LOTR on HD DVD? (1 Viewer)

[DarrylWHarrisJr]

Could be possible Pete Jackson could put together a complete, unedited cut of the film on HD-DVD. 1 disc for 12 hours of LOTR (extended cuts of course) at standard DVD quality?

 

[Kyle McKnight]

Of course it's possible.

 

[Tony-B]

Yeah, I definitely think that it could be done. However, most of us would be complaining because the video and audio quality would suck for HD-DVD standards.

 

[Rob Lutter]

Uh, are you REALLY gonna sit still w/o food/drink or peeing for 12 hours at a time? Really... I don't think changing discs a few times will kill you...

 

[John_Berger]

Uh, are you REALLY gonna sit still w/o food/drink or peeing for 12 hours at a time? Really... I don't think changing discs a few times will kill you...

Not again.

Is it me or is there some condition going around HTF that is making its members forget that there's a PAUSE button on their DVD player?

 

[Tony-B]

Is it me or is there some condition going around HTF that is making its members forget that there's a PAUSE button on their DVD player?

Pause button? What the hell is that? I have never heard of "pause" in my life. Is it similiar to "paws"?

 

[John_Berger]

Is it similiar to "paws"?

Well, two lines going up and down ... I guess that it bears a close resemblance to what a scratch could look like if your cat decided to swipe you with its paws.

(Okay, it's a stupid answer, but I'm stupid for not being asleep right now. )

 

[Ned]

at standard DVD quality?

Barf. I hope this is never done in the lifespan of HD-DVD.

Never, ever, ever.

 

[Jeff D Han]

So HD-DVD will be able to fit more information on
the disc?

I have no doubts that people would snap these up
if they are produced, but I'll stick with my extended
edition regular DVDs. They suit me just fine.

 

[Tony-B]

Barf. I hope this is never done in the lifespan of HD-DVD.

Never, ever, ever.

My point is proven...

 

[Bill Burns]

Uh, are you REALLY gonna sit still w/o food/drink or peeing for 12 hours at a time?

While brief respites between each are a given (I hope), I'm nevertheless signing up for something very similar at full film resolution (woo hoo! ) if the following hits my city:

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-m.../22/09.00.film

I'll be walking around between each to guard against blood clots, for that matter (!), never mind bladder pressure. Many nods to New Line if this comes to pass as reported -- a greater treat for fans is difficult to imagine.

As to an extended viewing of all of these on DVD, back to back, in their extended cuts -- the above theatrical outing notwithstanding, that's just what I'll do with my carousel player when the EE of Return of the King hits -- though at six discs I'll be one slot shy, so a mandatory disc change break is unavoidable. Oh well. The pause button will be near at hand throughout.

When they hit HD-DVD, the audio/visual resolution gains will more than make up for whatever combination of disc swapping/flipping is required. One of the fluorescent discs a few sites were talking about back around 2000 could presumably hold all three, extended, at full 1920 x 1080p (at the time the FD proponents were saying they had several high density layers up and working, with the potential down the road for so many layers of data with the same base technology that a full terabyte of info could fit on one disc), but I lost track of FD and just where the technology was leading not long after the announcement (I believe it was briefly mentioned on DVDFile at the time, and I'm sure elsewhere) -- it looks like blue laser optical discs are the only serious contenders for the next wave, and from what Van Ling and others have said, at full resolution, we don't seem likely to see a capacity allowing for more than a single feature film per disc. How particularly long films will tax the tech (whether they'll have to be split across two discs, or whether the data capacity is sufficient to accommodate them on a single disc), I dunno. I'm afraid I haven't followed the blue laser developments very carefully, either, though I know Blu-Ray is said to have the highest capacity among currently proposed formats (I believe it's in the lead as a likely winner, too?). Others might comment more fully on specific data capacities (a certain Chris and a certain Dave seem to be up to speed on current HD-DVD developments ), which would then give us an idea of what will prove possible for trilogies and other series-films on the HD-DVD format (which I believe is still thought likely for a late 2005 debut?).

 

[Adam_WM]

Even if they are all on one disc, I hope they don't edit them together. I think they work better as 3 separate parts.

 

[Randy B A]

I hope they do this for the God Father saga also. Splitting them up over a few discs is fine with me also. My only complaint with the EE editions is that I only have 5 slots on my changer also as mentioned earlier.

 

[Alistair_M]

I read this interesting post over on dvdtalk

Was LOTR scanned at 1k? and the special effects shots based on that...


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post on dvdtalk by Flave

"I had the distinct pleasure of being shown around Weta Digital back in February of this year by an Associate Producer. I saw all the equipment they're using including their very impressive render farm (2000 CPUs!). One of the more interesting things I saw was the scanning machine they use to digitize their film. (I can't remember now if he said it can scan 4 frames/sec or 1 frame/4 seconds -- I think it's the former.) Also interesting was the conversation I had with the bit-head running this operation. Seems that this machine is capable of scanning up to 4K resolution but Jacksom decided that 1K was enough. When I asked why, he said they did some tests where they showed him 1K, 2K and 4K scans and he said that he couldn't tell the difference. So, they went with 1K scans to keep image size and processing time down.
The point of all this is that since the source material is only 1K in resolution, you will see only a minor visual quality improvement in the HD version, if that. To get full HD quality they would have had to scan the film at a minimum of 2K. And IMO there's no way that they're going to re-scan the film. The special effects were done over the 1K scans and I doubt they would do this work all over again for the HD version. And I believe that there are very few frames in any of these films that weren't digitally altered in some way."

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This does seem to suggest that LOTR will not look much better on HD-DVD. Anyone comment on this?

Hopefully, LOTR is such a big movie for New Line that they'd do HD-DVD with a new scanned source at eg 2k or 4k.

 

[Chris Farmer]

Alistair, I don't think that's true, as about a year ago, somebody had as their sig a comparison between the DVD version of Fellowship and an HD broadcast. The differences were remarkable, it was a detail of the runes from one of Bilbo's maps, and it was astounding.

 

[Ricardo C]

There was also an HD version of FOTR aired last year, it absolutely whipped the DVD.

Someone made a comparison using screen caps from HD and DVD, and then upconverting the DVD caps to 1920x1080. However, the comparison was flawed, since he used nearest neighbor conversion (which left the image looking blocky and filled with artifacts), as opposed to the bicubic conversion any self-respecting HTPC would use. However, the page's wroth a visit, if only to drool over the FOTR HD caps

http://www.geocities.com/sircash13/FOTR.html