A Few Words About A few words about...™ 300 -- in HD & BD (1 Viewer)

[Cees Alons]

Jari,

You can link to other sites. But will you please reduce the verbatim quotes here.
Especially if it contains complete nonsense like "I definitely saw a few eyes go wide in shock, let me tell you".

 

[Jari K]

Got it Cees. This wasn´t intentional, I just copy-and-pasted part of the text. I did some editing now, though.

I just feel that this is a major rumor. Perhaps Blu-ray re-release (*IF* it´s coming) of "300" will be the first release for the "full" BD-J... Hope hope.

 

[Cees Alons]

Jari,

Although my "nonsense" comment was meant in a light-hearted way, the main reason we ask this as a general policy is copyright issues. We don't want those.


(BTW, the sly accusation of Warner reps (as being in favour of HD DVD somehow), and the way it is presented, reminds me of a recent report at another site about an EMA panel. Appeared to be utterly biased, false and incorrectly suggestive.)

I couldn't find the article following your link. Who was the author?


Cees

 

[Jari K]

It´s on the front page of Digitalbits and the report is from Bill Hunt.

The other link is from some other person from the 300/Blade Runner event in "Comic-Con".

These quotes are from Deborah Snyder, not from WB. So again, far from official of course. But interesting, I would say.

 

[Tino]

It is

 

[Rob Young]

I'm getting the blu-ray version since it is cheaper and I do not care about the added extras on the hd-dvd version.

Nice to be a dual format owner.

 

[Adam_G]

I think it's ridiculous that they don't have the bluescreen pic-in-pin on the Blu-Ray version. It's clearly winning the format war, yet they give the feature to HD-DVD. Should be on both imo.

 

[Paul Arnette]

^

 

[RickER]

My thoughts too. Want a little butter Paul?

 

[Bleddyn Williams]

More BD promises for the future. The HD DVD works great and is in stores now.

 

[Jefferson Morris]

Agreed. BD's advantages remain hypothetical. TheDigitalBits' cheerleading for the format is a little tiresome, though I understand Bill's reasons.

My verdict on the IME for 300 is that it's an excellent feature, and a clear discriminator between the two releases for those who want to learn about how the film was made. Had all other things been equal, I might have gone for the BD version, given the fact that my PS3 outputs BD via HDMI, and my 360 add-on drive doesn't...but all other things were not equal.

--Jefferson Morris

 

[Douglas Monce]

The Picture in Picture feature doesn't work on Blu-ray yet, so they really couldn't offer it at this time. This would be an HD DVD only release (for now) if they had waited for Picture in Picture on blu-ray.

Doug

 

[Todd H]

Picture-in-picture seems to work fine on the Blu-ray version of Dragon's Lair.

 

[Douglas Monce]

I'm not sure how they did this for Dragon's Lair. There seems to have been some kind of technical trickery as I don't believe that any blu-ray player on the market at this point has the second chip required to do the video overlay for Picture in Picture.

The only player right now that might be able to do BD-J picture in picture is the PS3 and it would have to do it through some kind of software emulation.

Doug

 

[Tino]

And also on The Descent.

 

[Jari K]

So? I´m happy to double-dip if that´s the case in the near future. Blu-ray-version also "works great and is in stores now". It´s not "combo" and has additional PCM-track. Nothing wrong with that either.

I believe that this "rumor" (if Deborah Snyder actually said: "they were working on a more elaborate IME for the Blu-ray, which was going to have storyboards and production artwork in addition to the bluescreen footage") is an important one. Why?

Well, this might mean that "300 re-release" could be the first proper release on Blu-ray supporting the "full" BD-J. So when BD-Java is finally ready, "300" will be released (perhaps some other titles also) supporting PiP, storyboards etc. Snyder might have leaked something very important..

Of course some HD DVD-fans hope that full BD-J, Fox support etc doesn´t materialize, but I think there´s an old saying of who gets the last laugh..

 

[Robert George]

PiP, as defined by the format specs, does not currently exist on Blu-ray. PiP requires dual video decoders and no Blu-ray players have this. The Blu-ray spec requiring dual decoder support is not scheduled to go into effect until the first of November.

Those BD release so far that have what looks like PiP are using some other authoring to accomplish this.

 

[Bleddyn Williams]

The "SO" is that the IME is here NOW on HD DVD. The blu version is missing what is to a lot of us a major bonus feature. As this thread is discussing the two versions that were released on Tuesday, that seems a fair point to me.

 

[Bleddyn Williams]

Yes, I seem to remember reading around the time of release that The Descent actually has a second encoding of the film with the PIP window on it.

 

[Tino]

Same end result though right? Looked like PIP to me.