Fox Studios is making big points in my book !!! (1 Viewer)

[Dan Hinson]

I thought Titanic was distributed by Paramount...?

Not to get off-topic, but what exactly is Lucas’ issue with using DTS?

 

[ppltd]

David, here is hoping that the other studios follow suit. On both formats. THere is little excuse, at the premium being charged for current releases, not to expect at least one HD soundtract on a release.

While I have not been overly impressed by Fox in the past, if they continue this level of commitment, they will certainly have brought me back on board. Here's to great HDing .

 

[Dave Moritz]

I believe it is a matter of Lucas and Ray Dolby being good friends. And beyond that I believe that Lucas was involved in Dolby Digital EX. I may be wrong and if I am please correct me. I don't remember Lucas ever supporting DTS ever. The only reason there was theatrical DTS releases of Star Wars was most likely only because they needed to provide DTS capable prints to the theaters with DTS decoders. Fox has released titles with DTS in the past but IMHO Lucas will not let them since he owns the rights to Star Wars.

 

[Dave_P.]

Isn't Spielberg heavily invested in DTS as well? You'd think that would put them at odds with each other on the Indy films.

 

[Dave Moritz]

And IMHO that is why we did not see DTS offered on any of the Indiana Jones DVD's. I have allways been under the impression that the Indiana films where more Speilbergs films than Lucas. So I am not sure why Lucas got his way and there ended up being no DTS. I would like to see DTS-HD offered on Indiana Jones when it hits HD, doesn't matter if its HD-DVD or Blu-ray. We will see if Lucas crys about it and gets his way?

Keep up the great work Fox !

Am looking foward to owning:

• Stargate
• Speed
• The Omen
• The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen
• Kiss Of The Dragon
• Fantasic Four
• Ice Age 2
• Rising Sun
• From Hell
• Flight Of The Phoenix
• Transporter 2
• Men Of Honor
• Courage Under Fire
• Commando
• Alien Vs Predator
• The Sentinel
• Entrapment
• Broken Arrow

Just purchased the following:

• X Men 3: The Last Stand
• Behind Enemy Lines
• Transporter

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Thomas, that's a rather nice post (see #19) above. I would
recommend that everyone reread it.

It's absolutely true that neither of these two formats are being
embraced by the general population at this time.

I am also in the camp that believes no matter how many game
consoles are out there supporting either format, most of the people
who buy them will hardly use them to watch movies. I hope I am
proved wrong at that as I know the studios have put a lot of faith
into those players.

Until prices come down on standalone hardware and some of the studios
stop playing it so "safe" and release titles that early adopters actually want
to buy --- these formats are going to remain feed for early adopters ONLY.

.....and let's not even forget the biggest issue about there being
two different formats in the first place. How are average consumers
ever going to be able to walk in the store and justify purchasing
expensive hardware that may not be supported should that format
lose?

We have to stop these senseless arguments about which format
we think is going to be victorious. There is absolutely no way to
gauge such an answer at this point. Better hardware or software
is not an issue here. It all comes down to consumer choice, and
there are just too many variables at this point that make it impossible
to predict where these formats will be a year from now.

 

[MarekM]

well Lucas wrote INDY (script with Phillip Kaufman), so it's his story, he was producer (coproduction of lucasfilm and Paramount), and Spielberg as director.... so overall INDY is in Lucas hands almos as Star Wars, but I am not sure how RIGHTS to Indy are handled

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082971/companycredits

Production Companies
Lucasfilm Ltd.
Paramount Pictures

at least get UNCOMPRESSED PCM or DolbyTrueHD, but I am hoping too for DTS HD MASTER

Marek

 

[TravisR]

It is in America but everywhere else in the world, it's distributed on video by Fox.

 

[ppltd]

I find this all very funny, in a sad sort of way. When I look at the BD and HD-DVD releases in the US and Europe, almost all titles are being released in both formats. Kind of makes you want to cry.

 

[Grant H]

I hope we can get a great transfer of The Abyss! The DVD still looks pretty good for being nonanamorphic. The story was Cameron rejected the anamorphic transfer they were going to use at the time. Bad-looking print I guess. Hope they find a clean one. That movie could really suck you in in HD.

Re: Star Wars. They need another chance to monkey with the soundtracks and make horrible, horrible mistakes. So I'm guessing one of the first sets of Dolby TrueHD 7.1 tracks.

