Criterion Blu-ray

[Napier]

But your missing a lot of great films that may never see a Blu-ray release. Your loss.

[aox]

But your missing a lot of great films that may never see a Blu-ray release. Your loss.

haha

[Blood Pie]

But your missing a lot of great films that may never see a Blu-ray release. Your loss.

Possibly. And I'm fine with that. Its inevitable that Criterion will eventually release all new titles on BD day and date even if it takes a few years and they have already done a solid job with library titles (400 Blows, Seventh Seal) so I'm content with the current state of BD and Criterion.

And I think it will realistically come sooner than most of you think. While the percentage of homes that own BD technology may be around 10% the splits are much higher for Criterion. I'm too lazy to look up the link (and anyone with information that states otherwise feel free to correct me) but on HDD or BR.COM there was a thread or news link started that stated the splits were around %30 for criterion BDs over DVD.

And it makes sense. One of the calling cards for Criterion has always been preserving and restoring film so it can be viewed in the highest quality possibly. Like it or not that is BD and that number will only rise.

But again. I don't think it matters one way or the other if someone wants to only buy BDs, only buy DVDs or buy both depending on availability. To each his own.

[perkizitore]

But your missing a lot of great films that may never see a Blu-ray release. Your loss.

haha

Haha? What kind of response is that? If everyone only rented DVDs and not purchased any, Blu-ray would never have existed.

[Blood Pie]

But your missing a lot of great films that may never see a Blu-ray release. Your loss.

haha

Haha? What kind of response is that? If everyone only rented DVDs and not purchased any, Blu-ray would never have existed.

I think he was laughing because its safe to assume that eventually, even if it takes another 5 years, the majority of the Criterion library will be available on BD and likely will be the lead format. Criterion also used HD masters for the DVD releases and has been for some time so all it would take is an encode for Blu Ray for the majority of titles released in the last few years for this to come to fruition.

[aox]

But your missing a lot of great films that may never see a Blu-ray release. Your loss.

haha

Haha? What kind of response is that? If everyone only rented DVDs and not purchased any, Blu-ray would never have existed.

oh, you were being serious?

I thought it was a play on my previous post:

Good post, Jeff. I just have one nitpick.

You've missed out on several great releases.

This^, for me, leads to this:

I just find his constant declarations of (and I'm paraphrasing here), "aw come on man, it's the 21st century, why is anybody still making DVDs? That's crazy! Blu-ray is the best and people should only manufacture and purchase the best, financial realities be damned" to be a little hyperbolic and silly.

It's actually more annoying when people suggest this. I doubt that ShellOilJunior has 'missed' out on any new releases. I am sure he has 'settled' and seen many great films making their first run on DVD this year. The problem, which leads to your simplification of my argument, is that people on this board are generally conflating 'buying' and 'renting' (or even viewing) which leads to my admittedly militant reaction. That's my main qualm. No one is missing anything. No one is superficial enough to oppose viewing the Rossellini films simply because they aren't Blu (and if they are, they have other issues, and 99% of us aren't psych. doctors). I know I am bumping them to the top of my queue. It's buying them that is a problem.

A comment that we are missing out offers nothing but hyperbole. No one is missing out on anything simply because it isn't Blu yet. 99% of my netflix queue this year has been SD's (notably Criterions). Please stop conflating renting and purchasing.

[swo17]

Criterion also used HD masters for the DVD releases and has been for some time so all it would take is an encode for Blu Ray for the majority of titles released in the last few years for this to come to fruition.

False. Unfortunately, Criterion has found that their HD masters are in many cases not up to Blu standards, and so have had to start over from scratch. They have said that a Blu upgrade takes as much work as any other release does.

[Jun-Dai]

You people not buying DVDs of the films you want on Blu-ray do realize that by doing so, you're hurting the chances of them ever eventually coming out on Blu-ray, right?

I refuse to go down the path of worrying about what various companies will think about my personal purchasing decisions as they read into financial reports. Down that path lies madness. Voting with your dollars is one of the stupidest clichés I know.

I say this hypocritically, as I realize I just ordered Abbado's recording of Haydn's London Symphonies simply because I wanted to support Deutsche Grammophon's recent offering of FLAC downloads, even though there's very little in the rather anemic catalogue of DG FLAC albums that I have a strong interest in.

[perkizitore]

You people not buying DVDs of the films you want on Blu-ray do realize that by doing so, you're hurting the chances of them ever eventually coming out on Blu-ray, right?

I refuse to go down the path of worrying about what various companies will think about my personal purchasing decisions as they read into financial reports. Down that path lies madness. Voting with your dollars is one of the stupidest clichés I know.

