Congrats & Welcome Home to EMA Attendees (Recap from Ron Epstein Post #15)

Re: Congrats & Welcome Home to EMA Attendees

I just want to say thank you to Ron and Adam and anyone else that put in time and effort to make this a successful journey. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of my time here. It was exciting, informative, and a wonderful overall experience. One I won't forget.
I will definitely look into going again if the opportunity presents itself.

Oh, and thanks for the great freebies!!

Re: Congrats & Welcome Home to EMA Attendees

I also would like to thank Ron and Adam for making this the best event my wife and I have ever attended. The event was nothing but first class, and the people were the friendliest and nicest I have ever attended an event with.
Ron it was a pleasure to meet you personally and spend time with you at lunch.

Thank you all again.
RayJr & wife

Re: Congrats & Welcome Home to EMA Attendees

Having attended the meet in 2004 I had no doubts I would have a great time, even though Las Vegas is not really my cup of tea personally. As a group of us was discussing last night, the freebies are just icing (and a lot of it ) on the cake of meeting great people who share common interests. I only wish we could have had a final group day so I could have introduced a couple people to each other who shared some particular interests.

Re: Congrats & Welcome Home to EMA Attendees

I agree with everyone, this was the most fun i've ever had during a meet. Of course i'd only been to the NY/NJ meets quite a few years ago. Was great meeting a bunch of new friends, and seeing some old ones from the east coast. Hope we can do it again next year..fingers crossed. I will surely start posting more, as my membership lapsed for a bit, then i rejoined recently.
Hope to stay in touch with everyone i met via this great forum.

Winston Walker

p.s. To the folks i met heading to the San Diego ComicCon, drop me a line if you wanna do a little HTF/ComicCon meetup!

Re: Congrats & Welcome Home to EMA Attendees

Thanks Ron, Adam, and everyone else involved in planning this event. I also want to thank Martin Blythe for inviting us out to the convention. This was an amazing experience. Not only did we get AMAZING goodies, but I love hanging out with HTF folks. If I can brag, we're a great bunch.

Re: Congrats & Welcome Home to EMA Attendees

This was my first HTF event and it was fantastic! What a great bunch of people to hang out with! I really enjoyed meeting and talking with as many of you as I could. There just wasn't enough time to meet and talk with everyone. If any HTF people are going to be in San Francisco, please contact me so we can get together here.

With Dolby Labs and the soon to be opened Disney Museum here in San Francisco and Lucas facilities both here in SF and in nearby San Rafael, perhaps a future HTF event could be held here! (Of course, the meeting with Lucas would be non-anamorphic).

Re: Congrats & Welcome Home to EMA Attendees

Ernie was a real treat. It's hard to believe that he's 90 years old. He has an incredible memory -- when asked about "The Wild Bunch" he talked about working with Pekinpah and described the making of the one of the scenes where he had to hide the fact that in real life he had broken his foot. He told us about working with Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Stewart, Robert Ryan -- it was fascinating.

He is currently writing his autobiography and he said it should be published late this year or early next year. He said he developed his philosophy of life one day when he was broke and was walking on 8th Avenue in New York City. "I saw a sign that this guy had. He was selling chestnuts. That sign became my life's philosophy. It said, 'I don't want to set the world on fire - I just want to keep my nuts warm.'"

Re: Congrats & Welcome Home to EMA Attendees

I want to publicly acknowledge the monumental efort made by Rom, Adam, Bill et al on our behalf. Being a newbie at these meetings I was made to feel like I'd known all for many years.

The only almost bummer was that today on my return trip American Airlines tried to charge me an extra $50.00 today for excess weight in my suitcase (due to the over 100 DVDs -Blue Rays, WB Box set, various anime tiles and tons of screeners) - [I was carrying 2 bags on the plane as carry-on also]. It weighted 53.5 lbs with an allowable maximum of 50 lbs.

After giving the counter lady a nice smile, she gave me a slap in the hand, told me not to do it again, and waived the surcharge.

Again this was a FANTASTIC and GREAT event!

Thanks again!

