criterionforum.org

denti alligator wrote:Sony has an internal Blu-ray drive coming out for sale next month for a listprice of $199. I figure that by the time there are enough international BDs that I'm interested in getting, I should be able to get one for closer to $100. Add Slysoft's HD region-free software and region coding ceases to be a problem.

Is this in America or Australia? The thing about electronics, is that there seems to be some kind of law about buying from overseas, so you get wildly different prices from country to country (just take a look at Wikipedia's page on the PS3, which lists prices in each country.)

Actually, I almost went 'Bluray' originally (one format seemed as good as the other) $600 or whatever it was for a videogame system and a Bluray player seemed ok. Then I saw that Australians were expected to be $1000 (fortunately, I still think I ended up making the right decision. Regardless of format, HTPC is the only way to be safe from having all your multi-region discs rendedered unplayable by a firmware update)

Slysoft's Anydvdprogram, btw, is far from an absolute guarantee. I know for certain my Aviator HDDVD disc won't play at all with Slysoft running. And I think Slysoft has been one of the reasons that some of my Studio Canal DVDs don't work.

Thing about the newer formats, is everyone is apparently expected to have an internet connection, so there's going to be a real ping-pong match going on between hackers and studios. Buy the latest (region-locked) bluray disc, and you might discover you need a firm-ware update (which, as a side-effect, will render Slysoft useless) then it's a matter of waiting weeks or months until Slysoft release their own update before you can finally buy the disc you paid for (The Aviator still crashes on me half-the time. Not sure it is that I've gotten it playing the few times; I think I had to start Slysoft, then start the PowerDVD, then quit Slysoft or something equally complicated.)

As for Warner's contracts, etc. at a first guess, I'm assuming that they'll be honoring their contracts by releasing untilt the end of May (anyway, that seems the only reason for Warner to continue releasing on both formats after their announcement) Seems like something they'd check into, first.

Meanwhile, I've got my Blade Runner set in the mail, Pan's Labyrinth too. Would have been nice to see Lord of the Rings or Doctor Zhivago in HD, but that will have to wait a few years (and, meantime, I've got my Matrix trilogy and Casino)

An interesting development, but I'm sure I'll be sticking with standard-def for quite some time yet. In addition to the aforementioned problems of having to have a separate player to play SD-DVDs from other regions, as well as having a severely limited selection of non-US films to choose from, I'm aghast at how few classic Hollywood titles have appeared. Titles on this format have been coming out for over a year and a half, and there are hundreds of titles by now, and this is what we have so far from before 1967:

Rio Bravo (would love to have it)
That's Entertainment (would buy it if the price were right)
The Searchers (am pretty sure this suffers from the same flaws as the HD)
Jailhouse Rock (er...)
Viva Las Vegas (...)
Battle of the Bulge (no thanks).
20 Million Miles to Earth (I know who Harryhausen is but am not familiar with this)

Have I missed any?

Adding the titles from 1967-1979 only adds a handful more. I have so little interest in the vast majority of what they're releasing that this is still very much a niche format according to my own tastes. I know people will say: give it time, lots of good things will start coming out now. But it will still take a huge change in emphasis and a lot of months of releases before I'll have the least bit of interest in adopting this format. Right now I could count the titles I would have any interest in owning on one hand.
This really relates to the reason I had hoped the standard definition format would stick around longer. Only now after ten years of waiting are we starting to see some of the really outstanding older films begin to appear, and now most companies are going to simply start reissuing things already available on DVD on the new format.

Marcel Gioberti wrote:

Lemmy Caution wrote:Is Blue-Ray backward compatible?
That is, do standard Dvd's play in BR machines?

Yes, and the Blu-ray players will also upscale your standard definition DVD to improve its image on high def televisions. The better processors out there for this process (Faroudja is one) really do make it worthwhile.

