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In the long run this won't matter anyways, as the Blu-ray format is both technologically superior (holds 50GB compared to 30GB), and also has much wider support in the electronics industry. Though HD-DVD is technically the "standard" espoused by the DVD Forum, only two major companies support it, NEC and Toshiba. On the other hand Sony, Hitachi, LG, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Pioneer, Royal Philips, Samsung, Sharp and Thompson (not to mention Dell and HP) back the Blu-ray.

Check out this report comparing the two at CES. HD-DVD sounds like it is getting left in the dust.

i'm going to japan in the beginning of April, missing both the japanese release of Kill Bill and now the Appleseed remake.

hopefully GitS will still be in theaters by the time i get there.

"The release will be a 4-disc set, encompassing 3 movie discs and a 4th bonus disc of supplemental material. All three films will be digitally-remastered and THX-certified, and will be available in anamorphic widescreen video (there MAY also be a separate full frame edition, but this is still TBD). The audio for the films will be English Dolby Digital 5.1 (they may also be EX, although again this is still TBD), with subtitles in English, French and Spanish. The films will also be closed-captioned. Each film will include new audio commentary with creator George Lucas, along with various members of the cast and crew (the specific participants will be announced at a later date). The highlight of the bonus disc will be an all-new, feature-length documentary about the making of the films, which will include never-before-seen footage and other material. There may also be DVD-ROM weblinks to the official Star Wars website (TBD). There WILL be additional supplemental features, which will be announced at a later date. The films will only be available as a box set, the retail price for which has yet to be decided (despite reports to the contrary). I have officially confirmed that the films will be the 1997 Special Edition versions, as determined by Lucas himself. You should also know that, as with the Indiana Jones DVDs, the folks at Lowry Digital are once again involved in the remastering process. They're doing digital restoration and clean-up work on the new masters."

from http://www.thedigitalbits.com/#mytwocents (2/10/2004).

For an alternate view of the format war, checkout the coverage on The Digital Bits.

-- Brooks

Not sure how common knowledge this is, but one neat trivia piece about "A Bugs Life" DVD is that the widescreen and 4:3 versions of the movies are actually rerenders. Not pan and scan.

Screenshots showing the difference available here (Scoll almost to the bottom)

Link

This site also has some pretty good examples of the different aspect ratios, etc.

In the vast majority of cases, online petitions don't do a dickie-bird. But there are some cases where, if there are enough people who are signing the petition and taking other action as well, sometimes you can get through to the powers that be.

Case in point: Disney's original plan to release Princess Mononoke with no Japanese audio track only lasted about as long as it took for the fans to mobilize and produce a flood of petitions, emails, letters, and so on to David Jessen, the VP overseeing the project. Before you could say "tatarigama," the DVD release date was magically dropped back four months, and the Japanese soundtrack was added at such an 11th hour that the only indication on the packaging that the original Japanese language track was included was a sticker on the cellophane wrap.

And then there was the DVD of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Warner hadn't wanted to go to the trouble of producing a widescreen edition, reasoning that Charlie was a kiddie movie, and full-frame is more kiddie-movie-friendly. All the nostalgic movie buffs who wanted it in widescreen mobilized, and before you could say "Vermicious Knid," a widescreen edition was subsequently rushed out.

The thing is, in both those cases--and in the case of Farscape--the Internet activists didn't stop at online petitions. They made phone calls, they wrote letters (actual physical letters, not just email, though they sent email too), they collared executives at conventions, they did whatever else they could for publicity. An online petition is easy to ignore. Letters and phone calls are not so easy. And I don't know that I'd be so quick to call the Farscape campaign an unmitigated success, either--the goal of the 'scapers has always been for a whole new season, not just a 4-hour miniseries.

From a bit further down the page:
Also, Lucasfilm has said in the past that there aren't a lot of behind-the-scenes materials available for the original films, so having a single bonus disc of extras (as opposed to three) would make life easier for them.

I thought I remembered quite a bit of info on various "making-of" shows that showed the original models, how they did cutting-edge special effects on a shoestring budget, and the occasional flaws that made it through (like a TIE fighter shadow where the fighter itself had been removed).

