Blu-ray on a cold day
With Warners picking Blu-ray, and Paramount rumored to have an escape clause letting it follow right behind, I finally bought my first Blu-ray disc: Big Fish
Movies I’ve written are available on both formats, so I didn’t really care who won in the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray battle. I just didn’t want to get stuck with the loser.2 Or, better put, I wanted to pick the format that would lose last. Any disc-based format is ultimately going to fall as internet distribution increases. That’s the future. (And a primary issue in the WGA strike.)
Because you’ll ask: The Nines is a standard DVD. While it’s possible that there would be Blu-ray version at some point, it’s not on any calendar.
When I was working with Blue Collar, the folks who developed the menus and special features for The Nines, they were salivating over the sophisticated features you can build into Blu-ray discs, such interactive, animated guides with transparency. Without knowing the real technology behind it, it seems to move beyond the “decision-tree-with-loops” setup of current DVDs and closer to the realm of real programming.
Most of all, Blu-ray discs are big. My dream — which I pitched at last year’s Sundance Film Festival — is to use the extra capacity to include compressed clips of all the original source material, so ambitious viewers could recut the movie on their own systems. That’s a big thing to ask for Sony to support, so reasonable success with this month’s DVD release will be a major factor.
- Yes, I could have gotten something other than a PS3. But it was a very handy excuse for buying one. You know, for research. ↩
- Of course, isn’t really “over.” Even if all the studios sign on to Blu-ray, there may be alternative producers (porn, for example) who find a good reason why the other format is better, such as more flexible licensing terms. So here’s hoping that “universal” players are forthcoming, eliminating the confusion much the way the CD-RW+/- has largely gone away. ↩
Articles
January 8th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Here’s a quick question: Why are DVDs constantly being touted as “Special Editions” (like The Nines) when, more often then not, they’re the ONLY edition?
January 8th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Two months ago I bought “Ratchet and Clank,” and a PS3 to run it. Now that the new-toy buzz has worn off I can tell you it was a great investment.
Last night I watched 2001. I’m too young to have seen it in theaters, so catching it for the first time in full detail was worth every cent.
January 8th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Minor technical quibble: you presumably mean DVD±RW (not CD).
At first I was somewhat alarmed to hear that a Sony-backed format (Blu-ray) had “won”, but then realised that the consortium includes such members as Apple and Panasonic. Interesting, considering Sony and Panny are rivals in the production market (e.g. HDCAM vs. DVCPROHD).
January 8th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Devin (#1): I agree. “Only Edition” would be much more accurate. That said, the features on the disc are pretty, well, special. I’ll write more about them closer to launch.
January 8th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
“My dream — which I pitched at last year’s Sundance Film Festival — is to use the extra capacity to include compressed clips of all the original source material, so ambitious viewers could recut the movie on their own systems.”
Best. Extra. Ever.
January 8th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
“Without knowing the real technology behind it, it seems to move beyond the “decision-tree-with-loopsâ€? setup of current DVDs and closer to the realm of real programming.”
Excellent! I look forward to the first Blu-Ray virus.
January 8th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Welcome to the ps3 owners club! I got mine as a surprise birthday gift from the wife and I’ve found that while the “research” is fun, I’ve been more entertained by the media streaming capabilities and the general open hackery you can do with it. Like, the fact that the cross media bar is really a hyper visor and you can install linux to run under it. There are several great distro’s out there. Info here.
Alos, if you have any questions about streaming media to the ps3 don’t hesitate to send me an email!
January 8th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
“That said, the features on the disc are pretty, well, special. I’ll write more about them closer to launch.”
When you do, can you provide details on the “Script to Storyboard to Screen Comparison” feature? Like, the entire script and storyboards or just the for certain scenes? Sounds very cool.
January 9th, 2008 at 4:05 am
I own an Xbox 360 (with add-on HD-DVD) and a PS3, and I can honestly say that Blu-ray just doesn’t compare to its rival; not judging from the handful of discs I’ve bought and tested thus far, anyway. Of my mini-collection of some thirty-odd HD-DVDs, however, all apart from a couple are eye-scorchingly impressive. The HD-DVD format is sharper, richer, simply superior. Which is a shame it’s seemingly done for. That said, suppose I’ve now got an excuse to seek out one of those dual-format players. Once my 360 becomes obsolete, that is.
