S&V Grading of BD Studios in '08 (so far). (1 Viewer)

[Douglas Monce]

Clearly they haven't made that goal yet as there are still a number of BD25s being released.

Speed Racer actually is a 3 disc set. The only thing on the first disc is the movie.

Doug

 

[Danny_N]

Are your telling me that Blu-Ray is not for people who like good movies?

 

[Jason Seaver]

I'm guessing "JJ" is "just joking", right?

Still, I get a little annoyed at the rigidness of the "lossless or nothing" crowd. Part of it is that I really can't tell how much of any improvement I hear in a lossless track over a lossy one - and the lossy ones on BD tend to be darn good - is the placebo effect. At a certain point, I think lossless becomes an expensive feature, in terms of the storage space and bandwidth it requires, that a relatively small portion of the audience is really going to notice. It seems to me like there should be some room for flexibility there.

 

[Jeff Adkins]

I can get a "broad range of titles with full complements of goodies at reasonable prices" on DVD. I'm buying BD for top-quality. At these prices I don't want something that wasn't done right the first time.

Warner clearly deserves nothing greater than a C, since audio is half the equation here. If even Lions Gate can do lossless on everything these days, then so can Warner. Isn't it sad to think that if Speed Racer were a Lions Gate title instead of Warner, it would definitely have lossless audio?!? I never thought I'd see that day, but it's the sad truth.

 

[Brandon Conway]

Agreed.

Warner, more than any other studio, is a conglomerate of divisions, sub-divisions and departments. It's takes a while to get a change in policy (such as lossless on all releases) to get implemented across the board.

And while lossless is ideal, 640k 5.1 is nothing to sneeze at, IMO.

 

[CraigF]

Agree. If you don't meet the A/V bar set by the rest of your "class", you can't get better than a C. OTOH, if we're grading on "plays well with others", WB did quite well earlier this year and they were "an asset to the class"...

It's tough to rate the whole output of a studio when some titles are great and some are a little short ("does assignments the night before").

Lionsgate, when they were Lions Gate, was one of my scarey studios. I only have two BD titles from them, both well done. A good sign I hope.

 

[Brandon Conway]

Lionsgate releases about 1/10th as many titles as Warner. They don't have the corporate logjam problem.

 

[Jason Seaver]

Says who? I'd put it at closer to a quarter or a third, and that's for titles I'd actually buy.

 

[cafink]

Which is one of the reasons they're a better studio, deserving of a better grade.

 

[Jason Seaver]

I can't begin to understand the logic where Lionsgate is a better studio than Warner because they release an order of magnitude fewer movies, even if they do have a couple extra rear channels.

 

[Brandon Conway]

Especially sense, in pure numbers, Warner has released far more quality (with lossless audio) releases than Lionsgate has.

 

[cafink]

I don't think anyone's made that argument. I'd consider them the better studio not because they release fewer movies, but because "they don't have the corporate logjam problem" which has negatively affected several Warner titles. Brandon appeared to be passing this "logjam problem" off as an excuse for Warner's audio issues, but having an explanation for the release of an inferior product doesn't actually make the product any less inferior. That's why I agree with those who'd give Warner a lower grade; nothing--especially not "goodies"--is more important on a DVD or Blu-ray disc than the film itself, and the audio is a major part of that.

 

[Brandon Conway]

Warner has 57 releases so far in 2008 by my count.