 

[Edwin-S]

I guess the battles just continue to get fought because of the continual posting of unsubstantiated assumptions.....such as the one you made regarding the potential use of the PS3 as a movie player. Once there is an installed base, one will be able to gauge the impact of the PS3 as a player by seeing whether BD movies show a marked uptick in sales in the coming months. If the sales of BD movies increase substantially then it will reasonable evidence that the machine is indeed being used as a player and as a game machine.

All of these threads end up getting derailed because the posting of unsubstantiated assumptions invites rebuttal from people who should really know better than to respond........including myself. However, like a moth being attracted to a light, the urge to respond just becomes too strong and.....VOILA......instant thread hijack. To the OP, my apologies for adding to the jacking of this thread. I agree with you that FOX certainly does seem to be stepping up to the plate in support of BD; however, I still think they are shooting themselves in the foot with their prices.

Edit: Deleted a portion of this post due to a complete balls up, on my part, as to who was saying what. My apologies to ppltd for attributing some comments to him that were, in fact, not his.

 

[Ryan-G]

Actually, it was released last week. I received mine already and did a mini-review on the HD hardware board.

Two major issues with it that I've encountered so far, and I haven't had much time to play with it yet due to school & work.

1. The console instructs you to select "Play HD-DVD" from the media menu. Problem is, there's no obvious selection for it. You have to scroll down to "Play game", and then one more down to make it say "Play HD-DVD".

2. With King Kong, if I start the movie, let it play a minute or two in, go to the title menu, and attempt to enter the sound menu the movie playback crashes. Switching sound before starting the movie works fine. Not a major issue, but if you want to switch sound streams after you start it because you forgot, it may take longer than you thought it would.

Now those are the only issues I've run into so far. I wouldn't call it bug-ridden, but I really have to wonder what QA didn't think to check going into the sound menu after the movie started. It's not exactly odd behaivior.

Additionally, I ran into some problems with installation, but I can't say for certain if they were related to the 1080p update or the HD-DVD install. Either one is a strong possibility.

 

[Edwin-S]

The 1080p update interests me. Is MS is allowing 1080p to go out over the component connection?

 

[Ryan-G]

I don't have a 1080p display to test it with, but what I've read indicates that it will output all content in 1080p, including MS's official announcement.

According to the forums for the 360, it does output 1080p over component.

But of course, since this is MS we're talking about, it's not quite ready for prime time. Output over component is reportedly "Fuzzy". MS states they are working on it. 1080p over the VGA cables apparently works just fine.

Also interesting, MS is rumored to be working on an HDMI cable in addition to the component and VGA already offered. Apparently it'd be a "Adaptor on a wire" setup, but it'd be another option.

Edit: It's very important to note that this could be similiar to other implementations where it's deinterlaced 1080i rather than true 1080p, 1080p wasn't in the original specs. But the 360 does have 3 cores, and the HD-DVD player is tapping them out completely, so it could be MS managed to multi-thread the decode process across all 6 hardware threads letting the do full 1080p. Today's processors can nearly decode 1080p in software at a reasonable rate, if they multi-threaded it with 3 processors they might be able to pull it off.

 

[Edwin-S]

As I understand it, from reading some of the posts on the subject, properly deinterlaced 1080i is true 1080p. Interlacing 1080p and then immediately deinterlacing the signal will give you the original progressive signal, just as long as the deinterlacing is done properly. It just adds an extra step in the chain that can be dispensed with if the signal can be delivered directly in its native form.

 

[ppltd]

Edwin, after reading through your response, responding and then thinking better of it, I decided it just was not worth getting into a pissing match with someone who's opinion is obviously so much more meaningful than mine.

One point, though. The add-on has been in delivery for a week now.

No need to delete comment here, as additional comments are not warrented.

I have edited my comments to cool the retoric

 

[Edwin-S]

I did acknowledge that I had missed the rollout date in a later post, so I did manage to get sand out of at least one eye. For some reason, I thought that MS was going to release their drive closer to the PS3 debut date.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Guys,

Let's keep the debate here professional and friendly.

I am already receiving complaints in private about member
conduct here and the last thing I want to do is to start
suspending members because "barb" slinging going on here.

 

[BrettB]

BOT, so Fox is the only studio currently putting this info on the package?

Props to Fox.

 

[Dave_P.]

I think most of the other studios put the codecs, but Fox is the only one with the bitrate and layers (and a firmware update reminder).