Of course, nowadays I guess we expect someone to be filming the entire filmaking process for the express purpose of creating the ultimate making-of special. When even a film like Monsters, Inc., where every frame requires painstaking design and hours of rendering time, has "outtakes", "deleted scenes", and "goofs". Soon, we'll have cameramen following the cameramen, so we can see "The Making Of 'The Making Of "Star Wars VII: Attack Of The Menacing Phantom Jedi Clone Empire"'"

You know... maybe, just maybe, Lucas & co. should spend more time telling a coherent story with believable characters, and less time worrying about how he'll look in the outtakes?

It's fucking DVD player. Commodity item. Even Walmart sells them these days, alongside the CD-players and televisions. There are no replacement standards on the horizon for consumers, certainly none that are going to be widespread before the decade is out.

Yes, there *can* be poor encodings. DVD encodings are variable bitrate - and as such the mastering process requires care. Higher rates are typically used during action sequences and when a lot of detail is required (closeups / etc). VHS doesn't hold a candle to it. And if a DVD player has progressive scan output - wow.

In short: the manufacturer of the movie decides how much effort to put into making the picture good. When I first started collecting DVDs I worried endlessly about what the transfer quality was going to be like. I've had my player 4 years and I no longer care - so long as the disk plays I can enjoy the movie. Quality is taken for granted.

If you're a videophile geek (perhaps not, if you're asking about DVD many years after most geeks got into it), may I recommend some starter disks:

* Alien Legacy (Alien & Aliens were, I believe, encoded from the laserdisc version)
* Gladiator (nice DTS soundtrack too)
* Blade (a superb transfer - one of the first "reference" quality movies [plot not withstanding])
* The Matrix (on come on - it's just about everybody's first DVD purchase)

I'm sure there are more I could recommend, but I'm getting tired of typing.

Oh, and The Digital Bits is a good DVD site. Check out the reviews of movies before you buy them if you're that picky about the transfer.

There is an interesting commentary on this over at the Digital Bits. It looks like some companies don't want backwards compatibilty with today's DVD, and they want to lock down the market and prevent cheap Chinese players from entering the HD-DVD arena.

If they do that, I think that you will see HD-DVD relegated to a LaserDisc sized niche market. Only true videophiles will spend hundereds of dollars to upgrade hardware, and hundreds more to replace their DVD collection with HD discs. The rest of the population will be perfectly happy with Anamorphic Widescreen DVD on a HD set.

Personally I find that The Digital Bits has the best qidescreen guide. It's a part of their guide to widescreen anamorphic and takes the time to go over the history of widescreen, the various ratios used, the differences, and various techniques used in pan and scan. It also covers the use of so-called "open matte". The anamorphic guide is also a must-see for anyone who wanted to know why this matters so much.

Personally I feel that the selection of images really highlights the various negative effects that pan and scan can have... aside from the obvious problem is showing those terrible digital pans.

I'm not so certain and this is a rather constant debate that doesn't seem very likely to get settled soon given his death. I'm familiar with other films that were treated in a similiar manner. The Digital Bits Widescreen Guide covers the use of Super 35 for this sort of technique using Air Force One as a specific example. I think the problem was more of a simple mistake along the lines of a boom in frame.

Interview (search on page for "recompose").

IGN WS-vs.-P&S examples

Google for "bug's life recompose" for more citations.

...can be found here.

Props to The Digital Bits for the link.

And aspect ratios in the replies here. For the VAST majority of you misinformed Slashdotters, try this site. You may learn something.

Weclome to the club! ;-)

The widescreen version is better because it is the full frame as the cinematographer and director intended. Anything 'pan and scan' cuts out about a third of the frame. But we all know that.

I bought a widescreen HDTV a few months ago and I must say there is no going back to standard 4:3. Even if you do not watch/get HD feeds, I highly recommend the new widescreen HDTVs for DVD watching. Even without my HD receiver, I'd still have purchased the TV just for the DVD experience. Now, of course, I'm an anamorphic snob ;-).

No, I think this has more to do with George Lucas being extremly narcissitic. Basically, I believe that he does things (no Star Wars trilogy on DVD, not DTS or commentary in the new Indy trilogy) simply because he can, not because they make more money or make sense. Seriously, look back over the last 10 years, and pick one good thing George Lucas has done. I dare you. You can't! Ok, that's horribly subjective, but still...

