What can we do about Warner Bros? (1 Viewer)

[zackscott5]

Sony tried that with Superbit DVD's. They weren't that big of sellers because they took out the extras which is what the general public wanted.

Honestly, I feel that Warner Brothers is doing a phenominal Job with Their Blu-ray's just with the given fact that they all have Lossless Audio. (except the early blu's like Goodfella's and The ROad Warrior) BUt you have to admit that for a studio releasing such wonderful classic films like BOnnie and Clyde, Casablanca, and most of Kubricks biggest hits at such a point of infancy with this new format really shows that Warner's knows who the main demo for HIgh-Def Video really is...The good ol Laserdisc consumer from the 90's.

Remember the side flips on those? Did we complain about that? No! We kept on buying them at the premium price of $39.99. I can live with the minor inconvenience of having to switch the audio from DD to Lossless. I did it with DVD's switching from DD to DTS!

 

[Jeff Whitford]

No if the disc defaulted to True HD everything would be fine. Missed the rest of the thread did you?

 

[Powell&Pressburger]

Always looking forward to WB's releases but at the same time hoping they do them justice... I want My Fair Lady badly... but would be afraid they'd use about 28GBs of a 50GB disc for the feature and use about 10 more GBs for the extras. The film will just be ok looking... My worst nightmare.

 

[John H Ross]

But it doesn't make everybody else right. Hell, the James Bond "ultimate edition" cock ups weren't important to many people, but they were still cock-ups which, thankfully, have so far been addressed and corrected on the BD releases! (Thanks for the patronising tone there by the way, appreciated - not!)

Come on, SURELY you can't really say that what Warner requires us to do is good. Surely! Let's switch it around. If every Warner title from tomorrow defaulted to the TrueHD track, meaning that the movie just started and you had to do NOTHING, would you be pleased?

I mean it makes no sense to default to an inferior audio track. No sense at all. Not when there's no obvious way to correct it before the movie starts.

If you browse through various other forums you'll see a lot of people have been disappointed by the sound quality on THE DARK KNIGHT because they simply didn't know that they weren't listening to the Dolby TrueHD track! If they're using their player to decode the audio (as I do) there's no way of seeing what you're listening to! How are they to know that Warner Bros is encouraging them to listen to the wrong track right out of the box?

And as for my other points - so what if other studios are guilty of those things too? It doesn't mean that Warner Bros isn't!

 

[Vegas 1]

Hopefully films like My Fair Lady will get at least a 2-disc SE with one disc the film only, let's make the best of the disc space available no short cuts.

 

[John H Ross]

Not while the film was playing though I bet!

 

[Michael Reuben]

You've missed my point entirely.

You started this thread with at least one factual inaccuracy ("non-existant [sic]" extra features on Warner catalogue titles) and several gross mischaracterizations (DNR and EE on "many" Warner catalogue titles -- overlooking the many catalogue titles that don't have any -- and glitches that aren't fixed -- as if none ever are, e.g. Full Metal Jacket).

When these errors were noted, you had no response, which effectively means you conceded the points.

Factual sloppiness of this sort makes a person less credible on points where they might make a difference (such as defaulting to TrueHD). That may have something to do with the responses you're getting here. If I were a Warner executive, it would certainly affect how I received your input.

 

[Michael Reuben]

I have my own qualified experts to to back me up, plus there's the little matter of the Blu-ray spec. But we should probably leave this for another thread, since this is becoming something of a thread hijack.

 

[Brandon Conway]

Fair enough. But if Sony can release dozens of titles with just a TrueHD english track, so can Warner.

 

[zackscott5]

ACtually Yes. Pressing the audio button on my remote control. same thing as doing it with a pop up menu on Blu.

 

[Yumbo]

Warner should just default TrueHD, and everyone will be happy.

Name 1 reason why they shouldn't.

 

[Geoff_D]

A TrueHD default would be handy, but thankfully my thumbs are in full working order so a simple button press will do me fine. In the grand scheme of things, it's not exactly a major hardship.

 

[Runar_R]

I guess the two things you can do is to avoid buying their titles and to voice your conserns in forums like this one. WB have a history of taking feedback to heart, so I wouldn't be that surprised if they changed to defaulting to the HD audio track.
I have to admit that it has never bothered me the slightest to have to push the audi-button once to change to the HD audio-track. It's not that I don't see your point (as it would make more sense to start up the HD-track automatically), but to be honest it still doesn't come near to the annoyance of having to spend at least a minute or two skipping previews of the latest Disney-direct-to-video releases before I can see the feature presentation on their discs.

I've never found Warner to be skimpy on the extra features either. The one area I'm conserned is with the way DNR seems to have been used on some titles. Amadeus is on it's way in the mail, so we'll see how that turns out.

All in all, WB has given me some of my favourite HD-moments with their releases of classic movies. Adventures of Robin Hood, Casablanca, The searchers, all the kubrick titles.....

 

[John H Ross]

I agree that skipping trailers etc is a pain in the butt, but I'd still rather do that than have a 2-second audio dropout in all my WB movies!

But my point is you can have the best of both worlds. No trailers AND no audio switching. All WB has to do is default to the HD track. Simple. And everyone is happy!

 

[John H Ross]

Fine. Then what can I say? Enjoy the audio dropouts on your WB movies I guess!

And spare not a thought for those less informed who listen to the DD5.1 track on WB titles, not knowing that there's a better track on there!

 

[Yumbo]

Same attitude prevails apparently as with when Disney defaulted RATATOUILLE to 2.0 for some fantastic reason.

Imagine if all DVDs STILL defaulted to 2.0 over 5.1 (and they used to back in the day).

"Just use the remote!"

 

[Brandon Conway]

If someone doesn't look at the specs of a disc sitting right in front of them I have no sympathy.

That being said, I do feel that the TrueHD should be the default, or, like I said earlier, the only English track on the disc just like Sony does (and also as Fox/MGM does with DTS-HD MA).

 

[Douglas Monce]

Why don't you cue up the movie before your guests get there with all the correct settings, and pause it before the movie starts, just like the projectionist does in the theaters?

Doug

 

[PaulDA]

It's about the relative nature of the inconvenience. The audio issue is inconvenient, but it does not "ruin" the movie watching experience for me (and most people, I'd wager). I rank it far lower than the inconvenience of trekking out to the cinema, not getting the "right seat", listening to people talk during the movie, the noise of candy wrappers, popcorn munching and soda slurping, muffled sound--and so on.

No one disputes it would be better to default to the best audio, but it isn't as big a deal as some other things to most people. That's just the way it is.

 

[John H Ross]

Yes it bothers me. It's an amateurish way to watch a movie. And I don't expect amateurish on an advanced high-definition format.

As to not having sympathy, I'm not sure what it's like over in the States but here you simply don't get the original box when you rent a movie, so you have no way of knowing what audio tracks are on the disc. And if you do purchase the title I'm sure a lot of people don't even look at the back, they just figure that the disc will default to the best track if they're not required to select it in advance.

Stupid of them I guess.