Grindhouse in Blu hopefully?

Re: Grindhouse in Blu hopefully?

Grindhouse is a Weinstein Company release and they are currently HD DVD exclusive, so no Blu-ray release for now.

Re: Grindhouse in Blu hopefully?

I REALLY wish the Weinsteins would announce some titles, switch sides...DO SOMETHING.

I was really hoping for my favorite film of '07, The Mist, to get some type of High Def. release this March, but it doesn't appear to be happening right now.

First Death Sentence, now The Mist. For some reason, my favortes are being left behind on SD.

Re: Grindhouse in Blu hopefully?

Grindhouse wouldn't look any better on Bluray. The film purposely has a lot of grains. Just buy it on SD DVD.

Re: Grindhouse in Blu hopefully?

It's not like the directors shot it on 480p video. It will look better in HD.

Re: Grindhouse in Blu hopefully?

For some inexplicable reason, there's tons of people that think it should look 'bad'. Sure, it was shot and projected at resolutions higher than even HD can offer but it shouldn't try to achieve the look of the theater for some reason.

Re: Grindhouse in Blu hopefully?

I would have bought it on SD DVD had they released the theaterical version of the film. Unfortunately they decided to release something else. Now I have no reason not to wait for a Blu-ray or HD DVD release.

Resurrecting this thread, as Amazon has Grindhouse on blu for pre-order.  Oct. 5th is release date, original theatrical double feature version with tons of extras.

Awesome news!

 

Thanks, Mike.

Because it's not explicitly mentioned in the press release's list of extras, there's been some speculation that the Machete trailer is missing from the disc.  A user on Amazon speculates that it's not listed simply because it's considered part of Planet Terror (after all, it was presented as part of the film itself on the individual PT release, while the other trailers were omitted completely).  Bill Hunt at The Digital Bits is trying to find out whether the trailer will be included or not, but speculates that if it's not, it's probably due to a rights issue relating to the upcoming Machete movie.

 

I hope the guy on Amazon is right.  It would be a shame for them to finally get around to releasing the theatrical version of Grindhouse, without the alterations made for the individual releases, only to have to make a different alteration instead.

^ According to The Digital Bits today, the Machete trailer is considered part of Planet Terror so everything is included.

Great news, thanks for the update.  While the extended cuts are good, I like having the original theatrical versions of a movie, as well.  I honestly didn't think I'd ever be able to retire the Japanese Grindhouse DVD, and am elated to have been wrong.

This thread looks like the most relevant for a search for Grindhouse.  I could not find another thread discussing this audio issue.

 

Can anyone confirm that this release will be only lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 as reported several places on the 'net and including other BD forums?

 

DVD Empire has a back cover scan but it does not show any information but their text specifications do mention "Dolby Digital 5.1" only.

 

Update:  DVD Talk posted a review and it is indeed lossy-only.  But the reviewer states that the good outweighs the bad.

 

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/44706/grindhouse/

Edited by Keith I - 10/4/10 at 12:46am

If that's the case that's quite disappointing, Keith. 

 

Sorry I can't be the guy to confirm or deny...

DVD Beaver says lossy-only, too:  http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews33/planet_terror.htm

The only reason this is getting lossy sound, is because its supposed to represent a 70s grindhouse flick. If you want hi def sound, you got the extended versions.This even has extended versions of some of the fake trailers. Look at this picture from another forum, how can you not want this ?

I don't buy that reasoning.  For one thing, the extended versions also have the beaten, worn look intended to invoke the "70s grindhouse" vibe.  It didn't stop them from including lossless sound, so why is it an issue for this version?

 

Also, why would that reasoning apply to the audio any more than to the video?  They don't seem to have had any issues releasing Grindhouse in 1080p.  Why is it okay to give it the best possible visual presentation, but not the best audio presentation?

I only want the disc for the trailers and the special features (I have little desire to see Death Proof ruined by having a 1/4 of the movie cut out for this version) so I can live with the lossy audio.

 

 

 

Is that fact, Xenia?  Or speculation on your part?

 

The idea of blu-ray is for the best possible home viewing experience.  Uncompressed audio would only better serve to give us the "70s Grindhouse experience" the directors want us to have. 

 

Even mono 1.0 audio should be uncompressed for home presentations on Blu-ray.

Mike, its just speculation on my part. I also think maybe because its the theatrical version, that the makers of the film put lossy sound on purpose. Also, look at those screenshots on dvd beaver,its not that much of a jump going from dvd to blu ray, 1080 p or not. Im mostly buying it to see it as it was in american theatres. Here in Greece, theatrically we got only the extensions.

You know, it could also be that they were just lazy and said, lets just copy the audio from the japanese dvd boxset, for this blu- ray and be done with it.

I'm also in it wholly for the theatrical experience, one of the most pleasurable ones I'd had in years.  But sheesh, they didn't have the theaters reduce their projection and audio capabilities, did they? 

 

Oh well, I think I can convince myself that this little glitch doesn't really matter so much.

I am guessing this lossy-only issue is because of Vivendi, who put out junk-looking and sounding titles like The Killer (Hard Boiled is coming) and 36th Chamber of Shaolin, both in 1080i, too.  Granted, they are older titles that never had a great source to start with, but like other studios who only put out lossy-only audio (e.g., Music Box Films, Warner's TV shows), the pattern is there.

 

But as the DVD Talk reviewer states, send lots of polite messages to Vivendi to express your disappointment.

Since the entire feature is on one disc, and (according to DVDBeaver), Planet Terror alone takes up 23 GB of that, I'm wondering if lossy audio is the compromise we have to accept in order to have the entire feature, plus commentaries and audience reaction track, on one disc? Granted, the size of the disc according to DVDBeaver is 44GB, but lossless TrueHD or DTS HD MA, may have been just big enough to push the size over 50GB. I also note that the bitrate has dropped for this edition, probably due to the same considerations.

 Over on another forum someone looked at the size of the audio tracks on the single releases, and based on that rough estimate a 24/48 TrueHD track should have just fit.  A 16/48 track would have fit easily.  I have this set and it is othewise excellent but that really is a glaring omission.

Received mine in the mail today . Really low sound on this release. I had to put my tv volume at full blast just to hear at an acceptable level. Anyone else had to do this ??

Hmmm...  Interesting, but nobody seems to mention the fact that Planet Terror will be 2.35:1 AR on this release (and what is supposed to be the original theatrical AR although the DVDBeaver screencaps make some shots look like they were probably composed more for 16x9, which makes some sense if Robert Rodriguez shot it on HD video like he usually does).

 

_Man_

Was that estimate based on removing the DD entirely and replacing it with TrueHD? If it was, then it wouldn't work, because you cannot extract a "core" DD track from TrueHD like you can DTS HD MA. They could have just upped the bitrate on the DD track and I would be happy, especially since theatrical DD tracks are only 320Kbps.

I'm quite sure it would have been in addition to the DD track since the posters there seem to understand that situation quite well, and it would have been a close call as to whether or not it would fit.  But either way, a 16/48 TrueHD track would have fit easily.