Westeros

Courtesy of HBO and HBO UK, we’ve received copies of the new Steelbook collections of Season 1 Season 2 of Game of Thrones.

Besides a lovely new packaging inspired by the famed opening credits of the series (the first two sets feature a Stark-themed Winterfell and a Lannister-themed King’s Landing, and the next two sets will feature the Twins and the Wall when they are released; it’s worth noting that the central sigils also double as refrigerator magnets!), the chief draw is that the set will feature a brand new audio mix utilizing Dolby’s Atmos techology. This is an evolution from things like Dolby TrueHD, taking the audio experience in some very interesting directions. Although Atmos is quite new, and it may take awhile for there to be wide use of Atmos-capable speakers (particularly upwards-firing speakers designed to bounce sound off a ceiling to help create verticality, which spare home theater enthusiasts the cost and difficulty of mounting speakers on the ceiling), it’s worth noting that the Bluray of course also works with TrueHD and will play just fine on non-Atmos 5.1 or 7.1 audio systems.

HBO provided this video to give a better sense of just what the Atmos mixing process entails, and it’s quite illuminating:

As I said, in practice, Atmos isn’t that wide-spread ... yet. We certainly don’t have it at home, and unlike the good folks at High Def Digest (they do an excellent, and thorough review) we didn’t have access to a Dolby demo room, either. We do, however, have an audiophile neighbor who allowed us to try it out on his Atmos-compliant system. High Def Digest provides some highlights of what you can expect, but I admit that in our limited time I made a bee-line for the” Blackwater” episode and its huge battle scene.  Our judgment? The sound mixing and Atmos technology does not disappoint at all!

The wildfire explosion sounds even more catastrophic as the room fills with the sound of it, for one thing. Perhaps the best examples in that episode are the firey arrows being shot in various segments. Bronn’s arrow on its long arc over the ships to set alight the wildfire really does sound as if it’s above you as it tracks across the screen, while the volley of arrows launched from the walls as Stannis’s troops land really seem to whiz down from above to land somewhere behind the viewer. Melee scenes also benefit from the ability of placing individual elements like steel hitting steel, screams and shouts, or even the sound of a rock crushing a head (ick) in a way that makes logical sense. The real key to Atmos’s technology is the fact that it moves entirely away from the concept of left/right/front/etc. channels, and instead treats individual sounds as “objects” that are placed where they need to be placed. According to the press material, this means that an Atmo-decoder can send up to 128 distinct sounds out to the appropriate speakers.

Other than the packaging and Dolby Atmos sound, it should be noted that the sets don’t actually contain any additional extras like new commentaries or featurettes. That said, the Game of Thrones Bluray’s have always been pretty jam-packed with extra material, so the lack of something new isn’t that surprising.

The first two sets are out since yesterday. If you’re an audiophile who wants the most cinematic experience possible and already have or plan to have an Atmos-capable sound system, these Blurays are definitely worth the effort to acquire.