Faroudja is outdated and has been for some time. One of the advantages of the PS3 is the Cell Processor. Currently according to Sony engineers it is only working at roughly 65% to 70% capacity for scaling purposes. As they continue to provide firmwire updates - the future will see improved processing capacity to make the most of the Cell Processor in that respect. No word on when that will get here. If you do not go the PS3 route - as for the "better processors out there" you should look for a Reon or Gennum processor.

Quite honestly, if your budget allows for it - you are better suited to let your seperates do the processing.

Gregory wrote:Titles on this format have been coming out for over a year and a half, and there are hundreds of titles by now, and this is what we have so far from before 1967:

Rio Bravo (would love to have it)
The Searchers (am pretty sure this suffers from the same flaws as the HD)
Jailhouse Rock (er...)
Viva Las Vegas (...)
Battle of the Bulge (no thanks).

Don't forget

The Adventures of Robin Hood (beautiful transfer!)
Casablanca
Forbidden Planet (another beautiful transfer)
20 Million Miles to Earth

I thought those first three were HD-DVD exclusive. I was just talking about the Blu-Ray format. I found 20 Million Miles to Earth right after my previous post and then edited it. It's probably something I would only shell out for if I were pretty hard up.

[quote=""membrillo""]

Marcel Gioberti wrote:Yes, and the Blu-ray players will also upscale your standard definition DVD to improve its image on high def televisions. The better processors out there for this process (Faroudja is one) really do make it worthwhile.

Faroudja is outdated and has been for some time. One of the advantages of the PS3 is the Cell Processor. Currently according to Sony engineers it is only working at roughly 65% to 70% capacity for scaling purposes. As they continue to provide firmwire updates - the future will see improved processing capacity to make the most of the Cell Processor in that respect. No word on when that will get here. If you do not go the PS3 route - as for the "better processors out there" you should look for a Reon or Gennum processor.

Quite honestly, if your budget allows for it - you are better suited to let your seperates do the processing.[/quote]
Wow, thanks for the info. I have a PS3 in addition to a Samsung that sports the Faroudja. I've never paid very close attention to either machine's upscaling ability, but I'm glad to hear the Sony is respectable in that regard.

Gregory wrote:I thought those first three were HD-DVD exclusive. I was just talking about the Blu-Ray format. I found 20 Million Miles to Earth right after my previous post and then edited it. It's probably something I would only shell out for if I were pretty hard up.

True, sorry. As usual, wasn't reading closely.
It's true that Blu-ray has a disappointing selection of pre-60s film. Let's hope the end of the format war changes that.

davidhare wrote:Darth there are some ways of getting electronics sent to OZ from offshore - PriceJapan for one. Example a Sony VP60 1080p Projector is under 4kAUD shoipped EMS here but is way over 7K AUD street price. All you need usually is a 120 to 240 volt step down transformer.

That projector is dual voltage and does not require a step-down transformer. You either need one of those cheap Japanese to Aus plug adaptors, or you just use a standard three pin power cable (like the one on your computer) to replace the cable that comes with it. The Japanese PS3 is dual voltage as well according to the PriceJapan website.

David, I don't know the details, but I assume the drives have nothing that makes them coded one way or another. Your operating system would determine that, or (also) your DVD software. Drives are drives.

The $199 BD drive I saw was from Sony (listed at amazon for pre-order).

I'm currently using Slysoft for SD on my HTPC and it works sans hitch. I haven't added an HD or BD drive to the HTPC yet, because I haven't needed to. I assume when the time comes Slysoft's HD crack will allow me to play BD through Power DVD (or whatever) without problems. If there are problems, the hackers will have intervened by then. I always trust the hackers to be ahead of Sony & co.

I'm gung-ho for HTPC because nothing (not even my Toshiba HD A-20) up-converts a SD DVD better. Plus (as I've mentioned again and again), if you use Zoom Player software to play the discs you can improve picture wquality even more with ffdshow post-processing and do wonders with incremental zoom (making Criterion's annoying windowboxing easy to get rid of). Some SD DVDs (like Criterions's La collectioneuse, for example) look on my system like they're HD.

