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One DVD To Rule Them All
Obiwan Kenobi writes "In a gala event last night New Line Cinema revealed their Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring DVD Plans. This includes a 2-disc version on August 6th (in both Pan & Scan and Widescreen, click here for box art), and a special 4-hour, R-rated cut of the film debuting in a 4-disc set on November 12th. While the August release includes some nifty features, it's the four disc version, with the longer cut and three audio commentaries, that really gets the drool flowing."
Now that's what I'm talkin about!
I understand. It's long. If you don't want the 1/2 hour extra footage you can buy the shorter version. Everyone wins.
I take that last bit back. in the end the people selling me the cd utimately win. Bastards.
Am I the only one disappointed by the sound getting no better than DD 5.1? I'm all about DTS. And widescreen. I'm still trying to convince some of my friends that you GAIN by watching the widescreen. They always complain that the black bars destroy their viewing experience. Ahh well, a home theater nerd I am. :)
This is stupid, you know. There's no bloody reason that pan & scan and widescreen shouldn't be THE SAME FILM, using the SAME MPEG-2 stream, on the SAME DVD. After all, it's not like it's a different movie, or anything - this entire mode of "must choose widescreen - must choose pan&scan" is more stupid than I can possible imagine.
Let me explain: normal TVs are in one format (NTSC), and movies are in a different, but all of the movies are wider than the TV, right? So, Pan & Scan movies aren't cropping, or zooming, or anything: all they're doing is displaying only a "portion" of the screen, and another remaining portion is left offscreen.
WHY didn't the movie makers come up with a standard to allow a DATA track along side the DVD MPEG stream which cues the DVD player to pan & scan ON ITS OWN? Most people already have "Zoom" features on the DVD player, and then with "left" and "right" buttons you can "pan and scan" manually. All you need is a cue track to move the 'window' left and right. It's a joke - honestly. It would take no effort, everyone would have everything they want, and we'd be happy. And better yet, if there were some scenes where the director said "um, no... I really want to retain the widescreen here" it could simply switch out of pan and scan for a portion of it. Best of both worlds, and all it requires is a really trivial amount of coding (come ON, I could do this in my sleep!).
Grr. Rant off. Pan and Scan will always be around, simply because different films use different transfer techniques, and while most people say "who cares, I don't mind the black bars" the fact is, it's not the black bars - it's the fact that you're tossing resolution in one direction to gain information (which may be meaningless) in another. I'd rather have the option to see it full screen (that is, pan and scan) rather than having widescreen shoved down my throat.
Heh, four hours doesn't come close to doing the books justice. The book is an epic adventure through wide spaces, dozens of side stories, meetings with all sorts of interesting people, etc... Heck like half a year passes in the first book. The movie is like "gotta go, gotta go, move move move move move, not enough time, lets skip a few chapters, go go go, action action action, go go go, skip some more, go go go go go, fight some baddies, go go go..." The movie makes it seem like the whole war of the rings took place in 3 days. A movie that actually represented the first book would alone take like 12+ hours, even if some of the more expendable side stories (like Tom Bombadil) were cut.
If it weren't that mini-series were always so poorly made, it would be better served in that format... Except it would be like 3 seasons long... So, maybe a regular TV show where the entire series is written and shot before it airs... But the first season would have a lot of episodes with no action, so nobody would watch it... Maybe if they took the story and put it in a series of books... Oh, wait...
... "Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the w
"This tv has been modified. It has been formatted to fit your movie." PAN & SCAN should be a CRIME!
The way I look at it is that we may have bad feelings about drug dealers, but we sure do like them drugs.
hinderfreude ('hin-dur-"froi-d&), n. The feeling of joy derived from being in the way.
Whenever a story is posted about the SSSCA, or Jack/Hilary talking about piracy killing their businesses, we all get up in arms and post hundreds of comments about the RIAA & MPAA being greedy cartels (which they are). But as soon as they release something that we geeks love (Star Trek DVDs, LOTR, etc.), we all jump for joy.
Repeat after me: SLASHDOT HAS MORE THAN ONE PERSON IN ITS COMMUNITY.
Now think about it.
"And like that
I agree completely. I voiced a similar argument a while back.
A lot of Slashdot readers like movies. That is why they care so much about digital rights. Someone who does not watch (and enjoy) movies is not going to care if he/she is able to excercise "fair use" with digital movies.
I dislike the MPAA quite a bit. I have voiced that opinion many times on Slashdot. However, I also greatly enjoy movies. I went and saw FotR twice in the theatre and will buy it on DVD.
Why? Because I feel like a boycott of movies means that the MPAA has won. They want to take away my rights. A boycott simply means that instead of *them* taking away my rights, I *choose* to ignore my right to go to a movie, hopefully to get someone to notice.
Unfortunately, I enjoy movies too much to give them up for a political point.
Call me a hypocrite, that is fine. But notice that I have never said that I am boycotting, and I have never called on others to do the same. I have written to my congressmen and I have encouraged others to do the same.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman