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First Blu-ray Movie Titles Announced
JorgeDeLaCancha writes "Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and MGM Home Entertainment have recently announced the release of the first titles on the Blu-Ray media coinciding with the Blu-Ray hardware release in the spring. Some of the films to be released include classics such as "The Fifth Element" and "Robocop" to more modern films such as "Black Hawk Down." Other corporations, such as Fox, have announced similar plans."
Until there is a combo hd-dvd/blu-ray player, they can take their discs and go pound salt.
Not a single lindsey lohan movie listed!
the Fifth Element is from 1997, and it's already a "classic?"
Now that everybody's re-bought their favorite movies on DVD, let's move on to the next format! Call me a cynic, but I don't think the average person wants to do this yet. I don't think it's a stretch to say that the average person has had a DVD player in their home for less than five years.
So. The major studios have finally gotten around to releasing real classics on DVD (no, not Fifth Element or Robocop) and now they want a new format. How long will it take to see a Cary Grant or Katherine Hepburn movie on Blu-Ray? The vast majority of truly good movies were made more than 30 years ago, and those are always the last movies to make it to a new format. How many film buffs are really excited about this new format? If The Fifth Element and Robocop are counted among the "classic" movies available on the new format, I'm guessing zero.
So the only early adopters will be the same gadget hungry geeks who invested in Laser Disc players. We all know how well that worked out. I'm really looking forward to watching this fall on its face.
Whaa? New discs from Sony? Sign me up!
- The Matrix
- Batman Begins
- The Bourne Supremacy
- Aeon Flux
- Jarhead
- U2: Rattle & Hum
There are many articles about HD DVD/Blu-ray titles on Google News.TO START
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I would wager that no single movie has had more digital releases than Fifth Element. From normal DVD to Bitstream to other special ediitons, it seems like a new version arrives about twice a year.
I liked it a lot but also have trouble thinking of it as a classic science fiction movie in the same way Aliens is a classic... but it is pretty unique and it has a lot of elements that show off sound and video features quite well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I can only wonder if Robocop was filmed with decent quality equipment. . .
.mp3 files on DVD audio disc?
It's called "film."
It's very old movie - it was made in 1989.
It's called "recent."
Isn't it kinda like putting
It's called "capacity."
It doesn't make any sense.
Ahhhhhhhh, it's called "troll."
IHBH
KFG
Until they stop pushing DRM down our throat ....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I think Babylon 5 looks better on VHS than on DVD.
Seriously, they filmed that series with two cameras, a semi decent one that made the sets look a bit plasticy, and something they found in a dumpster. Watching the DVDs you can see the different cameras in use, scene to scene, cut to cut. Decent. Grainy. Decent. Grainy. And they always put the decent camera on the men, and the grainy character on the women. Unforgivable.
It is the last series I would have thought about putting on HD media. Indeed most TV series until the last few years probably haven't got that much resolution.
Also redoing the effects would be an act of sacrilege. You might also get killed by rabid Amiga fans. Video toaster and Lightwave man! 30,000 polygons for B5 itself. Woooo...
Sadly, 90% of the content out there isn't good enough for a bloody iPod video resolution, nevermind HD.
Why buy those movies now on Blu-ray, give it half a year and then they will come out with the directors cut, special edition, 3 Blu-ray set.
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
The other truth of the matter is, for most intents and purposes, the average person has never exploited how good DVD looks in the first place. They use S-video at best. An anamaphoric-enhanced DVD release (as most theatrical DVDs have been since the 90's), on a progressive scan DVD player with component inputs on a widescreen TV looks damn good. Better than most people will ever wish to have in their home.
The big mistake all of the movie companies are making is that they think we are all itching for something new. We aren't. We don't care. Very few people care about this technology. We'll be well into the next decade before we start lamenting that Wal-Mart is carrying more Blu-Ray/HD discs than DVD. The studios and certain techies keep throwing numbers out there, telling us all what we are supposedly missing...and the joke is going to be on them when these things hit the market with a resounding thud.
That was back when blowing up a robot involved actual pyrotechnics.
There are degrees of apparent privacy. Before home video, there were theaters, and therefore home video market when available was greatly influenced by porn availability. You have to go to a public store and be relatively public or receive a potentially conspicuous package, but have to wait and still risk embarassment. The home video market exploded, decreasing the theater market to nil and growing the overall market for porn in general.
Nowadays, how sizable is the home porn video market compared to the more anonymous, the more instantly 'gratifying' internet porn market that has presumably overwhelmed DVD/VHS distribution due to the immediacy and anonymity the computer offers. If nothing else, seeing all the computers I've dealt with where people stick porn in places they perceive as obscure suggests they have higher confidence in hiding files on a computer than hiding tapes or discs in their home. Even for the television channels, I would wager people feel safer buying some porn network/pay-per-view and hiding the charges on their credit card they find easier than hiding discs/tapes.
In essence, as amusing it is to think of porn as a huge market force in such a context, it probably isn't realistic to consider it a 'killer app' this time around. However, I doubt Sony will be so prudish this time compared to the Betamax fiasco, just to be on the safe side.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Now when you upconvert an interlace source (which film is not) to progressive you can get terrible artifacts, but this also depends on the quality of the upconvert hardware/software. Some HDTVs are un-watchable trying to view NTSC, others actually improve the image HUGELY, it all depends on the upconvert algorithms and horsepower assigned.