Plus, you can always upgrade without throwing everything out. Add a new drive, add some more memory, add new software, whatever.

On the subject of older films, there's also (not sure of the exact years) "Mutiny on the Bounty" (which looks gorgeous on HD (very vibrant greens in Tahiti) and The Dirty Dozen just off the top of my head.

There is *some* logic to releasing mostly newer films (especially all those IMAXs,) there just aren't as many older films that can hold their own against a modern blockbuster for image depth, etc.* The Searchers and Mutiny on the Bounty manage it ok, but much as I enjoy my HD of Forbidden Planet I wouldn't consider over Jackson's King Kong as "demo material"
Might be somewhat interesting to see what Warner does with it's Bluray exclusive titles (I'm guessing The Matrix trilogy will get a bluray release soon, not so sure about Forbidden Planet or The Adventures of Robin Hood. And, I'll be curious to see if the Bluray rereleases get any improvements (most likely the Matrix will just use the extra space to present the movie with picture in picture as a seperate 1080p movie file like with Terminator3)

*Excepting films like "The Phantom of the Opera" deliberately shot a little soft to make the actors look more glamorous, and thus almost indistinguishable from SD.

As for the format war being 'over' I think we're in the ironic position of being able to declare a winner (Bluray) although the war itself isn't officially over. Paramount will presumably continue releasing exclusive to HDDVD for contractual reasons (how long, I'm not sure) and Universal *may* be continuing with their HDDVD only stance.
Besides which, once the war finally is over, there's every possibility that High Definition will remain a 'niche' market.

Price Japan sounds like it could be useful (just loading the website now) Any idea were I can find some third-party corrobation (some sort of etailer review sites?) before I split with several hundred dollars?
Also, hadn't heard of Zoom player (I usually use PowerDVD Ultra or VLC) loading that website now, too.

Darth Lavender wrote:there's also (not sure of the exact years) "Mutiny on the Bounty" (which looks gorgeous on HD (very vibrant greens in Tahiti) and The Dirty Dozen just off the top of my head.

I thought those two were more HD-DVD exclusives. If there are Blu-Rays of them I couldn't find them. In any case, neither are anything I would be all that excited about owning. The Dirty Dozen is from the end of the era of Classic Hollywood I was hoping to see more of by this time. For some reason films from the late 1960s and '70s are being chosen for release over more highly regarded films from the 1940s and '50s. Part of the reason is probably because so many people buying into this format are prejudiced against anything in academy ratio, which is dumb.

There is *some* logic to releasing mostly newer films (especially all those IMAXs,) there just aren't as many older films that can hold their own against a modern blockbuster for image depth, etc.* The Searchers and Mutiny on the Bounty manage it ok, but much as I enjoy my HD of Forbidden Planet I wouldn't consider over Jackson's King Kong as "demo material"

Since the format is more than a year and a half old I hoped we would be beyond "demo material" by now. It seems like a lot of people are looking only at colors and sharpness and not at whether a lot of these films are worth watching over and over (thus the reason to buy them) or even at all.

Gregory wrote:Since the format is more than a year and a half old I hoped we would be beyond "demo material" by now. It seems like a lot of people are looking only at colors and sharpness and not at whether a lot of these films are worth watching over and over (thus the reason to buy them) or even at all.

That's what DVDs are for.

Which part do you mean: the "demo" side of it or what I was trying to suggest are the more important things that make a DVD worth owning?

I think I'll leave off posting here for now because there are clearly lots of other things people wish to discuss with this news. I just meant to make a single post saying that even if there is a big upswing in classic and foreign titles on Blu-Ray it still looks like it'll be at least a year before there's enough to make me want to switch to a new player.

I may be crazy (for urelated reasons), but I simply can't see HD or BD taking off as "the standard" for releasing dvd's until at least 3-4 yrs down the road. And I think that that would be a miracle. And by that I mean "the format that the majority of consumers buy home video".