Anyway, I suspect that Spielberg takes a back seat when Lucas is involved. Spielberg has done other DVD releases of his films that are quite good, and include lots of intelligent and interesting extras. Lucas has none of those credits. If I didn't enjoy all three movies so much, I would boycott this release (ok, subjective again, but if you don't like it, just kiss off and keep the flames to yourself). I count on being dissapointed by Lucas no matter what he does from here on out. And check out the commentary on the digital bits for some higher level perspective.

It has been fixed. Oh, and it's Universal, not Paramount.

Want info? Go read The Digital Bits which is one (of many) websites that kept on top of this debacle.

Heck, my BTTF DVDs are still in shrinkwrap because of this...

The real debacle isn't that they aren't fixed - it's that the disks were released in other regions first (such as Australia) and were defective then. It wasn't until Universal released the movies in region 1 that they listened to the hue and cry about defective transfers -- and agreed to fix them. Note that they were released in Oz 4 months before release to region 1.

One more way for Microsoft to lock up artist works in their own file formats. How long before studios decide to release Windows only DVD's rather than bother reencoding the movies?

Considering the staggering total of existing DVD players on the market, it's unlikely that a consumer electronics non-giant like Microsoft will be able to foist a new "standard" on the market anytime soon. It'll be a few years yet before the DVD momentum subsides and enough people have the high-definition equipment necessary to even consider putting anything else on the market.

The correct link for the article, since the article was moved off the home page into the archives.

Point 1: CD speed (both reading and writing) is measured in data/time. In this case it is measured in chunks of 150kb/s. That is to say that a 2x CD-ROM drive could read 300kilobytes per second.

Point 2: You make reference to this - angular velocity and linear velocity are going to be different based on where you are on the CD.

The outer tracks obviously hold more data - the track length is longer ("track length" probably not the technical term, but I am using it to mean how far it is around at a certain spot on the CD). Using our familiar Circumference = (2 * r * pi) formula, we can see that as the radius increases (the distance away from the center of the CD), the length of the track length increases, as well.

CDs store data as digital data stored in non-reflective pits on an otherwise reflective surface. These pits are a certain distance apart. This distance does not change as you get father out, and the size of the pits is a constant, as well.

Think about cars parked in a spiral pattern. The farther you get out from the middle, the more cars are in each loop.

So what does this mean for our CD-RW? Toward the middle of the CD, the CD is spinning at a certain constant rate. However, only so many pits are going by each second. For a 52x CD-RW, there are about (24) x (150kb) each second. As the laser moves out (since CDs burn from inside to the outside), the CD RPM stays the same, but now there are more pits flying by each second. Towards the outside, there are (52) x (150kb) each second.

So the angular velocity (RPMs) does not change that much while burning. The linear velocity, however (how many pits are going by) changes greatly, more than twice as much.

This is actually somewhat of an over-simplification, since modern CD-RWs use a mix of both CAV and CLV technologies.

Two (or three) interesting side notes: DVDs work using several more technologies, but the end result is the same. For one thing, the pits used in DVDs are much smaller, as are the tracks. This allows a lot more information to be stored on a single DVD. In addition, DVDs are capable of using multiple layers using different laser wavelengths. So when the DVD player changes layers, the laser changes wavelengths, allowing it to "ignore" the pits on the first layer and instead read the pits on the second layer.

In addition, DVD drives are measured using a different unit than CDs. At 150kb/s, a DVD would be an extremely fast CD drive reading off a DVD. A single layer DVD read at 1x is about 1.321 MB/s. More information about the speeds between CDs and DVDs can be found on the DVD FAQ

An interesting historical note: Laserdiscs could be found in both CLV and CAV formats. CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) discs came first, and had one frame per revolution (or maybe more, but there was a ratio between frames and revolutions). CLV (Constanst Linear Velocity) discs came later, and used a technology closer to CDs - allowing multiple frames per revolution, with the rate being based more on location on the disk. This allows for more information per disc (thus Laserdisc being called "CAV Standard" and "CLV Extended Play"

And hopefully this has been "more than you ever wanted to know about angular and linear velocity of optical discs."