I say this hypocritically, as I realize I just ordered Abbado's recording of Haydn's London Symphonies simply because I wanted to support Deutsche Grammophon's recent offering of FLAC downloads, even though there's very little in the rather anemic catalogue of DG FLAC albums that I have a strong interest in.

Yes, because you know some people will NEVER stop buying some releases, so why do you have to be the sucker that buys non HD content?

[Michael Kerpan]

One votes with one's dollars on a constant basis -- whether one "wants to" or not.

How are the Haydn performances? ;~} (I still rely on my old Dorati LPs).

[perkizitore]

If you think this way, it's like feeling bad when prices are decreasing for a blu-ray title you had paid full price for, or when a blu-ray upgrade occurs (it has not happened no more than 2-3 times but it will be something common in the future). Some people made this happen and you have to be thankful to labels like Milestone and Flicker Alley for bringing 'lost' films to the public again. Your logic can only apply to major companies where price and format issues are not their only concerns.

EDIT:
It's idiotic thinking Criterion will inevitably upgrade all their catalog.

[Blood Pie]

If you think this way, it's like feeling bad when prices are decreasing for a blu-ray title you had paid full price for, or when a blu-ray upgrade occurs (it has not happened no more than 2-3 times but it will be something common in the future). Some people made this happen and you have to consider especially why Criterion are 'inevitably' going to upgrade all their catalog. Your logic cannot apply to smaller companies like Milestone, Flicker Alley and the other amazing US boutique labels.

Perhaps. Its all speculation at this point. Eventually, striking quality HD masters and then encoding them to the BD format will become easier and cheaper and won't be the headache it is now for smaller production houses and studios.

And maybe not ALL of the library will be released but Criterion have already stated they want to eventually start releasing 4 BDs a month and when that occurs the library and adoption rate (which is already higher for Criterion) will follow suit.

[fiddlesticks]

Chungking Express and The Third Man make me wish that Planet Earth were a better-looking title.

Of all the things posited in this thread, this one is to me the most flabbergasting. Planet Earth is the reason I bought a Blu-ray player, and it is absolutely breathtaking in 1080p on a 42" screen. I use it as a demo for Blu-ray resisters and tyros to show how incredible the format can be.

[aox]

It's idiotic thinking Criterion will inevitably upgrade all their catalog.

no it isn't.

[perkizitore]

It's idiotic thinking Criterion will inevitably upgrade all their catalog.

no it isn't.

I suppose you base that on the unlimited pool of Criterion's faithful customers? :-"

[Jun-Dai]

Chungking Express and The Third Man make me wish that Planet Earth were a better-looking title.

Of all the things posited in this thread, this one is to me the most flabbergasting. Planet Earth is the reason I bought a Blu-ray player, and it is absolutely breathtaking in 1080p on a 42" screen. I use it as a demo for Blu-ray resisters and tyros to show how incredible the format can be.

On my uncle's 42" plasma, Planet Earth is definitely stellar. I recently got the Panasonic projector (I don't like having a TV, and the projector is a bit less to take with us whenever we move, plus we have a big, white wall). While it's still breathtaking, you can see (a) a lot of artifacting in general and (b) a lot of the sequences were shot at a lower quality than, say, the aerial sequences. I understand that you can't always have the best source material when shooting underwater in a mountain cave river, but even the aerial sequences suffer from bits of digital artifacting throughout. Nothing very distracting, and I still use it to show the difference with Blu-ray to friends, but it's not the best transfer I've seen by any stretch of the imagination.

Chungking Express, The Third Man, For All Mankind, and The Last Metro, in contrast, seemed pretty much flawless (though I confess I was watching the movies more than monitoring the transfers). I have never seen Blu-ray look better. I have to imagine that, as with the better DVD transfers of 8 years ago, a Blu-ray transfer of this quality no doubt takes a tremendous amount of work and tweaking. If it didn't, I'd expect more companies would have the same level of quality as the Criterion Blu-rays.

The one thing about blowing up a Blu-ray with a panny is that you start to see where you could use more resolution, especially with wow-footage like Planet Earth, though I imagine that even with a better transfer that series will ultimately be limited by the source material. Given the recent and upcoming changes in video camera techologies, hopefully they can shoot the next big BBC docs at much higher resolution.

[swo17]

It's idiotic thinking Criterion will inevitably upgrade all their catalog.

no it isn't.