Manufacturers love to create Central Home Items with a short shelf life so that consumers "have" to "rebuy" to "stay current" with the Jones'. The releases of SD titles illustrates this in a nutshell. A barebones title, then the title released in a "collectors edition", then "special edition", etc. Look at how many times Universal has packaged up Frankenstein and Dracula.

Problem is the Jones' just arent nibbling on Hi Def en masse. I daresay a vast majority of Regular Folks 1) can't discern the difference between sd & hd, and 2) even if they could, they don't care. They're tired of throwing out nintendos and PS's & segas etc-- where at least they get new and wilder games-- and I just don't think they're prepared to throw out their dvd players to see the same old movies they've spent a fortune piling up on their walls... just to see what to them equals the visibility of a few extra fabric stitches and stray hairs caught in backlighting.

Personally I know the kind of home video I like watching probably wont find it's way onto HD / BD for a long time, so I really don't care either way. I'm perfectly happy to be deprived of the benefits of seeing the very few vintage masterpieces made available in this format at present time.

I can appreciate all the posts - factual or opinion.

I just find it interesting that Criterion has already tested in Blu-ray and I am very curious as to what title it was.

One last point:

Since when have Criterion releases been marketed to the "Mass Market Consumer" ??? Hence, why would they care about mass market HD panel adoption?

[quote=""membrillo""]Since when have Criterion releases been marketed to the "Mass Market Consumer" ??? Hence, why would they care about mass market HD panel adoption?[/quote]
This has been discussed before (probably about a thousand pages earlier in this very thread), but with the move from Laserdisc to DVD, Criterion lucked into a paradigm shift and went from being the prestige label of a tiny niche market to being the prestige label of an enormous mass market, with the consequent sales and revenue implications of that. A move from the mass market of DVD to the niche market of Blu-Ray now is in no way comparable to the move from the niche market of Laserdisc to the no-less-niche and potentially-mass market of DVD way back when.

Anyway, I'm just a bystander along with Schreck and Gregory in Curmudgeon's Corner (mm-hmm, smell the mildew on that sofa!). I've yet to see anything content-wise to get me excited about any HD format, and it's only content that's going to get me excited. If I want the ultimate audio-visual experience I'll go to a cinema. So wake me up when the Blu-Ray-exclusive Susumi Hani, Mexican Bunuel or Compleat Jean Epstein set arrives.

zedz wrote:So wake me up when the Blu-Ray-exclusive Susumi Hani, Mexican Bunuel or Compleat Jean Epstein set arrives.

Definitely! Alternatively, wake me up to get *mad* when every company that I love starts spending more on rereleasing films we already have and not on putting out forgotten gems.

davidhare wrote:Zedz by the time Epstein or L'Herbier are somehow transferred into HD masters . . .

By the time that happens, I'll be having the movies beamed directly to my brain as I scoot about with my own personal jet pack, high above the gigantic ice rink formerly known as Hell.

Perhaps one thing in favor of a post-format-war adoption of HD on disc is the fact that many sets are being sold with at least 1080i capabilities. The more people watching HD images from broadcast/cable/satellite, the more desire to see HD content. Personally, I'm more prone to buy a truly niche title on standard-def DVD these days (oh, the new Harry Langdon set) than something that will most likely see the HD light of day at some point in time. On thing is for sure, watching even bandwidth-challenged HD programing on my Dish Network setup has pretty effectively stopped my viewing of standard-def broadcast programming.

Of course prices will need to come down....I DID pay more for my first DVD player in '98 than what a BD player would cost now, but times have changed, and I think many would just as soon see some new super broadband service where HD content can be streamed on demand than invest in physical media again.....certainly that's preferable to a trip to the local rent-ery to find the latest popular title has flown off the shelves. Perhaps Joe Six-Pack can't see the difference between standard def DVD upscaled and HD, but I think it CAN be sold to him if he is convinced he's missing out on some part of the home theater experience.......at the right price, at least........I'd say it's got to break the $200 barrier to get it going....$150 maybe......$100 slam-dunk. Sub-$1000 digital displays have helped make this at least theoretically possible.....it wouldn't matter if the players were $100 if you needed $3000 to get the display for it.

