DVD details for
Aliens (1986) More at IMDbPro »

Michel Hafner (9 June 1999):
This is the second DVD in the Alien series from Fox. It follows Alien (1979) and based on the good quality of the first disc we expect this one to be just as good or better. Is it?
Hm, yes and no. Both DVDs are actually rather similar in many aspects. Here too we start with a clean film master in good shape with sharp images, although again not as sharp as the format allows. Again high marks for contrast and color. There are a bit more compression artefacts here, though, likely due to the lower average bit rate as the result of a longer film that uses all the scan lines (1.85 aspect ratio) unlike Alien (2.35 aspect ratio) (for example there is a blooper at the start of chapter 7 that should not have passed quality control!). There is a bit less noise and grain and very little aliasing. Also less overenhanced edges.
Nonetheless "Aliens" scores worse on video artifacts than Alien (1979). There is one problem and it's not minor, at least when watching the film on a good wall size projection system. Past transfers of Aliens have been criticised for grain and noise. Probably because of that, Fox decided to get rid of both for good and used digital noise removal. It's not a problem per se if this option is used carefully. Helas they are overdoing it. Distracting artifacts are the result. To study the problem go to chapter 1: 5:29 and following, where Ripley is recovering from decades of sleep and Burke is visiting. The noise removal blurs fine texture detail when objects are moving and produces shadow images next to fast moving objects in direction of the motion. The blurring and unnatural behaviour of the patterns is best seen on Carter's jacket and people's faces. The shadow images are well visible around the nurse's head. It's true that at regular speed the problems are less visible than when you step frame by frame through the sequence. But you need no stepping to see them. The unnatural textures are rather obvious at normal speed, too. And it seems that the compression here also gets confused at times and adds additional artifacts in the form of floating or freezing texture parts. The problem is present in many scenes and that's the reason that this transfer and DVD is not the last word in this matter and while otherwise very watchable, it is unnecessarily compromised.
The definitive "Aliens" DVD (at NTSC resolution) is not yet here. Please Fox/DVCC, be more careful with digital noise removal and give the film a higher bit rate if the natural grain of the film master requires it. If necessary put the supplements on a second disc or use the soon available DS-DL technology.
Enough whining for now. This DVD will look just fine on a large majority of systems after all. Also the audio is very nice with clear dialogue and powerful sound effects. There are quite some supplements including an interview with James Cameron. Image quality of the supplements is mostly dreadful, as exptected. But we are used to that, are we not? The quality of the additional scenes (this is the longer director's cut) is about the same as the rest except for the audio which sounds a bit different. Finally, if you watch the end credits closely you can see that the extra credits for some cast members do not originate from film but were put in electronically. They do wobble around, while the rest is very steady.