I rushed out and bought the Alien special edition boxed sets. The first two movies were repackagings of the laserdisc sets, and the last two were featureless movie only editions. Now they are coming out with a new "Alien Quadrilogy" boxed set; new special editons for the first two, and real special editions for the other two.

Despite all of the excitement that seems to be surrounding this release, I won't buy it. I'll wait to replace my collection with the HD-DVD version, whenever that comes out. Same goes for the Matrix. How did I just know that they would eventually bundle that "Revisited" disc in with a super-super edition.

Fortunately, they did announce the movie and special edions of FOTR at the same time, so I didn't get burned on that one. From now on, though, any blockbuster that is release in a "Movie-only" or "Limited suppliments" edition, I defanately will not buy, and will hold out for the eventual "deluxe" edition.

I am really annoyed at the Alien set. I was certain that that would be the last time it was visited until HD-DVD. Crap.

Ok that's it, now I *am* getting the new Alien Quadrilogy box this year.

Anyway, if this is true, then I guess we'll have to watch out for our Columbia/Tristar releases - they had a some track record with laser rot on the LaserDisc format.

1. Its Official - Futurama will be part of Cartoon Networks "Adult Swim" from Jan. 2003
Although Cartoon Network has a 5-year contract for Futurama, 20th Century Fox has the right to sell to syndication if TV stations show an interest in buying the reruns.

2. Chat Transcript: 20th Century Fox
A chat transcript, including Peter Staddon of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.
[peterstaddon] There are so many TV titles coming down the road that I don't know where to start/ Futurama, The Shield, King of the hill, Son of the Beach, nypd Blue, Dark Angel, Angel, Family Guy, and probably a couple that I've overlooked as well. There's more than enough to keep you watching tv 24/7 .

Check out the Home Theater Forum for evidence.

Here is Universal's official response, as found on The Digital Bits:

Thank you for your email. Universal Studios will exchange Back to the Future parts 2 and 3 for copies with the updated framing in late February 2003. You may send the DVDs back now or wait until February. Please send Back to the Future disks 2 and 3, without the case, and a letter with the following information: Name, Full Mailing Address, Daytime Phone Number, Reason for Return and Return Address. Send to:

Back to the Future DVD Returns
PO Box 224468
Dallas, Texas 75260

Thank you,
Universal Studios Customer Service

Those in Canada can call 866-532-2202.

As for me, I'm waiting until February to get a correct version of all three films. The fanboy who reviewed this got a bit carried away.

Then of course there is The Digital Bits who have had their review posted for a couple of days now.

Well the slashdottd review isn't the only one out there. (Glad I read it yesterday. (Maybe I should sumbit stories more often.)
Here are a couple more reviews of the extended DVD.
This review is a pretty good rundown of the DVDs.
and
This one is a rundown of Xoanon's review and there is a nice Question and answer format at the end where fans of, well, the Fan Site write in with their questions. Tons of SPOILERS --you're warned.

You may want to check out the review on the Digital Bits as well.

We're getting a lot of e-mails from readers asking if the special features set to be included on the theatrical edition of The Fellowship of the Ring (due on 8/6) will be repeated on the special extended version (following on 11/12). The answer is no. The documentaries and web featurettes are being included on the theatrical edition because a lot of fans have requested them. But since the special extended version includes an entirely new cut of the film, everything that will be included on that later edition is being custom created specifically for that release, for a more adult audience and to go MUCH deeper into the making of the film trilogy than what was seen in any of the TV specials. The idea is that most DVD consumers will be satisfied with the theatrical edition, while more sophisticated fans will wait for the extended edition. The most diehard fans will probably want both, as they perfectly complement each other but do not overlap.

