsis for this show or even this season is a bit weird for me as I honestly think about at least 90% of the readers have seen this show at some point in their life, but I’ll try my best here to write a synopsis of some sort. For those of you who have actually never seen the show, let me explain a tad bit. The show revolves around the family, “The Simpsons” comprised of a drunk, dimwitted father “Homer” (voiced by Dan Castellaneta), the wife with large hair “Marge” (voiced by Julie Kavner), the menace of a son “Bart” (voiced by Nancy Cartwright), the smart and outspoken daughter “Lisa” (voiced by Yeardley Smith) and lastly the baby “Maggie“. The family lives in the town of “Springfield” with other crazy characters such as the bartender “Moe” (voiced by Hank Azaria), the richest man in town “Montgomery Burns“, his assistant “Smithers“, the overly religious neighbor “Ned Flanders” (voiced by Harry Shearer), the kids TV show host “Krusty the Clown“, Bart’s best friend “Milhouse” (voiced by Pamela Hayden), the policeman “Chief Wiggum” and even his hilarious son “Ralph Wiggum” to just name off a few familiar characters.
All 21 Episodes of the twentieth season of the show are included. They are as follows.
- Originally Aired: September 28, 2008
- Originally Aired: October 5, 2008
- Originally Aired: October 19, 2008
- Originally Aired: November 2, 2008
- Originally Aired: November 9, 2008
- Originally Aired: November 16, 2008
- Originally Aired: November 30, 2008
- Originally Aired: December 7, 2008
- Originally Aired: January 25, 2009
- Originally Aired: February 15, 2009
- Originally Aired: March 1, 2009
- Originally Aired: March 8, 2009
- Originally Aired: March 15, 2009
- Originally Aired: March 17, 2009
- Originally Aired: March 29, 2009
- Originally Aired: April 5, 2009
- Originally Aired: April 19, 2009
- Originally Aired: April 26, 2009
- Originally Aired: May 3, 2009
- Originally Aired: May 10, 2009
- Originally Aired: May 17, 2009
- Episode 1 – “Sex, Pies and Idiot Scrapes“
- Episode 2 – “Lost Verizon“
- Episode 3 – “Double, Double, Boy in Trouble“
- Episode 4 – “Treehouse of Horror XIX“
- Episode 5 – “Dangerous Curves“
- Episode 6 – “Homer and Lisa Exchange Cross Words“
- Episode 7 – “Mypods and Boomsticks“
- Episode 8 – “The Burns and the Bees“
- Episode 9 – “Lisa the Drama Queen“
- Episode 10 – “Take My Life, Please“
- Episode 11 – “How the Test Was Won“
- Episode 12 – “No Loan Again, Naturally“
- Episode 13 – “Gone Maggie Gone“
- Episode 14 – “In the Name of the Grandfather“
- Episode 15 – “Wedding for Disaster“
- Episode 16 – “Eeny Teeny Maya Moe“
- Episode 17 – “The Good, the Sad and the Drugly“
- Episode 18 – “Father Knows Worst“
- Episode 19 – “Waverly Hills 9-0-2-1-D’oh“
- Episode 20 – “Four Great Women and a Manicure“
- Episode 21 – “Coming to Homerica“
“The Simpsons” in their 20th season, celebrating now their 20th anniversary of being on the air, still remain the same hilarious family that we enjoy tuning in to on a somewhat weekly basis to laugh at pop-culture and our own silly human behaviors. It is definitely a great pleasure as a fan of the show to see it debut in Hi-Def finally and the most recent season too none-the-less. Kudos to FOX for finally giving this show the budget to go Hi-Def and having the good judgment of bringing it to Blu-ray Disc as well.
