Razor Digital Exclusively Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

link

The trend continues.

Even on the hardware side now with Denon going Blu-Ray.

How are Imax films normally displayed on video? Do they keep the original aspect ratio, or do they matte it for widescreen?

The Imax films I've seen on video are OAR.

Doug

The biggest problem with IMAX movies so far is that the large-format negatives are routinely improperly scanned with gear optimized for 35mm scanning, and so most IMAX DVDs look blurry and out of focus. Ben-Hur on DVD (the new one) has the same problem.

Wow! 5 replies and no negative HD-DVD spin yet? I am proud of you guys!

Too bad you had to post that.
No reason to be proud of you, apparently.


Cees

Does anyone have any figures on how much it costs to do a dual-release on both HD DVD and Blu-ray?

I've been following the Insider Discussions over on AVS pretty closely (I'm a few days behind in my reading), but I've never seen any solid figures on the real costs for studios to release titles on both formats.

Perhaps for non-major releases such as these, it's not possible to do both formats, but if you're going through the work of making an HD master, wouldn't you want to sell to as many people as possible, so long as the additional costs weren't outrageous?

If they don't get fancy with the menus and interactivity, and they use the same encode for the audio and video, where is the huge additional cost that would prevent a studio/distributor from tapping as much of the HD market as possible?

If I've missed such information, I would appreciate a link to it. If anyone has such information, I'd be very curious about the details. Maybe that would help to show me that studios are exclusive (to each format) for a better reason than just political loyalties.

I imagine that for titles which are only expected to sell a thousand or so copies, two glass masters would be prohibitive, especially since releasing on two formats won't come close to doubling sales (since there's likely a non-trivial set of people with both players).

Over at AVSforums RBfilms shared some information from last year about what his prices were for producing each format in terms of glass master fees and AACS fees and such. You have to consider that in addition to the outlay to go all the way from initial production to disc replication, a small company has to make plans on how many to produce for each format. It's probably far less of a gamble to be worng on one format then to guess badly on 2 different formats on top of the additional expense of dual format production.

This is why I'm going to be watching this with interest.
Blu-ray production costs are across the board higher.
The glass masters are double the cost (of HD DVD), and then on top of everything there is the mandatory AACS license fees with Bd (that aren't mandatory on HD DVD).
And Razor wants to release these in Q4? Exclusively on a format that skews younger, demographically, than the competing format. When there will be a dozen other exclusive high profile, big budget Hollywood spectaculars (and TV series apparently) vying for the PS3 owners money?

Yeah. This is going to be interesting.
But then, not really. If Razor doesn't invest in new masters, why would anyone want to buy these regardless of the format?