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Sony Completes First Full-Length Blu-ray Disc

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hot-off-the-presses dept.

john writes "Sony Pictures Home Entertainment announced that authoring has been completed on the first Blu-ray Disc (BD) to contain a full-length, high-definition feature film. Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle was compressed and authored in MPEG 2 full high-definition (1920 x 1080) and is now being shipped to BD hardware companies for player testing."

16 of 258 comments (clear)

  1. Why MPEG2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    i would have thought that we would have moved onto MPEG4-- This is a cutting edge media ;-) They could fit much more data with a better compression method.

    1. Re:Why MPEG2 by Bad+Boy+Marty · · Score: 5, Interesting

      No, you don't get it. They don't want to put more data or better data on the disc. It only needs to have enough space to hold the lowest resolution they can get away with so that it will forever provide a tolerable experience, thus forcing people to spend $10/person to watch new movies in a theater. From the perspective of the content providers, you exist only to be raped.

      Are any of you smart enough to vote with your wallets?

      --
      RHCE; are you certified? Karma: ambiguous.
    2. Re:Why MPEG2 by imsabbel · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I wondered, too.
      Especially considering that hd-dvd wont use mpeg4, but straight go to h264...
      Under that light, the "larger disc space" argument for blue-ray becomes a moot point, quickly.
      I would rather have a 10GB h264 file than a 20GB mpeg2...

      --
      HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
    3. Re:Why MPEG2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      For "Charlies Angels: Full Throttle", that won't be much of an issue. :-)

      Now, if 20th Century / Fox were to bring out the original, "Han shoots first" Star Wars, that would be more difficult.

      But for as long as both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray have onerous copy protection/licensing requirements that would prevent me from ever making my own content to play on my own player, and prevent or greatly hinder piping the legally-purchased output through my stereo/switching system/computer and watch it how *I* like it, I doubt I'll buy one until regular DVDs and players aren't being made anymore. I can't see that happening for a decade, at least, perhaps longer, even if the initial release of the HD players and content doesn't flop.

      And to think that I bought one of the very first models of DVD players made -- a Sony even. It cost almost $1000. Such is the financial cost of being an early adopter, but I really liked the idea that once I bought a DVD, it was going to last for far longer than a video tape. I took it home, and, surprise, Macrovision immediately prevented me from setting up my system the way I wanted. It's like buying a car and discovering it has an unadvertised governer that keeps its speed below 60km/hr. It took me only a few dollars to fix the problem, but, now or soon, doing that kind of circumvention might not be legal or financially reasonable for HD-DVD/Blu-Ray content.

      So, never again. I've already been fooled once, and I'll stick with the system I've got until it is clear that a new system would have as much versitility.

  2. 1080p or 1080i by Physician · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is the movie being produced in 1080i or 1080p format? What format will most movies be released in?

    --
    Does God treat us as servants or friends? Check my homepage.
  3. Who is telling the truth? by bogaboga · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Didn't Microsoft and its colleagues say that the Blue Ray technology from SONY is more than a year away, and that it's not viable? Sony here disproves that. My problem with Sony is that I see Microsoft tendencies in it as well.

    1. Re:Who is telling the truth? by blincoln · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That was a bit of a stretch, but a lot of people interpreted it the way you did.

      You can actually buy Blu-Ray writer/players in Japan, and at least one person is selling them and the blank discs on eBay.

      --
      "...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
  4. MPEG-2? by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why is Blu-ray using MPEG-2? Wouldn't they get higher def or longer movies if they standardized around XVID or some other variant of MPEG-4? It seems like a terrible waste.

  5. Test cases with different codecs by tepples · · Score: 3, Interesting

    With all the buzz around H.264 (possibly due to me having a Mac), I would have thought they would have used something different....

    Sony is probably using different Columbia/Tristar films to test different codecs (MPEG-2, H.264, and WMV9) to be included in each player's firmware. This makes error reporting easier: "Charlie's Angels screwed up" means a problem with one codec, and "Stealth screwed up" means a problem with another.

