The Format War

[Zenien]

I Own

Black Haw Down (Yuck)

Will be getting
A Scanner Darkly
Million Dollar Baby
Blood Diamond
Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2 Discs) (Pirates 2 and 3 do not exist)
Big Fish
Underworld Evolution (shuddap!) (well I technically already own it for UMD but I'd buy it for Blu Ray otherwise)
The Departed (maybe, over-rated)
Full Metal Jacket (maybe..... it has Jayne from Firefly in ti!)
G.I. Jane (Again... Shuddap!)
The Last Samurai (Loves)
Silent Hill
Ultimate Avengers Collection (maybe)

Upcoming Releases

The Fifth Element (Remastered)
Reign Over Me Sony Pictures Jul 24, 2007
Disturbia Disney / Buena Vista Aug 07, 2007
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within Sony Pictures Aug 07, 2007
TMNT Warner Bros. Aug 07, 2007
Doctor Strange Lionsgate Films Aug 14, 2007

EDIT: 500th post in the thread!

 

[EdRyder]

Blood Diamond is a great film for anyone who hasnt seen it yet.It ended up a little more hardcore than people expected,might have contributed to the luke warm reception.
Kingdom of Heaven and The Prestige are must have Blu Rays as well

 

[imdaly]

Will be getting
A Scanner Darkly aweome awesome movie. looks great in HD
Million Dollar Baby
Blood Diamond haven't seen it yet but am very anxious to see it on HD DVD (and with exclusive HD DVD features )
Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2 Discs) (Pirates 2 and 3 do not exist) but...."Dead Man's Chest" IS Pirates 2...? You must mean "Curse of the Black Pearl"
Big Fish
Underworld Evolution (shuddap!) (well I technically already own it for UMD but I'd buy it for Blu Ray otherwise)
The Departed (maybe, over-rated) worth it if only for seeing [blackout]Matt Damon get shot in the face in High-Def [/blackout]
Full Metal Jacket (maybe..... it has Jayne from Firefly in ti!)
G.I. Jane (Again... Shuddap!) oh come on...seriously???
The Last Samurai (Loves)
Silent Hill
Ultimate Avengers Collection (maybe)

Upcoming Releases

The Fifth Element (Remastered)
Reign Over Me Sony Pictures Jul 24, 2007
Disturbia Disney / Buena Vista Aug 07, 2007 actually, that's Paramount...neutral...is it any good?
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within Sony Pictures Aug 07, 2007
TMNT Warner Bros. Aug 07, 2007
Doctor Strange Lionsgate Films Aug 14, 2007

EDIT: 500th post in the thread!

Blood Diamond is a great film for anyone who hasnt seen it yet.It ended up a little more hardcore than people expected,might have contributed to the luke warm reception.
Kingdom of Heaven and The Prestige are must have Blu Rays as well

Can't speak for KoH, but yes, The Prestige looks amazing on my HD DVD, and it's a great movie (even though I TOTALLY saw the twist at the very beginning )

 

[Zenien]

G.I. Jane (Again... Shuddap!) - oh come on...seriously???

Dude, you have Poseidon on you list.

I forgot to add the Prestige to my will be getting list.

 

[imdaly]

Dude, you have Poseidon on you list.

Touché.

 

[imdaly]

Warner to Debut First "Blue Screen" Picture-in-Picture Commentary with HD DVD '300'

Warner Home Video is planning to push the boundaries of high-def technology with the July HD DVD release of '300,' which is set to include the world's first "blue screen" picture-in-picture commentary.

Warner first announced '300' in early May for a July 31 release on both Blu-ray and HD DVD, with initial specs including an In-Movie Experience video commentary track (exclusive to the HD DVD version).

Though IME tracks are common to many HD DVD releases, '300' will be unique in that it will include what Warner is dubbing the first-ever "Blue-Screen Picture-in-Picture Version." Throughout the track, director Zack Snyder will present the pre-CGI-enhanced version to the finished film, allowing viewers to compare the entire movie in both rough and completed forms.

The HD DVD will include several other additional exclusive features, including the "Vengeance and Valor" interactive game, a "Pick Your Favorite Scenes" function allowing users to assemble clips and create a unique montage, as well as other web-enabled downloadable features to be announced.

