Just as a quick follow up - in case US fans cannot wait, the UK release of this which came out in September is region free. I tested it on one of my US PS3s.
Although filmed on 16mm (as are most UK filmed TV shows) this does look very nice. When I compared the BD to the original UK DVD of it, the BD was massively better.
The packaging claims that the picture is windowboxed - which seems very lazy by Criterion not to have updated the text from the SD-DVD version. Furthermore the use of a cardboard digibox is a disgrace - for a label which prides itself on quality, these flimsy easy to scuff cases look cheap.
Christian Slater plays a security guard in the first film who is hypnotised by Austin using the "powers" that he learned in the east. It's a very amusing cameo and was a noticable ommision from the US DVD.
Maybe not in the USA but in Europe there were loads. We've had widescreen TVs available to the masses since the early 90s and the BBC has been making widescreen standard definition programmes for the same length of time.
Any idea if the Christian Slater and Death of A Henchman bits are in this version? We had them in the UK cut, but they were missing from the R1 DVD - never could figure out why? The UK lost the line about Prince Charles due to over sensitivity after the death of Diana just before the film...
Just received from my rental company the first three discs of the Blu-ray release of the classic Supermarionation series "Thunderbirds"
First of all, the episodes have been cropped from 4:3 to 16:9 which whilst "morally" unacceptable, doesnt actually harm the enjoyment of the episodes.
As...
I had my copy of Starship Troopers arrive today and this is a BD-J title. Interestingly enough, when you activate the Bonusview feature it reloads the Java and then kicks off the BV from the start of the film (regardless of where you were when you activated it). Then upon leaving BV it...
Of course not, but why should we - stop apologising for clumsy design Put it another way Is it really hard to enable full selection of the relevant options without the user having to go out of his/her way or interrupt the start of the film? Sheesh
Well its more like mini hardback books, with a spindle inside - akin to a digipack. Nearest DVD comparison I can think of is the R1 release of Schindlers List. They are an attempt by Warners to make their titles look prestigious when for me it has the opposite effect. Looks cheap and there is...
John, I'd echo the comment about player generated subs on Blu-ray. They are a hell of a lot less intrusive than there were/are with dvd. The real "test" though is whether the studios go to the effort to duplicate the relevant fonts etc which are used in the films rather than a generic font...
But thats no need to not be aware and critical of the shortcomings imposed upon us by either the studios or the technology manufacturers. For example my biggest bugbear with BD is the lack of a resume function for BD-J discs. With more and more of these being released it seems positively...
The complaint quite reasonably is that you should be able to start the film from the menu after you have adjusted the settings, as opposed to having to pause the film, make the adjustments via the pop up, and then restart the film. Given that films still tend to have the lossy audio formats...
Dont think they did! The 1997/98 releases which were canned IIRC after The Spy Who Loved Me certainly didnt use the original film artwork. I dont think any Bond DVDs have used these - they all went for generic bland imagery which the BDs have continued.
Both series of Life On Mars are coming out on BD here in the UK in October. Given that the show was made on super 16mm this surprises me, but they should still benefit from high bit rate encoding compared to DVD levels.
not quite that simple though - although not implemented on the relevant releases (which have been converted) European HDTV material will almost certainly be 25p or 50i. So far all of the BBC releases have been converted to 24p or 60i
British advocates of HD-DVD have been spinning this line for the last 18 months but I cant say I've really noticed it. In fact I've seen the opposite. Blu-ray versions of Face Off and Brokeback Mountain to name just two. Studio Canal were supposed to be the saviours of HD-DVD but aside from...
What would be more relevant though is to ask which series which exist as 35mm negs would we like to see on HD. Most shows since the mid to late 80s whilst being originated on 35mm were edited on tape/in the video domain. Hence whilst it might be theoretically possible for some of these to be...
I have the UK HD-DVD of OOP and its a 2 discer. Have briefly checked out the end of the film - ie the big battle and it looked and sounded superb in Tru HD on my 100 inch screen (Mitsubishi HC5000 1080p projector). I dont really care about IME but in this case I decided to go for the HD-DVD...
on the other hand its perfectly possible to be a fan of world cinema and not care for Bonnie & Clyde. I've never cared for either of the leads, and found this to be very over-rated when I picked up the widescreen DVD back in the late 90s. I'm glad Warners are releasing it, because it has a...