A few members of the HTF staff are down in LA for a Blu-ray media event this week. Yesterday we met with Fox and they showed us some highlights of some upcoming BD titles:
Die Hard 4 (November 20th): Only available as part of the Die Hard Collection. It is the theatrical cut. Only the DVD has the unrated extended cut. Fox reiterated that there wasn't enough time to put the extended cut on BD. There is also a BD-J game with a funny intro by Kevin Smith. To win the game you have to go through three levels of a building without being detected.
Independence Day (December 4th): 27Mb/s. There is a BD-J game that uses persistent storage to save your place in the game. The game starts the movie with a list of things on the bottom of the screen that you have to find (glass of ice water, newscaster with glasses, etc). When you see an item you move the curser to it and click enter. There are different things to find every time to play the game.
I Robot (2008-TBD): In addition to going through the menu, you can access special features anytime during the movie by using the appropriate color button. There are 3 commentaries accessible by selecting the green button on the remote. The blue button pulls up the index, the yellow button the trivia track and the red button accesses featurettes that are relevant to the section of the movie you are in.
Master and Commander (2008-TBD): 25 Mb/s. Has a my scenes feature to save you favorite moments. It doesn't appear that you can share them online like you can on some Universal and WB discs. There is also a map that you can activate anytime to see where the ships are in relation to each other (similar to the assassin tracker in Smokin' Aces).
Sunshine (2008 TBD): This is Fox's first picture with true PIP technology. If you don't have a profile 1.1 compatible player, you can watch the PIP files in a full screen mode (they are in standard def so they don't look as good in full screen, but at least you are given the option of still being able to see them). In addition to PIP, you can also change the audio mix. You can pull up a menu that shows the 5 speakers, and select the one that you want the computers voice to come through. Not sure why you would want to change this on the fly, but you can.
Die Hard 4 Special Edition DVD (November 20th): On disc two of the special edition DVD are two windows media copies of the film. On optimized for Windows Plays For Sure devices, and the other optimized for PCs with Windows Media. Both files have DRM and can only be played back on one device. The PC file is 1.5Mb/s while the portable is approx 700Kb/s. The support site will be http://www.foxdigitalcopy.com. There was an indication that WB will also be including something similar on the new Harry Potter release.
Die Hard 4 (November 20th): Only available as part of the Die Hard Collection. It is the theatrical cut. Only the DVD has the unrated extended cut. Fox reiterated that there wasn't enough time to put the extended cut on BD. There is also a BD-J game with a funny intro by Kevin Smith. To win the game you have to go through three levels of a building without being detected.
Independence Day (December 4th): 27Mb/s. There is a BD-J game that uses persistent storage to save your place in the game. The game starts the movie with a list of things on the bottom of the screen that you have to find (glass of ice water, newscaster with glasses, etc). When you see an item you move the curser to it and click enter. There are different things to find every time to play the game.
I Robot (2008-TBD): In addition to going through the menu, you can access special features anytime during the movie by using the appropriate color button. There are 3 commentaries accessible by selecting the green button on the remote. The blue button pulls up the index, the yellow button the trivia track and the red button accesses featurettes that are relevant to the section of the movie you are in.
Master and Commander (2008-TBD): 25 Mb/s. Has a my scenes feature to save you favorite moments. It doesn't appear that you can share them online like you can on some Universal and WB discs. There is also a map that you can activate anytime to see where the ships are in relation to each other (similar to the assassin tracker in Smokin' Aces).
Sunshine (2008 TBD): This is Fox's first picture with true PIP technology. If you don't have a profile 1.1 compatible player, you can watch the PIP files in a full screen mode (they are in standard def so they don't look as good in full screen, but at least you are given the option of still being able to see them). In addition to PIP, you can also change the audio mix. You can pull up a menu that shows the 5 speakers, and select the one that you want the computers voice to come through. Not sure why you would want to change this on the fly, but you can.
Die Hard 4 Special Edition DVD (November 20th): On disc two of the special edition DVD are two windows media copies of the film. On optimized for Windows Plays For Sure devices, and the other optimized for PCs with Windows Media. Both files have DRM and can only be played back on one device. The PC file is 1.5Mb/s while the portable is approx 700Kb/s. The support site will be http://www.foxdigitalcopy.com. There was an indication that WB will also be including something similar on the new Harry Potter release.
These are for sale individually.