Also, just to clarify, each DVD version includes a SEPARATE edit of the film. The 4-disc special extended set DOES NOT include the theatrical cut of the film on a separate disc or via seamless branching. If you want the theatrical cut, you have to buy the August 2-disc set. If you want the longer cut, you buy the November 4-disc edition. If you want both, save your money accordingly and buy both. Some people may feel that this is an effort to milk consumers, but I don't think so at all. In order to include everything you'll be getting on both editions, New Line would have to create a single 6-disc release, which would be WAY too expensive for most consumers to even consider. This way, they can have DVD purchase options for everyone. And by not having any overlap between the two editions, fans who buy both are absolutely getting the most for their money. Just think... over eight hours of unique special edition material alone on these two releases, not including the films themselves! If you're a fan, I say don't look a gift horse in the mouth!

How could they use a previous score written for a different cut of the film? This version contains 1300 feet of film that hasn't been in any version of the film since since the original German release. This cut, at 147 minutes, is only six minutes shorter than the original, but far shorter than director's 210 minute cut, which is apparently lost forever. More information can be found at the Digital Bits, and from the restorer's site, and Kino's site, the company releasing the DVD of this version.

The link in the story isn't very informative. Here's a better link, with pictures and more information.

In response to an incredibly uninformed reply, Anonymous wrote:

You're absolutely 100% dead wrong

Amen.

Not only that, but there are deinterlacers, interpolators, and various image enhancement/sharpening filters that (and, using transcode under GNU/Linux for example, or VirtualDub under Windoze) can take a less than perfect TV image regardless of source (for the clue challenged, this includes DVD) and improve the image in resolution, color quality, and just about every other measurable metric over the original source.

Any source correctly filtered in this manner can have its resolution upscaled to 1080p or, in my case, 1200p :-), not only without a loss in quality but with an actual gain in quality.

How is this possible? Hint: interpolation and some of the various other filters actually create information. The more intelligent filters make very good educated guesses as to what belongs in the missing space, so much so that your jaw will drop when you see the result.

The poster to which you replied (indeed both followup posts) may want to believe that a fuzzy TV looks better playing back a DVD or a recorded video source, but that is only true if one is using consumer playback products, rather than their PC, which can do so much more with the image. Those of us who have built their own, super-high-quality PVRs will never go back to watching painfully low-res, interlaced television.

Since DVDs are made using the TV resolution, when you watch them on a monitor, the DVD player software has to resize the image to make it look right. This makes it fuzzy. There's no way around it.

You're absolutely 100% dead wrong.

Linux drivers would be nice: they could just capture in MPEG-2 in a single pass.

But given your comments, I'll probably stick with my first plan: get the newest model of Radeon All-In-Wonder, the one with the digital TV tuner, and run under Linux. (When the drivers are available; I don't think they are, yet.) I don't really care what format it captures in, as long as the picture is nice and it can be recompressed overnight into real MPEG-2.

By the way, the 640x480 probably really is full quality. The 720x480 size of DVDs only includes about 640x480 of viewable picture info; see the DVD FAQ for more details.

Too bad about the 32 kHz though.

steveha

And it wouldn't have taken up that much space on the current disc, so I'm surprised it's in an R2 edit but not R1

A few things:

First, the Canadian release is nowhere near the picture and sound quality of the US release.

Second, watching Memento in chronological order is an unbelievably boring and predictable experience. It's brilliant backwards, but it's also a very simple story: it had to be, or no one could follow it.

Lastly, a 2-disc special edition, with director's commentary and other goodies, is on it's way May 21st. Check out the cover art here, and go to the digital bits for more info. I don't think it has the chronological order option, but it might be on there as an easter egg (for those desperate and/or bored enough to watch it that way).

Yes, in a way it does actually. It means that the studio and director copped out. They were willing to sacrifice the artistic integrity of the movie in order to get a few more sales.

Movies are now starting to show up on DVD in Pan and Scan ONLY, and that's REALLY bothersome. Luckily this one was not the case. Here the studio could have taken the opportunity to educate the public on the reasons for preserving OAR (Original Aspect Ratio) on what will surely be a HUGE selling DVD, but instead they took the low road.

Instead of selling a pan and scan version, they could have put in a very short demonstration on the disc that showed the difference between pan 'n scan and OAR.

I've yet to meet someone who, once properly shown what is lost when the sides are chopped off, didn't understand and accept OAR (and yes, that sometimes means "not filling the whole screen").

There's excellent examples of the damage pan and scan does here and here.