[quote=""membrillo""]
1) Manufacturing costs for Blu-ray are steadily decreasing. One would assume the move by Warner would further push this decline.
2) A good portion of the catalog is already mastered in HD. The real question here is the licensing cotracts for HD releases.
[/quote]
Correct. At the moment for a decent sized print run of a BD release (10,000 or more copies) you would be looking at about 2 to 2.5 times the cost of the equivalent number of DVDs. This includes licensing fees. Note that the AACS licence fee is mandatory for BD (it is optional for HD DVD as AACS encryption is not mandatory).

I don't think the profit margins are there for Criterion or the smaller labels just yet. However that doesn't preclude Sony (for example) subsidising Criterion in a BD release. It would be something of a coup for them if the major prestige label released in their format.

Michael Bay loves Blu-Ray.

zedz wrote:This has been discussed before (probably about a thousand pages earlier in this very thread), but with the move from Laserdisc to DVD, Criterion lucked into a paradigm shift and went from being the prestige label of a tiny niche market to being the prestige label of an enormous mass market, with the consequent sales and revenue implications of that. A move from the mass market of DVD to the niche market of Blu-Ray now is in no way comparable to the move from the niche market of Laserdisc to the no-less-niche and potentially-mass market of DVD way back when.

This deserves repeating again. DVD hit just at the right time and was able to take the 'niche' audio and videophile market, the hardened film fan, the casual film fan and everyone else along with its advance in technology.

Despite the advances of HD I don't think they'll be able to do the same thing again - it is just a more difficult sell. I don't know what the HD television take up is but I suppose you need people to have updated their televisions to really get the full benefit out of the discs, compared to the simpler 'plug and play into existing equipment' situation with DVDs.

HD DVD players are unfortunately coming along during a wave of other changes and so, compared to DVD players having little competition from other technology, people will be making decisions about whether to get a HD television first and especially in Britain what to do about the digital switchover about to affect TV broadcasts - all this other stuff might have an effect on people deciding to hold back on high definition players until they have the other things sorted out. It depends on individual priorities compared to DVD players running almost unopposed from other issues during the first few years they came out.

There is also the technological leap - it is a big one in quality but I get the impression it is not as huge a leap as going from VHS to DVD originally was. So many issues factored into my own wish to go to DVD - the primary ones were the audio and visual upgrade (not needing to travel to Sheffield or Manchester to search out a widescreen VHS of a film, instead being able to pick up the DVD from my local town centre and be assured of it being in the right ratio was a big bonus!) but there were also extra features, the ease of quickly finding any spot in a film, alternate audio tracks and being able to add or remove subtitles at will. While Laserdisc owners were already used to these features and could move to DVD without that seeming a big deal, I wonder whether many people like myself found DVD a huge expansion of what they were used to from videos and might not feel the same urgency to upgrade to HD just for improved sound and picture and for the extra features that are Hi-Def only (I love extra features and that might be a possible reason for my upgrading sooner rather than later, but hearing negative comments on commentaries or extra material from different sources makes me wonder how big of an importance most other people place in the presence of them on a disc and whether the casual fan already finds more than enough material on DVDs).

Similarly I still have a collection of VHS tapes of films - many of them over the years have been released on DVD but even then I never really felt the need to upgrade unless there was a compelling reason to in terms of extra material (Blade Runner being the most recent example of a film I was content to keep just on VHS until the recent box set gave a good enough reason to get it again on DVD). That will be the same thing that happens when I eventually go HD - my VHS and DVDs will not suddenly become redundant (and it is good to know that DVDs will be backwards compatible) but it will affect how many HD discs I do eventually pick up - as with DVD it will be a combination of films I do not have (either new releases or older, but new to me, films) and some films I already have that provide a compelling reason to upgrade. However years of DVDs have raised expectations a lot in terms of what incentives I would need for an upgrade!

