Yet, another Fox BR title delayed. (1 Viewer)

[Robert Crawford]

I think it's safe to say that most of us that have BR players are sick and tired of Fox constantly delaying titles that were announced back in January. So "Me, Myself and Irene" joins "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", "The Fly", "Commando" and several other Fox titles that have been delayed over the last 3 months or so.


http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/sh...-ray_Slate/545

 

[Chris S]

So the only title they've been able to release from their announced list at CES is Eragon? Pathetic...

 

[Dave H]

I'll admit I was wrong. I was defending Fox a couple of months back on their initial delay - but, this is just absolutely ridiculous and I am now convinced they had no intentions of actually releasing these titles anytime soon and it was ALL for show at CES.

Furthermore, let me just say they have been releasing crap in terms of video quality in too many cases. No excuse at all - especially compared to what some of the other studios have been releasing.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Which Fox titles have been crappy PQ-wise? I bought a bunch of Fox titles a couple of weeks ago when Amazon had their sale, but haven't watched any of them yet.




Crawdaddy

 

[Rob Young]

Not surprising since the studio is trying to rob us owners with their catalog prices. They obviously don't give a rip and are banking on the fact they KNOW bluray owners will buy the stuff they release.

Man, real consumer friendly!

 

[Shane Martin]

Look at the bright side, you get to pay $40 for the title once they do release it

 

[Jason Seaver]

You have to actually make movies available for purchase to bank on that.

I used to joke that the big CES announcement was just a smokescreen to create the appearance of BD steamrolling over HD DVD (and I still think, looking at Fox's cancellations, a lot of people owe Universal an apology), but I'm coming around to the idea that Fox actually intended to release them and got scared off by AACS being cracked. So, the only things they release are movies like Eragon where the bump of a day-and-date release is potentially too large to ignore.

 

[Chris S]

How does Fox's lack of follow through have any affect on the peoples' opinion about Universal's lack of title announcements? Should we be thankful to Universal that they withheld the announcement of titles that they eventually leaked a few weeks later (and should be noted have so far made good on)?

 

[Jason Seaver]

Because the two were being very much linked in discussion - that BD was kicking HD DVD's butt because of the avalanche of titles being announced for it, including a large number of Fox/MGM catalog titles - while Universal didn't announce anything. Now it looks like Universal was behaving responsibly while Fox was being rash at best and underhanded at worst, but the uproar isn't nearly at the level as it was during the show.

 

[Jordan_E]

This is getting pathetic....
Wait. Getting? It IS pathetic. Fox, you should be ashamed.

 

[Chad R]

Reminds me of the Laserdisc days when you could check the Image website every Friday to see what titles were actually going to be released on Tuesday as announced, and which ones were postponed to a new date (which would inevitably be postponed again). I remember waiting for the Star Wars Special Edition from September through several delays until late November.

 

[Dave H]

I misspoke. There have been a couple titles I've watched recently that I was not impressed with, but they are MGM and Sony - not Fox.

 

[Shawn Perron]

As big as Fox is on piracy, you guys are really surprised they are delaying titles while AACS is completely useless? Supposedly AACS has an update coming shortly, and I bet that all of a sudden Warner, Paramount, Universal and Fox start releasing titles again. Until the AACS fix is released, I bet there are many more "delayed" titles for both formats in our future.

If there is any irritation that needs to be directed somewhere, direct it at the people that made it easy to pirate HD-DVD and Blu-Ray movies. Having AACS broken so early in these formats allows the studios the option to delay or cancel titles while there isn't much profit to be made anyway. Had this happened later when there was more money to be made, I don't think we'd have seen HD-DVD have such a dry spell through the beginning of this year.

 

[Sean Bryan]

Exactly! I agree 100%.

 

[Robert Crawford]

So far it's basically Fox that is delaying titles, not Warner, Paramount, Universal or Sony.

 

[Shawn Perron]

Sure, and Universal, Warner and Paramount never had any plans to release movies for the first 3 months of this year. The easiest way to delay a movie is not to announce it in the first place.

 

[ppltd]

Not sure about Universal and Paramount, but Warner made it quite obvious that they were going to release BD and HD at the same time. Given the state of, or lack of Java support on the BD side has forced Warner to delay (or not announce) many new releases.

With the announcement of Matrix on HD first, here's hoping that Warner gave up on this policy.

 

[Shawn Perron]

How much easier was it for Warner to decide on this policy when any movies they put out were going to be easily pirated anyway? I'm sure delaying titles to wait for Total HD was also a much easier policy to adhere to during this break in AACS as well. The timing of the AACS fix and the sudden increase in HD-DVD release scheduling are far too coincidental to not have been planned. If I ran a studio and the copy protection was broken while sales numbers were so small, I'd probably hold things up too and see what AACS was going to do to fix things.

The real question is: Can AACS can infact secure future releases? If they can, for how long? If AACS is compromised fairly quickly, Hollywood is going to have to decide once and for all what they plan to do. Either they will just have to learn to live with the piracy and release thier movies, or they will have to totally rethink thier HD plans for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. If AACS is totally broken, I can see the studios releasing more classic movies and non blockbusters catalog titles until the market grows enough to support the blockbusters. I really don't think that would be such a bad thing in the long run.

 

[ppltd]

Shawn, while you certainly could be right, the current releases were scheduled well before the fix was in. Bottom line is, I am just glad that the flood gates seem to be opening up now.

 

[Shawn Perron]

From the insider thread at avs:


Cees should be thrilled to see his beloved BD+ being mentioned and possibly implemented.