  6. DRM and consumer backlash by TheRealFritz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's amazing that the mainstream media don't cover the coming era of DRM more. A true failure of the press in my opinion. Their responsibility would be to cover this topic in laymen's terms to make it understandable to the masses. This should make the nightly news instead of a review of your latest and greatest toothpaste. As it is, the public doesn't know about this and lawmakers don't understand it, so the content companies have a relatively easy time pushing their legislative agendas.

    Personally, I can't wait for DRM to become widely used so that consumers are faced with a limitation of their rights.

    Content companies need to learn that people like to consume. DRM is a barrier to consumption and thus doesn't make business sense. A great early example of this was Circuit City's Divx system which flopped very quickly.

    Once consumers realize what's happening, DRM as we know it today will hopefully go the way of the Dodo.
    --
    http://www.gloryhoundz.com/

  7. Plotless by Dog135 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They chose it because it's one of those movies that's better seen then heard.

    My wife's deaf, but she still likes to go the the theater every once in a while. Just goes to show how important plot is in today's movies.

    Funny thing, she liked Starwars EP1 better BEFORE she saw it captioned.
    "Is the caption messed up, or is Jar-Jar retarded?"

    --
    "That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
    1. Re:Plotless by kalidasa · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'll tell you what - compare the dialogue of Jar-Jar Binks to that of any character in any Harry Potter book (which was also always for kids), and tell me again how brilliant a writer of dialogue Lucas is (we're talking about dialogue, here, because that's what the fellow's wife was shocked by - the subtitles). Episode III was good. Episode II was ok. Episode I was a video game commercial with dialogue a six year old would find painful. Better yet, just watch that whole "Tell me, Master Qui-Gon, what are midicholorians?" exchange and tell me that was written by someone with a clue about exposition and plotting.

  8. Sony - The hits just keep on coming! by HangingChad · · Score: 3, Interesting
    First the rootkit debacle, now first Blu-ray Disc (BD) to contain a full-length, high-definition feature film. Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle

    Sony Entertainment needs to clean house. Sell off the movie studios and record company. Fire the bean counter CEO and replace him with an engineer and go back to making the very best electronic devices in the world.

    Follow up the rootkit with Charlie's Angels. F'ing brilliant.

    --
    That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
  9. Hey, I already made a MPEG-2 HD DVD feature! by benwaggoner · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They've only JUST NOW finished the first completed disc? Crazy

      I was bored this summer, and made a feature-length HD DVD using MPEG-2 and Apple's DVD Studio Pro 4. In a weekend. Targeting DVD-9 media. Looked pretty good, and would have looked great if DVDSP4 supported using H.264 for 1080 content, or VC-1 at all.

    I can't share that disc image unfortunately, but I can, once again, share this link to a HD DVD disc image I made before I tried the feature. A mix of MPEG-2 and H.264, 720 and 1080, i and p. Plays back perfectly in DVD Player 4.6 on a G5 Mac, and probably in other software players as well.

    http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/HD_DVD_TEST.dm g.torrent?1C6B407CD6671B2BB03F55C49D67CEB584A74D90

    --

    My video compression blog
  10. Re:DVDs are 480i, not 480p by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    You got that almost completey wrong. Many DVDs are, indeed, progressive scan - PAL DVDs from progressive source. NTSC discs originated on progressive source are generally encoded at 29.97 with 3:2 pulldown - thus they must use interlaced mode. As you say, progressive-mode player can apply the 'intelcine' pulldown removal necessary for progressive display of these titles. Almost all video originated materila is encoded interlaced.

    24p universal discs were one of the early dreams of DVD-Video that never transpired, mainly due to the cheapness of manufacturers and the dictates of the stupid regioning system.

    I myself have encoded HUNDREDS or progressive mode DVD-Videos.

  11. MPEG4 is better in all scenarios except ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    ... when you don't have enough CPU power for playback.

    I store my video sources using XVID @ max quality. Final encoding bitrate is 8.7MB/s and it looks visual indistinguishable from the original MPEG2 video sources copied off DV at 1/3rd the file size.

    Then after editing, I encode the final product back to MPEG2 for burning to DVD and even at bitrates like 6.5MB/s (~90mins of video for a 4.4GB DVD), the quality is clearly worse. I can see mosaic & dithering effects when playing back the DVD on the computer. (On a regular TV, you can't tell the difference though.)