In all likelihood, Criterion could speed up its rate of upgrading catalogue titles to Blu, but if it stayed at the 2009 rate (essentially, one each month), it would take about 37 years to update all of the catalogue titles from before the switch to Blu. And that's not counting all the releases since late last year that were only released on SD. Or the ones that will continue to be released only in SD in 2010 and beyond.

[aox]

It's idiotic thinking Criterion will inevitably upgrade all their catalog.

no it isn't.

In all likelihood, Criterion could speed up its rate of upgrading catalogue titles to Blu, but if it stayed at the 2009 rate (essentially, one each month), it would take about 37 years to update all of the catalogue titles from before the switch to Blu. And that's not counting all the releases since late last year that were only released on SD. Or the ones that will continue to be released only in SD in 2010 and beyond.

So we agree! Perkizitore's statement was erroneous. Thank you for doing the math.

[Jun-Dai]

One votes with one's dollars on a constant basis -- whether one "wants to" or not.

How are the Haydn performances? ;~} (I still rely on my old Dorati LPs).

Good point. I guess that while I don't deny that one votes with one's dollars, but I do think that voting with one's dollars is very rarely worth even thinking about, unless it's part of a recognized and organized boycott. Voting with one's dollars as a personal decision is about as effective

The Haydn is nice (only listened to them a little bit so far). I haven't historically been much into Haydn, but that's changing. When I think of all the DG releases I'd love to get my hands on, it's not that high on my list, but I'm glad to have it. It's only $22 for a 4 CD set, and it beats ordering the CDs, ripping them, converting them, and then getting rid of them. I really hope that they some day get around to putting their whole catalogue out on FLAC.

[Jun-Dai]

no it isn't.

In all likelihood, Criterion could speed up its rate of upgrading catalogue titles to Blu, but if it stayed at the 2009 rate (essentially, one each month), it would take about 37 years to update all of the catalogue titles from before the switch to Blu. And that's not counting all the releases since late last year that were only released on SD. Or the ones that will continue to be released only in SD in 2010 and beyond.

So we agree! Perkizitore's statement was erroneous. Thank you for doing the math.

Not that this discussion is even really worth having, but another consideration is that a number of titles will no doubt fall through Criterion's licensing fingers before they get around to doing a Blu-ray edition (shouldn't be as bad as with LD->DVD, though). For others it may never be possible for Criterion to get good enough source materials to justify the effort. So even with the rest of your life ahead of you in the frictionless world of Blu-ray as a format here to stay, you'd still have to settle for "most".

[swo17]

So we agree! Perkizitore's statement was erroneous. Thank you for doing the math.

Ooookaaaay...but by the time Criterion finally gets around to releasing, say, Human Condition on Blu-ray in 20 years, won't you have already proclaimed your undying zealous allegiance to whatever might be the prevailing format of the time, at which point Blu will have taken DVD's place as the "inferior," undesirable format?

[aox]

So we agree! Perkizitore's statement was erroneous. Thank you for doing the math.

Ooookaaaay...but by the time Criterion finally gets around to releasing, say, Human Condition on Blu-ray in 20 years, won't you have already proclaimed your undying zealous allegiance to whatever might be the prevailing format of the time, at which point Blu will have taken DVD's place as the "inferior," undesirable format?

haha...maybe. Two decades is a long time. But hopefully we will be here on this board in 20 years and we can laugh at this thread.

[Gregory]

I think [pictureboxing] was timed in response to a rise in complaints about them cropping the image when in fact they weren't. I remember reading a whole bunch of complaints on Amazon about the Playtime disc, all of which were focused on Criterion's cropping of the film, and specifically referencing things that had been cropped out (the melting plane gag, etc.), and the when I watched the DVD I noticed that every single one of those gags was visible on the disc.

I don't know about Amazon reviews, but for the record many of the complaints on the forum about over-cropping were on-target, and that does include the original DVD of Playtime. It's quite noticeable even when overscan is not present. Whether or not all the "gags" were fully visible, it remains true that Criterion routinely used to frame the image too tightly, a practice they seem to have abandoned in the last several years. This change, along with the pictureboxing policy, may have been in response to all the complaints.

[aox]

What do people think will be the first Ozu to go Blu for Criterion? Is Tokyo Story too obvious? I am kind of hoping for An Autumn Afternoon.

[Michael Kerpan]

What do people think will be the first Ozu to go Blu for Criterion? Is Tokyo Story too obvious? I am kind of hoping for An Autumn Afternoon.

Neither film has first-rate elements, even by the relatively low standards that applies to the surviving Ozu films. And (so far as I know) Shochiku hasn't even hinted at doing Japanese Blu-Ray releases of Ozu yet.

I wouldn't hold my breath for Ozu BRDs.