The remaining specs will be identical to both the HD DVD and Blu-ray versions of '300,' including standard audio commentary, multiple featurettes, a suite of "Webisodes" and deleted scenes.

Warner has set a $39.95 list price for the HD DVD/DVD combo version, while the pared-down Blu-ray will sell for $34.95.

Note that these separate-but-unequal versions of '300' are the latest in what appears to be new trend for Warner, following the recent dual-format release of 'Blood Diamond,' which the studio issued in a stripped-down Blu-ray version earlier this month, ahead of a more full-featured, IME-enhanced HD DVD edition due on July 3.

Source

 

[Zenien]

That's actually a cool implementation of PiP. (The Blue Screen thing)

 

[imdaly]

Hell yes, it is!




Also, since my last preview of upcoming High-Def discs, there's been a couple more added in the last couple days:

Blu-ray
- The Lives of Others (Sony) - August 21
- House of 1000 Corpses (Lionsgate) - September 18
- The Condemned (Lionsgate) - September 18


HD DVD
- For Love of the Game (Universal) - September 18
- The Last Starfighter (Universal) - Septemer 18

 

[Zenien]

Didn't some recent Blu Ray release simulate the PiP by basically baking on the PiP on one version of the film and not on another, and you could choose if you wanted to watch the faked PiP one?

They could do that for the Blu Ray release, granted it wouldn't be dynamic. Which is sort of the 'thing' of PiP, but it would be a decent compromise all things considered.

 

[imdaly]

Didn't some recent Blu Ray release simulate the PiP by basically baking on the PiP on one version of the film and not on another, and you could choose if you wanted to watch the faked PiP one?

They could do that for the Blu Ray release, granted it wouldn't be dynamic. Which is sort of the 'thing' of PiP, but it would be a decent compromise all things considered.

Yeah, there's at least one or two Blu-rays out there that do that (I think "The Descent" was one). It's just like you said, it basically puts the entire movie on the disc twice: once just the movie, and the other one has the PIP on the whole time. And you could choose to watch one or the other.

What HD DVD's PiP allows, since all HD DVD players are required to be able to stream two seperate video streams at once, is have the main feature on the disc only once, and the PiP stream burnt on the disc as a separate video. When PiP is activated, it simply overlays the PiP video file over the main feature video. This saves a LOT of space, since there is no need to have the entire main movie burnt onto the disc twice.

Also, there are times in some HD DVD discs where you have more than one PiP video to choose to show at any given point.

There are times in "King Kong" where more than one HDi icon pops up in the corner, telling you that you have more than one PiP option to show at that point. One might be a PiP Video commenatry. One might be storyboards. Since the main movie never has to be "switched" to another "PiP-burnt-in copy" of the movie, it is possible to have more than one option at a time. With Blu-ray, this is not.

With BD-J 2.0 being mandatory for every Blu-ray player that comes out after....Oct. 31 I think...any player that comes out after that point will be required to have this Dual Videostream capability that every HD DVD from the start has been required to have. After this point we may start to see some movies come out like "300" will be on HD DVD.

Unfortunately, since the capability to play two separate video streams at once is a hardware issue, from what I understand no Blu-ray player that is out at this point (even the PS3) will be able to use any such feature that would come out in the future, as firmware updates cannot magically add hardware to the player.

 

[BatMatt]

true, but a firmware update will fix that for the PS3 once it needs to

 

[Superman1314]

Now that I have a PS3, what will a blue ray movie look like on my Standard Television? As good as a regular DVD? Or will it look worse/better?

 

[Avalanche]

Will be getting
A Scanner Darkly

Me and my friend tried to watch this movie, and 15 minutes in had to give up. We had no idea what was going on.

 

[Fading]

Me and my friend tried to watch this movie, and 15 minutes in had to give up. We had no idea what was going on.

It's not as good as I thought it'd be, but it's not bad either. It makes more sense the further it goes along. I'm not liking cell shading in moves much tho in all honesty.

 

[Zenien]

Me and my friend tried to watch this movie, and 15 minutes in had to give up. We had no idea what was going on.

