Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
"...I'd buy that for a dollar!"
Slashcode bug # 497457 - unfixed since December 2001 - Go look it up!
o/~ Join us now and share the software
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
Until they stop pushing DRM down our throat ....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
How about: decisions decisions, DRM or DRM? My answer is "not yet"
John
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.
Letter To Iran
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.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
Retract that comment. You have 20 seconds to comply.
http://cd.textfiles.com/carousel/GIFA/ED209.GIF
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant