First Blu-Ray movies and Players announced

kobylka68

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Studios announce first Blu-ray films as show opens, Toshiba counters with HD-DVD players; existing region system to be reshuffled?

With Sony incorporating its Blu-ray media format into the PlayStation 3 and Microsoft publicly pondering an HD-DVD-equipped model of the Xbox 360, the battle for supremacy between the two formats is likely to have repercussions for the gaming industry.

That battle is heating up today as the Consumer Electronics Show opens in Las Vegas to opening salvos from both camps.

Unsurprisingly spearheading the charge for Sony's Blu-ray was Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, which announced an initial lineup of 20 titles to be released alongside the first Blu-ray players this spring. That full first wave includes The Fifth Element, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Desperado, For a Few Dollars More, The Guns of Navarone, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, A Knight's Tale, Kung Fu Hustle, The Last Waltz, Legends of the Fall, Resident Evil Apocalypse, Robocop, Sense and Sensibility, Stealth, Species, SWAT and XXX. Sony Pictures also announced Black Hawk Down and The Bridge on the River Kwai for a summer 2006 release.

Also in the summer, Sony Pictures will start adding bonus Java games to its Blu-ray discs and begin releasing some titles for the format at the same time as their standard DVD counterparts. To update its sizeable back catalog of titles, the studio will initially give the Blu-ray treatment to four older titles per month beginning this summer, and move up to 10 titles per month by the end of the year. Also being readied for a summer release is the complete Stargate Atlantis TV series in high-definition.

Independent distributor Lionsgate announced its own support for the Blu-ray format as well, detailing its first 10 titles, set to start hitting shelves in the spring: Lord of War, The Punisher, Devil's Rejects, Saw, T2: Judgment Day, Reservoir Dogs, Total Recall, Dune, Rambo: First Blood, and See No Evil, starring the WWE wrestler Kane. Twentieth Century Fox has also said it will release 20 Blu-ray films in a first wave this year that will include films like Fantastic Four and Ice Age.

There was news on the HD-DVD front as well, as a primary backer of the technology, Toshiba, unveiled its first two HD-DVD players for the US market. Beginning in March, the HD-XA1 and HD-A1 players will hit stores for $799.99 and $499.99, respectively. Both units are backward compatible with regular DVDs and upconverts the signals from them to an output resolution of 720p or 1080i for HDTVs. Perhaps taking a cue from the Blu-ray-equipped PS3, some HD-DVD players will have USB ports "for convenient connection of gaming controllers," according to Toshiba.

Not all the format wars news is coming out of Las Vegas. Japanese site ITmedia has reported that Blu-ray discs will shakeup the current DVD regional lockout system. DVDs and DVD players carry one of nine different region codes, each corresponding to a different set of countries and territories. To play a disc from a given region, a DVD player must come from the same region (or be a Region 0, or all-region, player). According to ITmedia, Blu-ray discs will shuffle which countries are in which regions so that North and South American, Japan, Thailand, Malayasia, Korea and India are all in Region 1, with Europe and Africa in Region 2, and China, Russia and others in Region 3.

This should make it easier for importers and cinephiles to get their hands on foreign films, as the current DVD Region 1 is essentially confined to American and Canadian releases. It is currently unclear what changes HD-DVD will make to the standard DVD region system, if any.
 

thirdkind

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And so it begins.

Thankfully, it looks like other studios will make up for Sony's poor showing in their launch titles. Talk about a lame lineup. They own the entire MGM catalog, for Christ's sake.
 

Curt

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Really a Lame lineup of titles.

I wonder what the time difference between the first Blu-ray players, and the launch of the PS3 will be?
 

Tacitus

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Go BETA!


...oh wait...


shit.
 

Stinky-Dinkins

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thirdkind said:
And so it begins.

Thankfully, it looks like other studios will make up for Sony's poor showing in their launch titles. Talk about a lame lineup. They own the entire MGM catalog, for Christ's sake.

Yeah, it does seem that way.... but seeing the Fifth Element T2: Judgment Day, Reservoir Dogs, Rambo: First Blood in HD would be nice.

Blu-ray discs will shuffle which countries are in which regions so that North and South American, Japan, Thailand, Malayasia, Korea and India are all in Region 1, with Europe and Africa in Region 2, and China, Russia and others in Region 3.

This should make it easier for importers and cinephiles to get their hands on foreign films, as the current DVD Region 1 is essentially confined to American and Canadian releases.

Also good.
 

kobylka68

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Yeah I really like how they expanded Region 1. It's a big bonus since I like to buy the occasional Japanese DVD.
 

thirdkind

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Stinky-Dinkins said:
Yeah, it does seem that way.... but seeing the Fifth Element T2: Judgment Day, Reservoir Dogs, Rambo: First Blood in HD would be nice.

Only The Fifth Element is Sony's in the titles you mention. Those additional titles from the other studios are the ones I'm thankful for.

Sony's offerings are mostly uninspiring. They needed a few major, recent titles in there to get people excited. Instead, they dive into their mostly lame Superbit library.
 

Kirk Foiden

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Well, at least this will be interesting to watch. Yep. I'm happily sidelining the whole Blue Ray/HD-DVD stuff until some late date. I'll just be watching this with popcorn in my hand. It's all a business soap opera to me ---

Bill Cosby interrupts and chimes in: "But if you're not careful, you might learn something before it's done."

Hey hey hey.
 

Stinky-Dinkins

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TonK said:
Whats wrong with current DVD media?

DVD's aren't high definition, they are standard def.

These sorts of media (blu ray, HD DVD) are made for high definition displays.
 

RAINBOW PONY

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well i'll be buying an HD-DVD player, for the upscaling alone. i really don't care if blu ray wins in the end, I have over 200 DVDs, so it will always be useful.
 

kobylka68

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DashK said:
well i'll be buying an HD-DVD player, for the upscaling alone. i really don't care if blu ray wins in the end, I have over 200 DVDs, so it will always be useful.

I'm pretty sure that Blu-Ray players will do same thing.
 

RAINBOW PONY

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kobylka68 said:
I'm pretty sure that Blu-Ray players will do same thing.

it didnt say anything about it, we'll see. i'd think the copyright holder would want to keep blu ray from doing dvd, if they have any money in hd-dvds success
 

bokmeow

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I'll take the sit and wait approach.

Whichever format the adult video industry embraces is the one likely to win this round.
 

neo_X7

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Are Blu-Ray players suppose to be backwards compatible with normal DVD's, like how HD-DVD players are going to be.
 

kobylka68

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DashK said:
it didnt say anything about it, we'll see. i'd think the copyright holder would want to keep blu ray from doing dvd, if they have any money in hd-dvds success

That might happen I mean if the market splits down the middle one of two things happen. We will either need both players or the studios will decide to make them in both formats. Who knows as of yet what will happen.
 

kobylka68

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neo_X7 said:
Are Blu-Ray players suppose to be backwards compatible with normal DVD's, like how HD-DVD players are going to be.

Yeah they will.
 

ResO

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Blu-Ray pwns HD-DVD. Nuff' said, you Toshiba fanboys. ;)
 

not sonic

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bokmeow said:
I'll take the sit and wait approach.

Whichever format the adult video industry embraces is the one likely to win this round.

didnt they embrace beta?
 

gamejunkie

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kobylka68 said:
A DVD can only store something like 30-40 minutes of true HD quality video.

I've been watching different encoding techniques for movie distribution over the internet, there are people that have figured out how to fit 2 hours of the equivalent of 720p video in mpeg2 on a single dual layer dvd. Now, of course there probably will never be a player that could do this, but it might be cool for the home user to record to.

I'm buying a Blu-ray player as soon as Toy Story is released.... Well, I might just buy a copy of Toy Story and wait for the prices to drop.

A lot of those movies have already been released in HD on DVHS. :chimp:
 
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