Video Quality on this release is in 1080p using the AVC MPEG-4 codec on TWO BD-50 (50 gigabyte dual-layered Blu-ray Discs) with 9 episodes in the (4×3) 1.33:1 aspect ratio and 12 episodes in the (Widescreen) 1.78:1 aspect ratio. The reason for this is that the show did not switch to Hi-Def 16×9 (Widescreen) until the 10th episode of the 21 episode season. It’s safe to say though that a majority (namely the second disc of the two disc set) of the episodes are in full Hi-Def but the 9 episodes on the first disc are clearly 1080p up-conversions of the original 480i or 480p broadcasts. I noticed some de-interlacing issues in those first 9 episodes so I think maybe they did work with a 480i source, regardless the up-conversion is nice but it is not to be confused with actual Hi-Def material like the 12 other episodes in this season. Below you will find a couple screenshot comparisons between the 4×3 (up-converted SD material) and the actual 16×9 Hi-Def material on some iconic shots that “Simpsons” fans will be familiar with.
vs. 
vs.
DISC USAGE:
Disc 1 uses 43.8GB total. Disc 2 uses 44.3GB total.
Episodes 1-9 roughly use about 4.7GB total each. Episodes 10-21 roughly use about 3.5GB total each.
The black outlines of the animation style on “The Simpsons” have always been one of the great characteristics of the show visually that translates to even the DVD’s of the show in Standard Definition looking good. “The Simpsons Movie” for instance which came to Blu-ray in Hi-Def looked great and had that quality to it. Now, something to admit is the 9 episodes up-converted from a SD source to Hi-Def look good with some solid detail but it is when the show transitions to full 16×9 (Widescreen) Hi-Def on episode 10 that you will really start to understand why this show looks amazing in Hi-Def — just as good as it did in the major motion picture from a few years back. The new amount of detail found here in episodes is simply astounding, I mean just the new opening title sequence alone holds a large amount of detail. The shading looks excellent here, colors are vibrant and almost jump off the screen at you (especially in the 12 Hi-Def episodes).
It comes a bit hard for me to give this an overall average for video quality because of the odd combination of 9 SD upconverted episodes and 12 Hi-Def episodes (like a 60% Hi-Def to SD ratio). I don’t know if I should rate the first 9 episodes and last 12 episodes separately and then round them up or what. So, I just decided to deduct a half star from my overall based on what it would be for the real highlight of this release visually, the last 12 episodes in Hi-Def. With that being said, I give “The Simpsons: The Complete Twentieth Season” an impressive “4.5 Star Rating” for overall video quality. It is a shame the show in it’s 20th season didn’t go Hi-Def from the start but it is also fun to watch the show transition from SD to HD in one season, pretty much near the mid-point.
Audio Quality on this release is presented in DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio. This is an obvious improvement over the Dolby Digital 5.1 found in the FOX broadcasts of the show. Dialogue, which makes up a large majority of the show’s sound material is delivered perfectly through the front center channel speaker. When music or sound effects are present they get delivered through mostly the front left and right channel speakers with a bit of rear channel and LFE presence. The show itself is not really the most demanding on a 5.1 sound mix as you could tell with the previous seasons that saw DVD release in a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix. With that being said, it’s nothing new to “Simpsons” fans to hear the show in a 5.1 mix if they have owned some of latest seasons released on DVD but it is a nice improvement to hear it in a lossless DTS-HD MA mix. This earns a decent “3.5 Star Rating” for overall audio quality.
Bonus Materials even though skimpy, are presented in Hi-Def (HD) video with Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo sound.
Disc 1 contains:
- “The 20th Anniversary Special Sneak Peek By Morgan Spurlock” (3:27 – HD) is a complete tease and it makes you wonder why the special itself was not included to make up for the fact there are no other actual materials included. This aired a week or so back in celebration of the show’s 20th anniversary (as the title suggests) but is nowhere to be found on here. Well, I searched and I couldn’t find you the whole episode but I can bring you this itself as a preview below.
Overall, the bonus materials we get here SUCK as they are really NON-EXISTENT aside from a simple frickin’ teaser for the 20th Anniversary Special that aired this past Sunday on FOX. I guess they plan to make us wait for the 21st season to get that as bonus material or they actually have the nerve to charge for it as a stand-alone release. Either way, it sucks too that no audio commentaries are found here or any behind-the-scenes featurettes or anything. This just feels like it’s really lacking something … because it IS.
Blu-ray Disc packaging:
Screenshots:
NOTE: The full-sized 1920×1080 files are in a .PNG file format and uncompressed. Bare with the slow loading times, keep in mind these files are at least 1MB (1 megabyte) in size each.