-S

You're not always giving up resolution. Some DVD's contain what I believe is called anamorphic-widescreen, it basically involves using all vertical scan lines to store the image, and then "shrinking" the vertical down to the desired aspect ratio.

Anamorphic Slideshow

More info

an (old) list of dvds using anamorphic widescreen

Here's some examples from Blazing Saddles, from a great "idiot convincer" site

Oh, and there is also widescreen-o-rama

In synopsis, the technology is called "Anamorphic pan&scan," it does precisely what you're bitching about: it encodes screen placement for the DVD for those with the 4:3 option set on their DVD players. Currently it is only seen on some Columbia/Tristar releases, but if it got the recognition it deserved we wouldn't have the MGM debacle where the extras are one side of the disc and the widescreen/pan&scan version of the film is on the other.

Also, since those links I posted above are slashdotted to hell, make sure you check some of these links for information:

The Digital Bits

DVD Angle

DVD @ IGN

Better Off Dead will be released in July.

The Digital Bits has good info on the new scenes:

A new addition to the opening sequence in which Bilbo provides background on Hobbits and their history in voice-over as he writes his memoirs.

A new introduction to Samwise Gamgee, seen in his capacity as a gardener.

A scene taking place at the Green Dragon Inn, which introduces us to the camaraderie of the Hobbits (we see them singing together) and sets up the geopolitics of the story.

The Hobbits witnessing the departure of the Elves from Middle Earth on the way to Bree.

Aragorn watching over the sleeping Hobbits, singing the ballad of Beren and Luthien to himself in the night.

Aragorn at his mother's grave, in which we learn that he was raised by Elves and that Sauron has long hunted him.

Two new moments during the departure from Rivendale, one in which we see Arwen's emotional reaction to Aragorn's leaving, and another in which Elrond sees the Fellowship off.

A scene with the Fellowship in the mines of Moria, in which we learn how the Dwarves themselves unleashed the fire-demon that eventually destroyed them.

A scene at Lothlorien, where Galadriel bestows upon each of the Fellowship a gift which will play an important role later in the Trilogy.

And finally, more footage of the battle at Amon Hen. This is not particularly bloody footage, but its addition will likely result in this cut of the film receiving an R-rating.

Actually, there is a BIG difference between "letterboxed" movies, and "anamorphic", or enhanced-for-widescreen-TV movies.

I can't possibly explain the difference as well as these guys can, so I won't even try. Go there and read this, it's a great explination. It's true that both present a wide-screen picture, but you lose a lot of information in a letterboxed format.

I was really looking forward to this special edition. I had been under the impression that he was going to make this like the Terminator 2 SE DVD -- that is, make most or all of the multiple cuts of the movie availible via seamless branching, Harrison Ford voiceover on a second audio track, etc., etc.

Now this looks like it will just be Yet Another Director's Cut(TM), with maybe some EPK shit thrown in for good measure. Maybe this rant is right after all, and quality DVD special editions are on their way out the door as DVDs continue to get dumbed down for non movie connoisseurs.

[1.20] What about animation on DVD? Doesn't it compress poorly?

Some people claim that animation, especially hand-drawn cell animation such as cartoons and anime, does not compress well with MPEG-2 or even ends up larger than the original. Other people claim that animation is simple so it compresses better. Neither is true.

Supposedly the "jitter" between frames caused by differences in the drawings or in their alignment causes problems. An animation expert at Disney pointed out that this doesn't happen with modern animation techniques. And even if it did, the motion estimation feature of MPEG-2 would compensate for it.

Because of the way MPEG-2 breaks a picture into blocks and transforms them into frequency information it can have a problem with the sharp edges common in animation. This loss of high-frequency information can show up as "ringing" or blurry spots along edges (called the Gibbs effect). However, at the data rates commonly used for DVD this problem does not occur.

I read The Digital Bits regularly, and from the editor's comments (which I agree with), most collectors of TV shows on DVD apparantly prefer to collect entire season box sets, as opposed to one or two ep.'s per disc priced separately, or "best of" compilations. Apparantly, Paramount ran a poll on the ST web site a few months ago asking how they should handle TNG DVDs, and the overwhelming consensus was to go with season box sets.