PS: I'll be sending Ron some of the pictures I took so that he can post them in the forum.

Re: Congrats & Welcome Home to EMA Attendees

I want to give a big thanks to Ron, Adam & Gregg for the tireless effort they gave in putting this fantastic event together. Thanks to Martin & the EMA for inviting us out there. Thanks to Bill & Gord for co-sponsoring, and for the insightful chats. Thanks to all of the guests who talked to our group. Thanks especially to the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD folks, who advocated forcefully for their format and provided our group with what has to be the summit of swag. It's going to be great to be a dual-hi-def-format home, especially with such quality hardware.

And finally, big thanks to all my fellow attendees - it was great seeing all of you, both old faces & new.

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Huge props to all involved and MAJOR thanks to the studios, the HTF owners, and all attendees, I'm EXHAUSTED and I have over 1500 photos to edit tomorrow!!!

Re: Congrats & Welcome Home to EMA Attendees

I'm definitely going to miss Martin and Peter Staddon, who I often considered partners during the early DVD days.

Re: Congrats & Welcome Home to EMA Attendees

This was my first show and I agree with all the posts that Ron, Adam, Gregg Bill, and everyone else involved put on a great show for us. The show was informative, especially the sessions provided by HTF and the BIts. Even if there were no perks this was a great show to attend. The perks just put it way over the top.

Thanks Again

Re: Congrats & Welcome Home to EMA Attendees

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, let me add my thanks to Ron and everyone. This was my first time but hopefully not my last time. I realize the gifts won't be like this every time, but I'd still like to be considered for next year if invited. I'm officially hooked and it's too late to turn back now.

Re: Congrats & Welcome Home to EMA Attendees

<b>Steve</b>,

I don't believe I actually did a recap yet. In fact, Bill Hunt is
doing the story coverage and I'm handling the photo pages that
should both go up Tuesday (and will be cross-referenced).

<b>Ray</b>,

Lunch with your wife and yourself was fun! Great conversation --
the kind only appreciated by movie enthusiasts like ourselves. I
hope to see you again at a future meet.

<b>Andy Munich</b>,

If you are reading this.....you rock! You were a lot of fun to
hang out with. You kept me laughing throughout this trip.


There comes such a great deal of satisfaction from reading all
your remarks. Though I put a great deal of myself into this event,
I think Adam Gregorich, Ron Stimpson, Brandon Henry and Gregg
Loewen were the real stars of this event.

Will we be doing this again next year? That depends. Martin
Blythe thought the fact we were there along with THE BITS and
TVSHOWSONDVD was a huge plus for EMA. He is going to
recommend we return next year, though admits it is not his
decision. There is also rumor that next year's event will be in
Los Angeles. If that is the case, and we are invited out, perhaps
we can combine EMA with trips to the studio lots.

One thing is for sure....

It will not be a "swag" event. What happened this year with all
of you getting free players will NEVER happen again. If you come
out, it's for the event and not the free stuff.

It was such a pleasure meeting all of you. I have a feeling most
of you will be back for future HTF, BITS, TOSD events.

Re: Congrats & Welcome Home to EMA Attendees (Recap from Ron Epstein Post #15)

Thanks again Ron, it rocked and I'm still collecting all my thoughts and editing thousands of pictures!

Re: Congrats & Welcome Home to EMA Attendees (Recap from Ron Epstein Post #15)

My hats off to Ron, Adam, Gregg and ALL you HTF guys as well, and to everyone who helped organize and set up this event. We were honored to co-sponsor and do what we could to encourage studio and industry participation, and it was just a real pleasure to see and meet all you guys. A lot of people worked very hard to put this together, so well done to everyone involved.

We've started our coverage of the event at The Bits. It's from a Bits perspective, of course, but we're trying to work as many of the relevant details as possible into the narrative. And we've linked back to this discussion area of the HTF and to the official HTF photo/video page too, so everyone can chime in with their own experiences.

Here's the link to The Bits coverage and, again, my best wishes (and thanks) to all of you!

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articl...007/index.html