If you have ever seen 1080I shot live like some of the BRAVO performances you will see that that the image is stunning fluid and better quality than 24fps film. 1080p will be even better when there is a lot of rapid motion of the whole scene. 1080I looks great when filming plays on BRAVO because they avoid exactly this sort of camera motion. 24fps stutters when you scroll and interlace breaks up into a nasty comb effect. 1080P avoids both. And yes this is why gamers are obsessed with frame-rate. Games tend to be nothing but fast motion and pans. Even 120fps isn't overkill for rapid motion. Granted your eye can't see changes at 120fps, BUT -- and this is a big but -- when you have large field rapid motion your eyes will track the apparent motion. The edges will blur as your eye tries to smoothly track a moving image that is actually a series of stills at the frame rate. The only way it could look un-blurred is if your eyes actually tracked them in with a motion that was a series of skips at the frame rate (not even vaguely humanly possible).
For 24fps film 1080I is much better than 720p. 720p is probably a good choice for sports however for all the reasons listed above. OTA transmission doesn't have the bandwidth for 1080p however (at least not with mpeg2). 1080p if pretty close to nirvana for me, past here the gains are so insignificant as to be pointless. But you can always go higher on the frame rate. Shooting stuff in 60fps or higher would likely lead to new filming styles as current ones purposely avoid things that make 24fps look bad.
The film industry should film everything in 60fps whether film or video (and progressive scan only for video). 1080P will look glorious once there is actually material available. This may be the ace in the hole that put Blu-Ray over HD-DVD in a couple of years. But only if content providers wise up and start making 60fps content.
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I'd put Pulp Fiction and Die Hard on my list of classics, even a pretty short list. They both fail your Bruce WIllis Litmus Test.
I'm a filmmaker, and I can't say that I look forward to shooting at 60P. Actually you can already (most economically at 720, but if you're willing to spend the $ and put up with a 2-piece camera system you can at 1080), but for dramatic films higher frame rates are only used for slow motion.
There have been film-based higher frame-rate systems in the past as well, but they never caught on. The problem, as I see it, is that frame rates above about 40fps or so look TOO real. Sets, even well built ones, look like sets -- your brain isn't as easily fooled at 60fps. Even acting tends to look worse -- it's strange, but all the visual cues that are used to convey action and emotion work differently. I suspect that it's possible to develop new film making techniques that would work for high frame rate cinema, but I doubt that it will become universal any time soon. Perhaps eventually when the current generation with its conditioned responses to 24fps drama passes on...
Where I definitely DO see 60fps HD fitting in beautifully is for "experience" kind of things -- rides and simulations and such. It really gives that "looking through a window" feeling that can become really transparent in that situation.
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I won't argue that artifacts can be magically fixed through manual or automated processes, but people make careers of restoring old media. Fixing thousands of frames in movies would definitely be harder than fixing faded and cracked old pictures, and fixing audio would make my head spin. The automated processes used to digitally "restore" movies have been known to occasionally blur out things that are not artifacts or leave some artifacts behind. Removing hiss from audio is likely complicated as well and may lose some (hopefully unimportant) sounds. The Criterion Collection has fabulous restorations of actual classics on DVD. With any restoration youll have errors still. If a majority of the viewing area is improved or maintained with a major increase in resolution people will prefer the new high definition format. If analog-sourced audio is converted to digital at a higher sampling frequency the sound will be reproduced more accurately than previous digital formats and people who think they can hear the difference will prefer the new high definition format.
I will agree with you, however, that improvement in audio and video quality could never make a bad movie magically turn good.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
Screw the new formats, and screw the DRM that comes with it. I get my HD movies off usenet just fine, thanks. I _usually_ own the DVDs, too. (Sometimes I just want to check something out, and can't be bollocksed to traipse to the video store through a foot of snow.) But then, DVDs don't look as impressive and 'secksiful' on a ten foot screen anyway.
:P Between that and my unlimited download, unlimited speed, 70+ day multipart binary retention, premium usenet feed... I COULD DOWNLOAD ENTIRE INTERNETS!
I have to agree with what someone above said, there's not going to be any more 'formats'... It's all about portability and access of the 'files'. We're at a point now, where sooner rather than later, buying movies and music is really going to be a matter of licensing rather than owning something tangible.
This will be both good and bad. There are some people, me included, who aren't really going to notice the difference... I've actually downloaded DVD ISOs of discs I own, because I couldn't find the damned thing, or downloaded anime preformatted for my PSP. (Or at least, a DVD rip I can transcode.) So, with that becoming sort of the norm, I won't lose much sleep over it. (Besides, I treat physical media terribly to begin with.) But for some people, this will just break them, on a fundamental level. Sucks to be them, but they're simply not fit for the digital world. And I won't lose much sleep over them, either.
Now if only I had Verizon FIOS, and its 15mbps downstram for $40 a month.
No wait, better yet... If only I lived in Japan and could share a 1gbit fiber line with twenty other people for $50 a month....damn, the very thought brings a tears to my eyes... *wrings out his eyepatch*
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