January 9th, 2008 at 6:39 am
Ben K (#3),
I’ve always thought of the competition between Sony and Panasonic in terms of HDCAM-SR vs. D5. I suppose DVCPROHD is used in the field, but I’ve never seen it used in post.
January 9th, 2008 at 6:57 am
I’ve had players for both formats for a while now. I got a PS3 about a month after they were released — mostly to play Blu-ray discs because there (still) aren’t that many games the game-players in my house are interested in playing on it, and I had an HD-DVD player because they were first out of the gate and I was really dying to have HD movie content to play on my big screen.
About a week ago, I picked up a Samsung BD-UP5000, which is a universal player for Blu-ray, HD-DVD, and old DVDs. A few reasons I picked it up: it is the first Universal player I’ve read about that seemed to handle both formats pretty well, it is a regular boxy player with a tray that I can put easily into our component stack, it has a normal IR remote control receiver (this is important for using the Harmony remote I have set up to control our home theater), it supports 24 FPS 1080P playback with our Samsung DLP (the one with an LED light source), like most HD players it has upgradable firmware (which might come in handy since some people seem to be having a few issues with early units) and since we have several discs in each format already this gives me a player that I can describe to the rest of the family easily: put any disc from our movie collection into it, press “movie” on the remote, and it will play (especially nice for my 5-year-old and the Disney movies starting to come out on Blu-ray).
Of course, about a week later, I hear about the Warner announcement, and subsequent Paramount rumors. Oh well, at least I don’t have to be in any hurry to replace the things I did already buy on HD-DVD, but unless things turn around somehow, I’m probably going to stop purchasing HD-DVDs. Of course, there’s always Netflix for seeing content that’s in HD-DVD and not yet Blu-ray without purchasing it.
January 9th, 2008 at 7:36 am
They didn’t send you Big Fish on the house???
January 9th, 2008 at 7:37 am
But I don’t want to recut the movie. I want to watch the movie you made the way you made it because it was your artistic vision, not mine.
I like commentary and special features and everything, but I really just want to watch the movie. With a lot of my DVDs I never even explore all those special features.
I get that the new format looks better. That’s cool. But I’m still working on replacing all my VHS tapes. Now I have to replace all my DVDs. And then I’ll have to replace all those Blu-Ray discs one day.
How much money does one girl have to spend on the same movie?
January 9th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Hey John,
I love your enthusiasm for giving viewers a chance to recut footage as you did for your trailer competition, but I have to say that I’m more interested in more conventional extras, except more of them. Things like more commentaries from those involved like DPs, producers, more of the cast, and of course, screenwriters.
Also, more cuts of the movie - director’s cut, deleted scenes re-inserted, extended scenes, etc. Also, more ‘archival’ stuff like maybe shorts that influenced the writer/director, more interviews, ‘making of’ docs, a ‘pop up video’ option that would insert interesting facts while you watch, etc. I recently rented ‘Sicko’ and it had a lot of extra interviews and docs that didn’t make it into the original film.
Finally, something that would probably interest you more would be options that would be available while he watched the movie. Things like different camera angles, extended scenes, and deleted scenes that could be changed on the fly.
January 9th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Emily –
You gotta check the special features! It’s like going to film school in your own home!
January 9th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
9: “Of my mini-collection of some thirty-odd HD-DVDs, however, all apart from a couple are eye-scorchingly impressive. The HD-DVD format is sharper, richer, simply superior.”
That doesn’t make sense. Pretty much all movies use the identical encode for both formats (usually VC-1). You literally get the identical movie files, regardless of the format. You can verify this by reading many reviewers’ opinions on pages like Highdefdigest.com, as well. If anything, the Blu-Ray titles have the potential of looking better because the bigger format capacity allow for bigger movie files at higher bitrates. Are you sure you have both players hooked up identically? Both are HDMI, or both are component video with identical cables?
January 9th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
12: “They didn’t send you Big Fish on the house???”
You rarely get copies of the finished product, especially for re-issues. And where do you stop? Do Director, DP and screenwriter get a copy? What about the grip, does he get a copy? The gaffer? It’s a bottomless rabbit hole. In games the (core) team usually gets a free copy of the product at the end of the project. But don’t expect it on the day the game gets released - product goes to the retail stores, first, the team comes second (rightfully so).
