Fox confirms more 50GB, BD-J and MPEG-4 movie releases for December
Fox already announced it is kicking off its support of the Blu-ray format with several enhanced titles timed to hit at the time of the PlayStation 3 launch, now it's announced more extras for several titles scheduled for the following weeks. From Hell will be a dual-layer BD-50 50GB release, authored in Blu-ray Java and using MPEG-4 (AVC) compression. It also features several commentaries, a lossless soundtrack, a trivia pop up feature and 21 deleted scenes. Flight of the Phoenix, as well as the rest of the releases, is authored using standard HDMV, includes a DTS HD Master Audio lossless soundtrack as well as commentaries and HD trailers. Rising Sun comes to Blu-ray using MPEG-4 compression, the only extras mentioned are lossless soundtrack and HD trailers.The Devil Wears Prada and Transporter 2 both use MPEG-2 compression and will include DTS HD Master Audio lossless soundtracks as well as HD trailers. The Devil Wears Prada is still set for a day-and-date release with the DVD December 12th, behind From Hell, Flight of the Phoenix and Rising Sun December 5th. Transporter 2 brings up the rear with a Boxing Day release of December 26th. All of the announced movies share a $39.98 MSRP. We've been complaining about the lack of extras on many HD releases, while Fox may be a little late to the party, it appears the company is ready to give customers the advanced features -- not to mention (hopefully) enhanced PQ with better compression/bigger discs -- once titles do hit the streets.
Filed under: Blu-ray
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Chris @ Oct 25th 2006 12:51PM
Why is it that Richard along with so many others think that MPEG 2 means bad video quality? Do any of you guys own a Blu-Ray discs player? Momento, Training Day, Stealth, Haunted Mansion, and so many others look fantastic...... While VC1 and AVC can offer lower bit-rates, they do not provide a better picture quality. They were never meant to... If this was the case why is it that every studio has released titles in MPEG2.... Even Warner....
Andy @ Oct 25th 2006 12:57PM
It's jsut with only 25 GB for single layer discs, MPEG-2 is not a good choice because of the bitrates they must use to achieve 25 GB. With dual layer 50 GB discs, MPEG-2 is just fine, but MPEG-4 and VC-1 can be done at smaller bitrates allowing more room for extra features, while not sacrificing picture quality at all.
jdb @ Oct 25th 2006 1:22PM
A big benefit seen thus far with VC-1 is that nearly all such releases went through Microsoft and Microsoft's VC-1 compression team is spending a lot of time and effort making sure the compressed release is indistinguishable from the master. A second plus of this is that the Microsoft team is quite vocal and willing to talk about their work over on the AVSForum, which makes the releases much more personal and gives one more confidence that the release is as good as it can get. Sure, MPEG-2 on a 50 GB disk can be just as good as VC-1; but there's no guarantee that whoever the studio is using to do the compression (in-house or otherwise) is actually spending the time to make sure it is.
WiFiSpy @ Oct 25th 2006 2:11PM
Looks like Fox is going to recycle all their D-theater titles on Blu-ray before focusing on new titles.
zombieflanders @ Oct 25th 2006 2:44PM
Might want to fact-check that. AFAIK, none of the following movies are on DVHS:
Kingdom of Heaven
Fantastic Four
The Omen
Transporter 2
Usual Suspects
Windtalkers
Bulletproof Monk
Rocky
The Sentinel
Rising Sun
Flight of the Phoenix
Devil Wears Prada
That would mean only 6 of the announced Fox Blu-ray titles are on DVHS, and many of these are recent (I think "The Devil Wears Prada" is even day-and-date).
Larry @ Oct 25th 2006 4:24PM
So are they doing with all this extra space? Adding on a bigger audio codec and using mpeg 2?
GhostDoggy @ Oct 25th 2006 7:47PM
Great. Can someone wake me up when I can pull the 1080P24 off the disk and actually get that out of a player like it was mastered in the first place? Heck, I'm even willing to make sure I have a display that accepts that 1080P24. :)
Dave @ Oct 26th 2006 2:17AM
Blu-Ray is gaining lead :D
Juice @ Oct 26th 2006 1:49PM
You cant say blu ray is gaining when all your talking about is titles released, no business is going to care about that if they are not selling, and that is blu rays biggest problem. look at
http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/2006/08/02/hd-dvd-vs-blu-ray-extensive-sales-data-comparisons/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedvdwars.com%2Famazon.cfm%3Fassociates%3Ddrmdb-20&frame=true
you can see that blu rays highest selling video is ranked something like 2300 on amazon while HDDVD is 150. Everyone knew from the start that Blu Ray would have more titles, its all about sales, and if they dont pick up by first quarter 2007 expect fox and disney to start putting out HDDVD, assuming they want to make money. Personally im still happy with my HDDVD, given I havent seen a single title from Sony, Fox, or Disney that I really miss, the one I was most excited about was House of the Flying daggers and it ended up looking like crap.
Blu Rays next biggest problem is that alothough they are now putting out good looking titles, there has been no technical feature that makes Blu Ray better, the 50GB discs simply hold more, but HDDVDs best still looks as good a Blu Rays best, and in general terms HDDVD has had much better picture quality, and studios like paramount and Warner are simply using the same transfers for most discs, as it is cheaper to put the same info on both discs.
I hope Blu Ray simply dies, not becuase I hate Sony, HDDVD has simply been the better product thus far, giving better looking titles at less money, were talking about half of the price of blu ray. When you have a product that performs equally at half the price that is a real technilogical innovation. Anyone can make something work with lots of money...with the exception of Sony's own blu Ray player :)