The biggest problem, IMO, with releasing one or two ep's at a time is that if the sales numbers don't crunch, additional ep's may be indefanately delayed, or cancelled. This happened with South Park (they released a bunch in order, then there was a loooong delay, and now they release out-of-order "best of" compilations, much to my dismay), and My So-Called Life (one disc with 2 or 3 eps was released, and when nobody bought it, the rest were quietly cancelled).

The Digital Bits has some more info and also a link to Urban Cinefile which has an interview with Barrie M. Osborne a producer on the project.

As a Multimedia Producer who does DVD authoring, we do keep up with the sales numbers in the US.

According to this chart DVD player sales in the US are already above 22 Million, not including DVD ROM drives. Granted, some homes (including mine) have more than one. Conservatively, 15 million homes have DVD players.

Now,you totally missed the point. The point is not "legacy" DVDs. It's "next-gen" DVDs. Whatever the pundits say, Microsoft is doing a great job working on HDTV technologies. The X-box supports HDTV resolutions. The simultaneously released Game Cube does not. This new technology supports HDTV resolutions as well. This is simply a business trying to get ahead of the curve!

So, you slam Microsoft for "unscrupulous business practaces" when they release competing projects, and then slam them when they try to bring something new to the marketlpace.

Cory
(apparently, a microsoft apologist, today.)

According to The digitalbits (check the news under 11/7/01) Paramount is still planning on doing directors cut's for all of them. For now you'll have to make do with ST:TMP Directors cut and wait for the rest.

Um, dude, there already is software of the computer sort on DVDs. Has been since the early days. That's what's infected on that Powerpuff Girls DVD, in fact--the interactivity software.

The earliest DVD that I know of to have software on it as well as media was the Bubblegum Crisis 3-disc set, which included its own Shockwave DVD player so you could watch the disc on your computer even if you didn't have a player program. Then came discs like The Matrix , which had an app called "PC Friendly" on them. PC Friendly, in addition to containing its own player for the DVD, would allow you to access the "special interactive features"--in the case of The Matrix, that would be things like the "I Know Kung Fu" fight scene collection, the interactive trivia game, the text articles, and of course the weblink.

These days, the helper app of choice is the Interactual Player, which is included on titles like The Mummy Returns, Star Wars Episode One (it is this software, by the way, that controls whether you can access the DVD-exclusive trailers on their website), and just about anything else that touts interactive features. (Notable exceptions including the Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within DVD, which uses a Quicktime program, and the forthcoming Shrek DVD, which the Bits says will be interactive without having to install anything, though it doesn't say how.) Interactual will also play the interactive content from PC Friendly-enabled discs.

You'll always know when you have a software-enabled disc--because when you put it in the drive, it'll either try to install the program, or else launch it if it's installed already--probably interfering with your DVD player software, which will also be trying to launch. For this reason, I went into the Windows registry and disabled the CD autorun function (and thanks for making it so easy for me, Microsoft! (That was sarcasm)).

Anyway, like I said, the interactivity software is what's infected on the Powerpuff DVD. If you didn't install it and have autorun off, it should be safe to play the movie content--but I wouldn't take chances anyway.

Pretty much all of the movies on HBO are in HD format. The quality is so good it's like being at a movie theater. Showtime is hit-or-mis on the movies. Both HBO and Showtime have their own series, such as The Sopranos and Leap Years, which are broadcast in high def. I just recently started watching The Sopranos(I didn't have the HBO package until I got my HDTV) and have become hooked - it's an excellent show.

Last night's Disney movie on ABC was Toy Story in HD. Next week will be Toy Story 2. A couple weeks ago they showed A Bugs Life.

PBS has been showing ONLY HD shows on their HD channel - shows on nature, travel, exporation. The travel shows through Europe have been really slick, the detail shown in HD of artwork and buildings is phenominal.

Non-letterboxed DVDs also look great on a HDTV. Any movie that's labeled Anamorphic or Enhanced for Widescreen has 33% more detail when shown on an HDTV. The movie is recorded on the DVD without the black bars. The DVD player will throw out every 4th scan line of the movie on a traditional set and add the letter box bars. See The Ultimate Guide to Anamorphic Widescreen DVD for some good info on anamorphic DVDs.