3D HOUSE OF WAX - 3-D Blu-ray Review and Production History (1 Viewer)

[Bob Furmanek]

Our new article on the HOUSE OF WAX 3-D Blu-ray and restoration is on the website, including an interview with Ned Price, VP of Mastering at Warner Bros.

https://sites.google.com/site/3dfilmarchive/House-of-Wax

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

What a massive, detailed article and review of the new disc. Well worth the time for everyone to check out.

 

[Bob Furmanek]

Thank you very much, Peter!

 

[Matt Hough]

Super article and reading it only makes the anticipation of having the disc in my hand all the more tantalizing!

Great job, Bob!

 

[RolandL]

Bob and Greg, you guys did a wonderful job on this article and review of House of Wax. I do have a question on the sound.

How did you get ".. subtle dialog directionality.." and "Chairs, screams, various effects and music can all be heard emanating distinctly from the surrounds" from the lossless DTS-MA 2.0 surround track? Would'nt the sound be coming from the front left and right speakers only?

 

[GregK]

Bob and Greg, you guys did a wonderful job on this article and review of House of Wax. I do have a question on the sound.

How did you get ".. subtle dialog directionality.." and "Chairs, screams, various effects and music can all be heard emanating distinctly from the surrounds" from the lossless DTS-MA 2.0 surround track? Would'nt the sound be coming from the front left and right speakers only?

This the same remix as previously found on the 2-D DVD. As mentioned in the article, it is a 2.0 matrix surround encoded remix (Lt/Rt), which should be decoded by a Dolby Surround Decoder. It has the proper surround decoding flag in the metadata, so my receiver went into the Dolby Pro Logic decoding mode automatically.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

Is this disc flagged for the player to send the sound out as PCM or straight bitstream? My Oppo player when set to 'auto' will send the audio as PCM or bitstream depending on the disc, but my Pioneer receiver has problems with 2-channel DTS-HD tracks. It locks into 2-channel only mode with no way to turn on surround decoding. I have one Blu-Ray disc, "My Brothers" from Olive Films, which is flagged for bitstream of the DTS-HD-MA track and its also flagged for Pro-Logic decoding which displays on the receiver, but the sound comes out at a very low volume and still only in 2-channel. I had to set my player to always send sound out as PCM to properly watch that disc- I can't leave the player in PCM however as it will then drop the extra surround channel on regular DVDs with DTS-ES.

Thankfully most 2-channel DTS tracks I've gotten have had the discs already authored for the player to go into PCM mode. The Sony player I had before I got the Oppo didn't have full DTS decoding on-board, so if I left that in PCM it would only get the core DTS track and also drop any extra surround channels. I had to manually set it to Bitstream in that case, but remember to set it back to PCM to play discs with any secondary audio, like menu sounds or picture-in-picture commentaries. On 2-channel mixes I had to decide between hearing it with surround decoding but not the full-resolution audio, or full-res audio but just through the front left and right. That was a pain! Don't know why DTS is used so much now anyways when Blu-Ray can handle lossless PCM.

 

[GregK]

Is this disc flagged for the player to send the sound out as PCM or straight bitstream?

I can't say for sure, as my bluray players are set to output the raw digital audio bitstream to my receiver for the reason you mentioned below.

I can't leave the player in PCM however as it will then drop the extra surround channel on regular DVDs with DTS-ES.

The important thing I was happy to see was WB *did* flag the audio as 2.0 Surround, so for most receivers it should correctly matrix decode the Lt/Rt 2.0 Surround mix automatically and correctly.

 

[Paul Hillenbrand]

The important thing I was happy to see was WB *did* flag the audio as 2.0 Surround, so for most receivers it should correctly matrix decode the Lt/Rt 2.0 Surround mix automatically and correctly.

Has the audio track been verified as 2.0 Surround? PowerDVD 13 is reporting House of Wax 3D English audio track as only "DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0" and not detecting surround.

 

[GregK]

The track is 100% confirmed a matrix surround encoded track.

As for the matadata, as in a Surround decoding flag, I do not use Power DVD often. Using my current Power DVD 10, I just sampled a half dozen DVDs and Blurays (and finding 2.0 Surround anything these days is tough). With PDVD10, all six surround encoded tracks simply showed as DTS or Dolby 2.0, followed by the bitrate. Can you list a 2.0 surround disc that shows it differently with this given playback software?

 

[Paul Hillenbrand]

The track is 100% confirmed a matrix surround encoded track..................
Can you list a 2.0 surround disc that shows it differently with this given playback software?

Not for Lossless audio. Interesting; The formats I'm aware of that had matrix surrounds have been re-mixed as separate discrete tracks.
There are titles out there, like the Toy Story 2 3D disc that a "Language" pop-up menu lists an English track for 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio ES but PowerDVD only shows it as DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1. "Surround" audio that is lossless and still flagged for matrix is a new experience for me.

Edit: Surprised and disappointed that there is no audio acknowledgement detail provided on the HoW "Languages" menu.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

Barnes & Noble currently has this on sale for 40% off. For those of us wanting to support classic 3D on Blu-ray, $21.59 is a reasonable price, especially when Dial M is still going for over $30, and for those who live in the States, free shipping for orders over $25.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

My Oppo output the audio as bitstream rather than PCM when set to 'Auto', and strangely my Pioneer reciever displayed it as matrix decoded and put out audible sound, but again only in the front left and right. Setting the player to PCM got it to decode properly, but again if I leave the player in that setting it will drop the extra surround channel on standard DVDs that have discrete DTS-ES. Don't know why my Pioneer won't just decode 2-channel DTS-HD- my older Sony receiver, one of the first to include DTS, wouldn't let you matrix-decode 2-channel DTS at all but that was an extremely rare format back then (I've seen it only on parts of the promo-only THX demo DVD.)

 

[Bob Furmanek]

Another myth is being repeated. I hope that it's not in the documentary or commentary track.

No, there was not a discrete WarnerPhonic audio channel devoted to "piercing screams."

Where do these myths originate?!

And somebody at Film Forum goofed: HOUSE OF WAX was never meant for - and never shown - in 1.85:1!

Aye aye aye...

 

[pinknik]

That image of the projector and the "scream track" are both in the doc. Just watched this last night and the feature looks great.

 

[Bob Furmanek]

Scream track?

LOL