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post #31 of 41
10/1/08 at 11:10am

Re: WHV Announcement: The Dark Knight (DVD/Blu-ray)

My 2 cents...

Warner Bros. has been churning out crummy transfers on SD DVDs for the past year or so.

They used to be a leader ("Batman Begins" looks fantastic), but a number of movies have a considerable amount of compression artifacts, digital noise, and look "lo-res" compared to past releases.

I have had to turn off the progressive scan feature on my DVD player to get them to look more watchable on my 37" Vizio HDTV.

It stands to reason that "The Dark Knight" will suffer the same fate as other WB releases recently.

I understand the economics behind "pushing" consumers to Blu-Ray.

It is interesting, though, that other studios (such as Lionsgate of late) can still churn out solid looking SD releases alongside Blu-Ray releases.
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post #32 of 41
10/1/08 at 1:31pm

Re: WHV Announcement: The Dark Knight (DVD/Blu-ray)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jonny P
My 2 cents...

Warner Bros. has been churning out crummy transfers on SD DVDs for the past year or so.

They used to be a leader ("Batman Begins" looks fantastic), but a number of movies have a considerable amount of compression artifacts, digital noise, and look "lo-res" compared to past releases.

It stands to reason that "The Dark Knight" will suffer the same fate as other WB releases recently.

Not necessarily. There's an article on IGN.com with an interview with Christopher Nolan about the Batman Begins DVD release, and Nolan specifically stated that he worked with the home video department to make sure BB looked and sounded good as possible on DVD.

There's no reason he didn't do the same for TDK... he did approve a Blu-ray release with DP Wally Pfister, if I recall correctly.
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post #33 of 41
10/1/08 at 2:22pm

Re: WHV Announcement: The Dark Knight (DVD/Blu-ray)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jonny P
I understand the economics behind "pushing" consumers to Blu-Ray.
If that's their plan then why are there any special features on the DVD? Why not just have special features only on the Blu-ray release?
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post #34 of 41
10/1/08 at 6:55pm

Re: WHV Announcement: The Dark Knight (DVD/Blu-ray)

The 2.35:1 cropping of IMAX isn't a big deal. Because of the huge size of the screen, your vision is concentrated on a fraction of the entire image. That's one reason why the transitions from 2.35:1 to full IMAX were barely noticable.

This is one film I'm waiting for BluRay since the IMAX experience was just fantastic. It'll be good to have it in HD, but I do hope it remains as an occasional re-release at IMAX theaters. No other film I've seen has been so involving... it's an exhausting film in that format.
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post #35 of 41
10/3/08 at 6:26am

Re: WHV Announcement: The Dark Knight (DVD/Blu-ray)

Warner's recent releases of new theatrical titles where they have not sacrificed bitrate to include a pan and scan version of the film on the same disc as the OAR presentation have sported better transfers than a lot of what we saw in 2007. Titles like "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", "I Am Legend", and "Speed Racer" had occasional compression issues as one would expect rather than constant or at least frequent weird noisy halos like we saw on "Happy Feet".

The titles where they either put each aspect ratio presentation on one side of a DVD-10 or put both presentations on the same side of a DVD-9 have been the particularly problematic ones. 10,000 BC was the only dual aspect ratio release where they employed a DVD-14 to allow for the OAR presentation to be presented on a dual-layered side.

In any case, I am not too worried about how TDK will come out on SD DVD.

Regards,
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post #36 of 41
10/8/08 at 10:11pm

Re: WHV Announcement: The Dark Knight (DVD/Blu-ray)

2-Disc DVD DETAILS:





Disc 1: The film, no additional extras

Disc 2:

Gotham Uncovered: Creation Of A Scene

-How Christopher Nolan and his team developed the new Batsuit and the amazing Batpod, and Composer Hans Zimmer on musically characterizing the Joker's reign of chaos

The Dark Knight IMAX Scenes

-View these 6 action packed sequences - shot on the largest format possible - IN THEIR ORIGINAL IMAX FRAMING *, just as they were intended:
-Prologue
-Hong Kong
-Armored Car Chase
-Lamborghini Crash
-Prewitt Building
-Final Montage

* Does this mean 1.43:1, meaning literally original, or re-formatted like the Blu-ray? Time will tell.

Gotham Tonight
-6 episodes of Gotham Cable's premier news program

The Galleries
-Poster Art, Production Stills, Trailers

No mention of the History Channel documentaries "Batman Tech" and "Batman Unmasked".
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post #37 of 41
10/9/08 at 4:40am

Re: WHV Announcement: The Dark Knight (DVD/Blu-ray)

I hope the Galleries section contains at least the three "main" trailers for this film: the one released in Summer '07 (mostly just Bruce and Alfred talking, ending with the fragmented batlogo and the Joker laughing), the one in front of I Am Legend and the one in front of Iron Man (all three also released online via the viral campaign). The BB disc has only one trailer on it, and it's not even the best one of the BB marketing campaign.

I would have loved a really in-depth featurette on the viral campaign as well, but the company WB hired may not allow that kind of access (or it may have been cost-prohibitive to include).
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post #38 of 41
10/9/08 at 7:37am

Re: WHV Announcement: The Dark Knight (DVD/Blu-ray)

42 Entertainment will undoubtedly get some award recognition for the viral campaign, and it would have been nice to include something about it not only because it was so well done, but because it tied into specific plot points and characters in the film.
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post #39 of 41
10/9/08 at 8:19am

Re: WHV Announcement: The Dark Knight (DVD/Blu-ray)

My main fear is the GOTHAM UNCOVERED feature will be much shorter than the Blu-ray version. I thought the History Channel docs were a mixture of content and filler, so I won't miss them too much.

As for the viral campaign, maybe the SD will have some bits in the galleries.
I'm wondering if BD-Live will have some viral connection/content.
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post #40 of 41
10/13/08 at 9:29pm

Re: WHV Announcement: The Dark Knight (DVD/Blu-ray)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicholas Martin
I took a ****load of the Prologue (encoded as mp4 and contained in an mkv file) and cropped it to 2.35:1, and while the sequence itself didn't have any issues of being cropped too much, several shots of the ending clips - specifically the shot of Batman standing atop the Sears Tower - were cropped to the point of masking half of Batman's head.

When Nolan and editor Lee Smith were supervising the crop lines for the 2.40:1 theatrical showings, I have a feeling they didn't just position the crop lines at the top and bottom of the IMAX footage but altered the positions of the crop lines for the more problematic shots to make sure no important information was left out.

I really didn't notice any significant cropping (perhaps in the prologue where Ledger takes off the clown mask and the shot around his face looks awfully tight) -- in fact, I've never seen the IMAX version, but I've done some comparisons between the 2.40:1 and IMAX ratio shots and it seems as though Nolan's shot compositions in IMAX seem a little loose, as if he wanted to make sure the scene worked in scope format too.
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post #41 of 41
10/14/08 at 12:26am

Re: WHV Announcement: The Dark Knight (DVD/Blu-ray)

I emailed Digital Bits to ask if they could find out if the DVD version's IMAX sequences are the original 1.43:1 as the back cover claims if you take it word-for-word, or if it's similar to what the BD will integrate into the film.

Either way, this is one film I'll happily shell out for both 2-disc DVD and BD versions of.
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