Warner 2008 releases with lossless audio (35 so far):

10,000 B.C.
August Rush
Batman Begins
Beetlejuice
Blow
Body Heat
The Brave One
The Dead Pool
Eraser
Every Which Way But Loose
The Gauntlet
How the West Was Won
I Am Legend
In the Valley of Elah
The Invasion
Justice League: The New Frontier
L.A Confidential
Led Zeppelin: The Song Remains the Same
The Lost Boys
Magnum Force
Natural Born Killers
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
One Missed Call
Otis
Outbreak
Pale Rider
The Perfect Storm
P.S. I Love You
Rest Stop: Dead Ahead
Rest Stop: Don't Look Back
Risky Business
Sex and the City: The Movie
Sudden Impact
Twister
V for Vendetta


Warner 2008 releases without lossless audio (22 so far):

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1.0 Mono)
Another Cinderella Story (DTV)
Appleseed: Ex Machina (DTV)
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Batman: Gothan Knight (DTV)
Bonnie and Clyde (1.0 Mono)
The Bucket List
Cool Hand Luke (1.0 Mono)
Fool's Gold
Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd Out of Control (DTV)
Justice League - Season 1 (TV)
Lost Boys: The Tribe (DTV)
Michael Clayton
Mongol
No Reservations
Pushing Daisies - Season 1 (TV)
Sharkwater (TV)
Smallville - Season 7 (TV)
Speed Racer
Sublime (DTV)
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - Season 1 (TV)
Under Siege 2: Dark Territory

So, up through the 10/7 releases, it's 35 w/ lossless, 22 without. Of those without, 3 are classic films with the original mono tracks, 6 are Direct-to-Video releases, and 5 are TV shows that had worse than DD 5.1 lossless when they aired, leaving 8 releases without lossless that have no reason other than outdated policy. And 5 of those are releases from before June.

So the pattern here is pretty clear.

Now, Lionsgate has released the following in 2008 so far (20 titles):

3:10 to Yuma
The Bank Job
Belly
Black Mask
The Doors
The Eye
The Forbidden Kingdom
Good Luck Chuck
The Invincible Iron Man
Mad Men - Season 1
Meet the Browns
Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow
Rambo: First Blood Part II
Rambo III
Rambo
Saw IV
Step Into Liquid
War
Weeds - Season 3
Witless Protection

All I'm saying is that 35 releases with lossless from Warner is more than Lionsgate's 20.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Again I think Warner's lossy audio choices have more to do with the fact that some of their releases are by necessity BD25, which really isn't Warner's fault.

Doug

 

[Ron-P]

It's a 100% Warner's choice and fault. Look at the Blu-ray of Doomsday, reference quality 1080p image and a HD-DTS Master Audio 5.1 track.

 

[Bryan Beckman]

I'm not sure I'm totally convinced of the argument that the BD25/50 situation is out of Warner's hands. How many catalog films have the other studios released on BD50s this year alone? I was just reading the BD review of "Romancing the Stone" on this forum, and it's listed as a BD50 (and with very few extras, typical of Fox). Surely "Romancing the Stone" won't sell as many copies as "Speed Racer," so why would Fox go that route? The oft-listed reasons of limited BD50 replication capacity and unattractive cost-benefit ratios don't seem to hold in this case. I suspect that's true with at least a good portion of the other BD50 catalog titles (I don't know the numbers).

 

[Jason Seaver]

Doomsday: 113 minutes
Speed Racer: 135 minutes

Could be the difference maker if you're up against the edge of capacity.

 

[Ron-P]

What's the average space used by a 2hr film and a lossless track?

 

[CraigF]

So what is the WB reason for not having so much access to BD50? Because they were later getting into the BD game, did other studios have much of the BD50 replication already under contract?

 

[Douglas Monce]

Warner releases more films on blu-ray than any other studio. I suspect that each studio at this point is limited to a particular number of BD50 releases in a particular time period. If there is a quota of BD50s allowed for each studio, they might very well have to make choices as to which films get a BD50 and which don't. Other studios that don't have quite as heavy a release schedule may not have to make those choices quite so often.

Warner was recently very vocal about the problems that still exist with blu-ray, both in marketing and production.

Universal's release of The Thing on blu-ray has been criticized because the picture quality supposedly isn't as good as the HD DVD was. It has DTS master audio and is on a BD25. Universal had to lower the bit rate to be able to include the lossless audio, and apparently it shows in the image quality, at least according to some. I haven't actually seen the disc myself.

Doug