DVD details for
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) More at IMDbPro »

Anybody who has written him off because of his string of stinkers--or anybody who's too young to remember The Goodbye Girl--may be shocked at the accomplishment and nuance of Richard Dreyfuss's performance in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Here, he plays a man possessed; contacted by aliens, he (along with other members of the "chosen") is drawn toward the site of the incipient landing: Devil's Tower, in rural Wyoming. As in many Spielberg films, there are no personalized enemies; the struggle is between those who have been called and a scientific establishment that seeks to protect them by keeping them away from the arriving spacecraft. The ship, and the special effects in general, are every bit as jaw-dropping on the small screen as they were in the theater (well, almost). Released in 1977 as a cerebral alternative to the swashbuckling science fiction epics then in vogue, Close Encounters now seems almost wholesome in its representation of alien contact and interested less in philosophizing about extraterrestrials than it is in examining the nature of the inner "call." Ultimately a motion picture about the obsession of the driven artist or determined visionary, Close Encounters comes complete with the stock Spielberg wives and girlfriends who seek to tether the dreamy, possessed protagonists to the more mundane concerns of the everyday. So a spectacular, seminal motion picture indeed, but one with gender politics that are all too terrestrial.

Michel Hafner (6 October 2001):
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) is now available from Columbia-Tristar on a two disc collector's edition. Quality as usual from this label?
The film master used is in good shape, clean and steady.
Color and contrast rendition are fine. The black level and shadow detail is not always as good as from today's films. The age of the film and the opticals take a little toll here.
The noise and grain level is moderate. Images are pretty sharp, but not as sharp as today's films transferred to DVD. Especially interior daylight shots tend to look somewhat fuzzy and also grainy.
Compression is good.
As far as video artifacts are concerned, there is the usual edge enhancement Columbia-Tristar apparently can't live without for titles wider than 16:9, and some jitter in fine image detail at times, likely caused by noise reduction. Also slight smearing of textures.
The supplements offer among other things a two hour documentary with good image quality (but from a composite source) and deleted scenes with bad image quality.
Considering the age of the film this is a solid effort from Columbia-Tristar that offers mostly film-like images suitable for any kind of display. Recommended.