To put the issues another way DVDs had a number of very important factors all converging together at the right time for the right price and without any extra push required became essential purchases for everyone, not just film fans and technophiles. HD players have a couple of very important improvements, rather than seeming innovations, and come at a time when people are distracted by other techological issues and at a time when most people have already made their move to DVD and may not be wishing to make a Windows OS-style upgrade so soon. Added to that the complications of a format war reminding people of VHS and Betamax and I'm not surprised that people have held back a bit.

I think from a UK perspective you are not going to see HD players catch on hugely here until the forced digital switchover takes place across the country and people have got through that and maybe have been able to check out HD broadcasts on television. Then there might be an upsurge of people wanting to pick up players (in that sense HD players arrived in Britain at almost exactly the wrong time, a couple of years too soon to capture the awareness of the general public), but I think if anyone is expecting a DVD style mass conversion here within a year or two they will be disappointed - they might not even have gotten that had they been released during a calmer period.

Contrary to how it might sound I am very interested in HD, the picture and sound quality sounds a great improvement (though I don't know how much of an audio improvement could be made to classic films with mostly mono soundtracks that DVD does not already do. Hopefully there won't be a Ruscico-like compelling need felt to remaster films in 6.1 EX surround! I did notice the Tartan Blu-Ray of The Seventh Seal presents the Swedish soundtrack in 2.0 which sounds like a bad sign, or at least a sign of Tartan continuing their DVD policy of releasing everything in at least 2.0 stereo!), but I think people also need to be realistic about the current prospects for the format. I think Criterion, Studio Canal and many other producers are doing the right thing in doing HD masters - it seems as if it would allow them to produce the best quality standard DVDs from that source and still be in a state of preparedness for whenever they feel it is economically viable to test the HD disc waters!

I did notice the Tartan Blu-Ray of The Seventh Seal presents the Swedish soundtrack in 2.0 which sounds like a bad sign, or at least a sign of Tartan continuing their DVD policy of releasing everything in at least 2.0 stereo!)...

It's 2.0 mono. There's nothing wrong or unusual about encoding a mono soundtrack to use the two main front speakers instead of a 1.0 center speaker configuration.

Antoine Doinel wrote:Michael Bay loves Blu-Ray.

Are you trying to convince us all to go HDDVD now?

Personally, I have no respect for film-makers who back a particular format. If they used their eyes, they'd see quickly enough that Bluray & HDDVD are visually identical.
I can understand producers, studios, etc. preferring a specific format (more anti-piracy (bluray) vs cheaper production costs (HDDVD)) but seeing previously impressive director's like Spielberg supporting Bluray so intently just shows how easily they can be swayed by advertising

SPIELBERG: Wow, Bluray has almost twice as many gigabytes, that must mean the picture looks twice as good! And it has UNCOMPRESSED AUDIO (HDDVD only has that terrible-sounding Lossless Compression...) I'm so happy I'm going to make HOOK 2! and the pirates will all have walkie-talkies!!

Looks like Paramount may be able to get out of its HD-DVD exclusive commitment sooner than expected.

Paramount is poised to drop its support of HD DVD after Warner Brothers' recent backing of Sony's Blu-ray technology, in a move that will sound the death knell of HD DVD and bring the home entertainment format war to a definitive end.

Paramount and DreamWorks Animation, which makes the Shrek films, came out in support of HD DVD last summer, joining General Electric's Universal Studios as the main backers of the Toshiba format.

However, Paramount, which is owned by Viacom, is understood to have a clause in its contract with the HD DVD camp that would allow it to switch sides in the event of Warner Bros backing Blu-ray, according to people familiar with the situation.