You can imagine my relief, then, when it turns out that Master And Commander's 1080p/24, 2.35:1-ratio Blu-ray transfer actually looks pretty decent. Not perfect, mind, or even close to it; but decent nonetheless.

Initially, though, it looked as if this might not be the case. For as I'd feared, the shots of the fog from which the French ship Acheron attacks the HMS Surprise at the film's start really do look quite dodgy, with clear dot crawl noise and artefacting. Darn.

However, the shots of the actors on the Surprise during this opening scene thankfully provide a completely different flavour for the transfer, as they look extremely sharp and detailed, impressively rich in colour, and absolutely full of contrast, with deep blacks and bright peak whites co-existing seemingly effortlessly.

In fact, the transfer's black level response is one of the very best I've seen in a Blu-ray film, portraying the at times nearly pitch black backdrop to some of the below-decks footage without a trace of greyness or 'crushing'.

The combination of deep black levels and at times extreme sharpness helps the disc portray a sense of three-dimensionality during almost every scene that just wasn't there on the standard definition DVD release.

The amount of detail visible on the surface of the sea is outstanding, too, especially as it's rendered with precious little in the way of motion artefacts, even during the film's impressively created storm sequences.

The film's relatively rare bright, sunlit scenes, meanwhile, display some engagingly rich colour saturations that really bring the image to life without ever - well, hardly ever, anyway - making tones look unnatural or over-ripe.

Still, before we get too carried away, there's no hiding the fact that the dotting noise we spotted right at the film's start has a nasty habit or reappearing at pretty regular intervals throughout the film, especially when there's a blue or grey sky to be shown.

There's frustratingly little consistency to the appearance of this noise, either; one minute you'll be watching as pristine an HD image as you could ever hope to see, the next the noise will be back as noticeable as ever.

Another problem is that the occasional bright edge in the film, such as those of the crew members during the scenes at the Galapagos Islands, can look over-enhanced.

Finally in the negative column, some of the shots featuring grey skies and/or mist look a tad over-lightened, and can even flicker quite distractingly from time to time.

Overall, though, while only very occasionally getting anywhere near 'HD demo sequence' standard, there's no doubt whatsoever that even at its worst the picture on this Master And Commander Blu-ray looks many times better than the old DVD release, and so is by default the finest way to watch this stirring movie from the comfort of your own armchair.

On paper, you might not think that a surprisingly 'intelligent' and historically accurate tall ship drama would contain too much scope for soundtrack gymnastics. But rest assured that every single cannonball that rips through the HMS Surprise also sounds - even feels - as if it's ripping through your living room too.

How? Perhaps the single most important element is the remarkable precision with which the DTS-HD Master Audio track positions its multi-channel effects. For instance, during the Acheron's first bombardment of the Surprise, as well as the 'leading' sound of cannonballs careening through the ship (complete with extremely aggressive and fast front-to-rear soundstage transitions), you can also make out sounds of wooden debris flying to all sides of your room with astonishing precision and spatial accuracy.

In fact, the attention to detail in the sound mix is such that you can even clearly discern different sizes of debris caused by the cannonballs, from fairly large chunks hitting what's left of the ship's deck to what sounds like little more than dust flitting away on the wind. Remarkable stuff.

It's important to stress, though, that Master And Commander's DTS-HD soundtrack doesn't only come to life during the film's action set pieces. It's immaculately and aggressively crafted at all times, putting as much effort into quiet scenes as it does loud ones.

And so during any of the below-decks sequences the soundstage is rife with just the sort of creaks and squeaks you'd expect an old ship to make, and there's even a sense of the water lapping away outside.

One final plus point of what really is a dazzling audio mix finds the soundstage doing as fine a job as I've ever heard of giving you an audio impression of the size of the location being shown. In other words, as the film cuts from a below-decks sequence to one outside, the shift in the audio's scope and scale really gives you an audio sense of stepping out of an enclosed space into the endless sphere of the ocean.

The film's constant, exceptionally aggressive and thoughtful use of the rear speakers in a surround sound setup contributes considerably to this sense of space, and provides an abject lesson to lesser sound mixes of just what this HD surround sound audio malarkey is all about.

It's worth adding before we get our teeth into Master And Commander's extra features that if you don't have the necessary kit to experience the DTS-HD audio mix, while the straight DTS 5.1 mix may lack some of the bass extremities and effects clarity of its high def brother, it still sounds absolutely bloody awesome.

Audio completists will doubtless be fascinated to know that as well as the English DTS-HD track, the disc also contains a Spanish DTS 5.1 mix.

For while there are, thankfully, a few more features on Master And Commander than poor old Predator got, there are also considerably less than we were treated to on the film’s old 'Two-Disc Special Edition' DVD release.

You don't get the excellent hour-long 'The Hundred Days' documentary, for instance, which follows the making of the film all the way from Weir coming onboard through to the completion of the score.

Nor do you get 'In The Wake of O'Brian', a 19-minute documentary on the DVD version going through the problems Weir encountered in turning a series of stories into a coherent film script.

Three further featurettes are missing too: HBO's surprisingly interesting, 25-minute 'first look' documentary; a 'Cinematic Phasmids' look at the film's special effects; and finally an analysis of the film's stunning sound design.

And still we're not done. For there's additionally no trace of the DVD release's stills gallery (containing conceptual art relevant to the film) or the DVD feature whereby you can see how a couple of scenes were put together via multi-camera shooting.

For Fox to put out Master and Commander on Blu-ray without all of these really worthwhile extra features is, for my money, another unforgivable betrayal by the studio of another great film - not to mention the Blu-ray format itself.

Having said all that, as I indicated at the start of this section, the Master And Commander Blu-ray does have a handful of hit and miss extras on it, including four not found on the DVD release. Though for me none of these four new features gets close to compensating for the missing documentaries.

Anyway, the full list of goodies looks like this:
1. Six deleted scenes
2. Historical and geographic trivia track
3. Search Content feature
4. Personal Scene Selection feature
5. Pop up map
6. Theatrical trailer in HD.

For a review of every feature on the disc, click here.

As usual for a Fox release, then, Master and Commander features no up-front menu. Instead the film just kicks straight off.

As for the Pop Up menus, they’re bland in the extreme; just a row of three words along the bottom of the screen, with their only ‘fancy’ touch being that they fade gradually into focus when you call them up, kind of like a phantom ship emerging from fog.

Accessing the sub-menus from the Set Up and Special Features options, moreover, just calls up some plain text options above the main options strip. As well as being totally drab, this approach means navigation of the options isn’t as easy as it would be if Fox had bothered to use a more graphical means of presentation.

One final aggravation is the fact that the menus only respond very sluggishly to presses of your remote buttons, meaning that you frequently end up accidentally choosing an option you didn’t mean to.