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Sony Completes First Full-Length Blu-ray Disc

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."

19 of 258 comments (clear)

  1. I could have saved 48 hours of my life! by dada21 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I wonder how long it took for Sony to transcode the AVI torrent they downloaded off of The Pirate Bay into the format needed for a BD-ROM.

    Had I known they were releasing this awesome movie in Hi-Def format, I'd probably have just skipped the download and just let them do the work.

  2. Complete with rootkit! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    No annoying dialogs just seamless integration

  3. In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...the companies the discs were shipped to asked sony to confirm in writing that the disks infact did not contain any rootkit that would damage their systems.

  4. Clever choice of material by Logic+Bomb · · Score: 5, Funny

    At first I was horrified that such an absurdly bad movie was chosen for this "honor." But then I thought about the current market for this stuff: geeky guys. I suppose it makes sense, but they probably could do better with porn.

  5. Well, Blu-Ray is dead. by OS24Ever · · Score: 4, Funny

    With all the films they had to choose from the one they pick to show Charlie's Angels 2? Nice way to kill the format.

    --

    As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.

  6. So now we see the real reason for high def by antifoidulus · · Score: 4, Funny

    of all the films they could have chosen, they chose the one with the most boobs.....Good choice!

  7. I understand... by Eric+Damron · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...that they would have been able to get this out sooner but had to overcome a lack of space caused by the oversized rootkit included.

    --
    The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
  8. and who by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...will be brave/stupid enough to put the first Sony blue-ray DVD in his (not yet existing) blue-ray-DVD-drive?

  9. 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.
  10. It makes sense by sterno · · Score: 5, Insightful

    First of all it's one of those spectacular blockbuster type movies with lots of explosions. So it'll be a good test for what the format is capable of. Second, and this is key, they won't have to worry about anybody trying to pirate the first Blu Ray disc because nobody will want it :)

    --
    This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
  11. hi-def porn = just say no! by Tumbleweed · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's the _last_ thing anyone wants in hi-def. Trust me - you _really_ don't want to see those people accurately.

  12. 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.

  13. Re:Why MPEG2 by beavis88 · · Score: 4, Informative

    FWIW, H.264 = MPEG4 Part 10. Different standards organizations, different names, same end result.

  14. Re:1080p or 1080i by dada21 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Blu Ray video format specifies the maximum read capability of 36 megabits/second. The encoding codec used will allow content creators to compress nearly any resolution as long as it won't surpass 36 megabits/second.

    I'm guessing we'll see 1080i as that is compatible with almost every HD TV out there. The format just specifies what video formats to use, it won't force anyone to stick to those resolutions.

  15. BD-ROM by News+for+nerds · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Blu Ray video format specifies the maximum read capability of 36 megabits/second. The encoding codec used will allow content creators to compress nearly any resolution as long as it won't surpass 36 megabits/second.

    Actually it's inaccurate.
    The transfer rate for BD-ROM video application is 54Mbps (1.5x speed) according to the official BD-ROM physical format whitepaper:

    3: Data rate
    For high-definition movies a much higher data rate is needed than for standard definition.
    With the BD format's choices for both NA and wavelength we have been able to realize a
    format with 5X higher data rate while only doubling the rotation rate of DVD-ROM discs.
    The following numbers offer a comparison:
    Data bit length: 111.75 nm (25GB) (267 nm for DVD)
    Linear velocity: 7.367 m/s (Movie application) (3.49 m/s for DVD).
    User data transfer rate: 53.948 Mbit/s (Movie application) (10.08 Mbps for DVD)
    The BD system has the potential for future higher speed drives.

  16. 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
  17. DVDs are 480i, not 480p by Phong · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is a common misconception about DVDs. In actuality, all video DVDs contain interlaced fields, with no exceptions (I remember an old Usenet posting by Chad Fogg that explained why the MPEG 2's progressive-video flag was not supported). Thus, movies are stored as 480i @ 48 fields per second, and, for "normal" TVs, are translated into into 480i @ 60 fields per second for display. A progressive DVD player has to unify the fields for display, and while this is trivial to do for film, the resulting video does not have quite as high of a vertical resolution as true 480p video is capable of because the 480i video was filtered for interlaced display (this removes twitter on interlaced TVs -- e.g. a bright dot on a single line would flicker at 30 updates/sec, so that is not allowed to happen).

    So, the difference between 480p@24 and 480i@48 is just a slight loss of vertical resolution (not to be confused with lines), but the difference is there.

    --
    ..wayne..
  18. 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

  19. Re:Why would you believe sony? by iso · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is not a stunt. I work at a company where I'm actively involved in Blu-Ray (and HD-DVD) related development. We need to be getting these discs (actually we needed them months ago) to verify a lot of the work we're doing, and to make sure we're optimizing in the right place. Blu-Ray may still be a ways off, but a lot of the software and hardware development needs well underway now to make that happen.