Wait you gae up on a movie because you had no idea what was going on in the first 15 minutes?

 

[imdaly]

Yeah, you're not supposed to know exactly what's going on until the very end.

 

[Zenien]

So I was reading up on BDJ and PiP while 'working'

According to our good friends at Wikipedia (Bless them):

1.1 (mandatory November 2007)

What is typically referred to as "Profile 1.1" (but is more formally known as "Final Standard Profile") adds a secondary video decoder (typically used for picture in picture), secondary audio (typically used for interactive audio and commentary) and capability of supporting a minimum of 256MB of local storage (for storing audio/video and title updates). Compliance with this profile will be mandatory for player models introduced to the market after October 31, 2007[1], but existing products will be unaffected. No players compliant with this profile have been announced or released.

Some profile 1.0 players may be upgradeable via firmware update to profile 1.1 if they have the appropriate hardware, but no manufacturer has announced any such upgrade. When software authored with interactive features dependent on Profile 1.1 hardware capabilities are played on profile 1.0 players some features may not be available or may offer limited capability. Profile 1.0 players will still be able to play the main feature of the disc, however.

[edit] 2.0 (BD-Live)

Profile 2, also known as BD-Live, adds network connectivity to the list of mandatory functions and increases mandatory local storage capability to 1 GB. No players have been announced as compatible with this profile.

So hypothetically speaking I think that the PS3 should be BD-J/Profile1.1/BD-Live compliant pretty easily since it already have the necessary ram/memory and can use the SPE's as video/audio decoders.

ALl speculation on my part I'll dig around.

 

[Zenien]

 

[KALEL114]

Looks like we are getting lost after all!

http://www.talkingretail.com/products/5526/Grocers-drive-down-DVD-value-s.ehtml t:

 

[KALEL114]

BD+ is starting to reel in Fox.
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=283

 

[imdaly]

Looks like we are getting lost after all!

http://www.talkingretail.com/products/5526/Grocers-drive-down-DVD-value-s.ehtml t:

The mention of "LOST" in that article was about the standard DVD release...

 

[KALEL114]

These will be available in both DVD and Blu-ray, the new premium high definition format.

They include a Pirates of the Caribbean box set; Pirates 3, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End; Jungle Book (released from the Disney back catalogue for the first time on DVD on 5 November); Santa Claus 3; new series for both Lost and Desperate Housewives and a new version of High Street Musical.

 

[Avalanche]

Yeah, you're not supposed to know exactly what's going on until the very end.

Well I know films would be a little dull if you understood what was going from the start, but this one was a little too much. I genuinely had no idea of anything. I couldn't follow anything. It was just too odd for me, and I like a quirky film.

 

[RedIsNotBlue]

The movie is supposed to be one big acid trip. I enjoy this druggie type of movies despite not being a drug user...I don't know I just love the whole humor. I also have been a Downey Jr. fan for a long time so I was going to enjoy it regardless. But I read one reviewer said that if you have experienced with drugs at some point in your life that you completely relate with the characters and their situations.

 

[imdaly]

Toshiba Permanently Drops HD DVD Player Prices

Hot on the heels of a month-long promotional price cut, Toshiba announced on Thursday that it would permanently lower prices on two of its entry level HD DVD players.

Effective July 1, Toshiba says its HD-A2 player will be permanently offered at an MSRP $299, while its HD-A20 will be offered at $399.

This returns prices on both players to the same levels seen earlier this month as part of the company's month-long $100 rebate offer. As we've previously reported, Toshiba had reported stronger than expected results from the recent promo, with some retailers claiming a five- to ten-fold increase in sales.

This most recent announcement comes amidst a series of price drops on both sides of the format war over the last two months. Toshiba's $299 price for its HD-A2 player remains the lowest for a standalone high-def player (the least expensive stand-alone Blu-ray player is Sony's BDP-S300, which the company is currently offering at a MSRP $499).

Ken Graffeo, co-President of the HD DVD Promotions Group told Video Business that his organization has found that price is the biggest motivating factor for consumers when it comes to buying a high-def disc player.

Source