January 10th, 2008 at 4:23 am
Matthias (#16): I’m on Highdefdigest all the time (good site), and understand that films coming out on both formats offer indentical transfers, and each format is supposedly as capable as the other. But from the films I’ve seen, believe me, Blu-ray just seems flat, lacking that striking vividness of HD-DVD. I’m really disappointed; it’s the prime reason I bought a PS3 — which I have hooked up with a 70 pound HDMI cable; my 360 the component cable it came with.
January 10th, 2008 at 9:34 am
There seems to be a confusion here with the media (the physical disc format), and the content (the actual content as encoded onto the disc). There’s no real difference in quality on Blu-Ray and HD DVD formats, except Blu-Ray is more suspectible to scratches etc, as it is encoded closer to surface. It’s all digital, and a single layer (cheapest) Blu-Ray disc will be able to have twice as much content than a comparable HD DVD disc. Warner’s dropping of HD DVD and their Total HD (Blu-Ray & HD DVD on same disc) is simply to cut costs, and support the better format (not for longevity, but either quantity or quality).
There’s no difference between the actual visual output capabilities of the format, only between the technical aspects of the players and the producers of the material. A 70 pound HDMI cable is just silly. It’s a digital format, so the difference between a cheap cable and an expensive one is nil. If you experience problems with your cheap cable, by all means buy a better one, but I bet I could solder one for 10 pounds or less, if I had the components.
January 11th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Blu-ray is far superior, technologically. This time it looks like something wins on merit!
I have a PS3, and it’s easily the best way to go with Blu-ray. And, ironically, for upscaling DVDs: the Cell processor really really kicks ass. In fact, Toshiba (i think) will be shipping HDTVs with Cell processors in them specifically to add some serious horsepower to uprezzing less-than-1080p content.
As for the interactivity, it’s far more than decision loops and trees, as you said. The programming language is BD Java, or Blu-J (get it?), and so just about anything is possible, bottlenecked only by the power of the CPU.
Which brings us back to PS3: the newer Blu-ray Profile 1.1 calls for two tuners(well, decoders) built into a player for picture-in-picture. The PS3 doesn’t have two decoders, it’s just that the Cell processor is powerful enough to decode two HD streams at once.
John, you should try watching a Big Fish DVD on the PS3, then watch the Blu-ray. I’ve found that the better-encoded DVDs can look better than poorly-encoded (see first release of “Fifth Element”) Blu-ray disks.
On top of all this, perhaps the VC-1 codec (Windows Media) will die and AVC (aka H.264) will be de rigueur codec. Look at the noise in light blue skies or beige fields on a VC-1 disk vs an AVC-encoded disk. The VC-1 is much noiser, both in range and odd-shaped specs.
Big Fish on Blu-ray was spectacular, visually. It only added to the brilliant writing and the magical qualities of any embellished storytelling.
jeff
January 12th, 2008 at 11:01 am
Being a union man from other trades, as heavy construction and carpenter, I’m still pulling for the stirke to go on as long as it needs until the WGA gets what they’re asking for.
Working through my unions, as well as time in the Army National Guard, made me enough money to pay for my college and grad film school at UCLA.
Do I feel sorry for strikers who are feeling the financial pinch by walking their lines? Yes…of course.
Do I feel sorry for outside businesses losing money in this strike? Yes…of course…but they’re also making a good penny, and many times, more so than the majority of working WGA writers when the buisness is going forward.
I look forward to getting in the WGA soon, since I had projects being looked at before the strike started.
But I’ll keep on writing in my own, and won’t submit until the strike’s settled.
Keep the strike going. Get what you know you deserve. I’ve been on those lines before.
MARK11
February 17th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
While it’s sad that I can’t grab this on Bluray, I at least have hope to hold on to. I would love to see in HD. The main reason for bothering to post is just to agree with you about the digital download replacing physical media. I have that appletv thing and love having access to all of my DVDs and TV shows without the need for the actual disc (same with mp3 players and cds). Unfortunately I am still stuck purchasing the physical disc and then moving it onto my computer. It will be awesome when full-quality movies and TV shows (HD quality?) can be easily purchased and completely rid us of discs.