Check out the amount of space wasted on Goodfellas, Happy Feet, Training Day, Last Samurai, T3, Ocean's Trilogy, Superman Returns and Michael Clayton that doesn't contain lossless audio.
Matrix Trilogy HD DVD disc info
Sci-fi movie with plenty of action scenes that may require high bit rates to mitigate film artefacts. Let's keep in mind that Revolutions exhibited macroblocking.
Checkout the amount of space wasted on Happy Feet, Training Day, Last Samurai, T3, Ocean's Trilogy, Superman Returns and Michael Clayton that doesn't contain lossless audio.
Really baffling decisions here from the clowns running the show at WB. And from what we've seen so far from Warner and their catch up Blu-ray titles that were HD DVD exclusive, we wont be getting any new Matrix encodes.
Personaly speaking I will not buy any more movies from WB that comes without a decent Dolby True HD or DTS HD MA soundtrack. I can live with slightly soft pictures but I cant accept paper-thin 600 kbps soundtracks anymore.
WB needs to step up their game and give us much better encodes. It's like some of their titles are screaming "double-dip" at me.
That said, I will offcourse buy older movies and accept lower bitrate soundtracks.
Personaly speaking I will not buy any more movies from WB that comes without a decent Dolby True HD or DTS HD MA soundtrack. I can live with slightly soft pictures but I cant accept paper-thin 600 kbps soundtracks anymore.
WB needs to step up their game and give us much better encodes. It's like some of their titles are screaming "double-dip" at me.
That said, I will of course buy older movies and accept lower bitrate soundtracks.
You should feel lucky you can enjoy the lossless soundtracks. I have yet to upgrade to a new receiver with HDMI and the DD 5.1 English track on V for Vendetta is really pathetic especially when all of the foreign language DD 5.1 tracks sound significantly better (the English was at 448kbps while all the foreign tracks were at 640kbps).
I guess I should count myself lucky that there really aren't that many Warner movies I'm interested in. I just hope they get their act together before the Matrix films come out.
I thought that once WB officially dropped HD-DUD that we would start to see high bitrate encodes like what we got from New Line Cinema in Shoot'em UP and Rush Hour 3....alas WB does not give a rat's a$$ about video quality or atleast matching other studio's quality encodes. They have had plenty of time now to show us what they can do being Blu-exclusive and have failed.
WB can keep their VC-1 encodes for all I care, but give us 30+Mbps encodes please.
Goblet of fire have quite a few scene with HEAVy Macroblocking and banding in the sky. Mostly when they show you the castle at dawn .. the sky and moving and dacing a lot..
I'm still bummed out with the Batman Begins transfer. It looks soft (to me) with warm skin tones and I actually saw dust on the print (totally unacceptable for a high profile movie on high def!)
This is not a shot at HD DVD - this is a shot at Warner! I've seen some great HD DVD ports (although I wouldn't mind them being maximized for Blu-ray potential). Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix looks amazing on Blu-ray - why can't Batman Begins have the same quality.
Heck, just look at the Dark Knight preview - apples and oranges for picture quality.
On one hand I give Warner credit for ending the format war. On the other hand I rarely buy their movies because the quality is usually sub par compared to the other studios.
I know it's not a Warner title, but Shooter is the last title I'm buying (I just received it) without a lossless track. Only exception I'll make is TV shows (at least this year) and mono only tracks I think.
The only movie I have with lossy sound is Swordfish, and I only have that because it was free. Warner really needs to step up its game.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Batman Begins should be reference level movies, but alas, they aren't. And for musicals like Happy Feet, The Phantom of the Opera, and Corpse Bride to have lossy... unacceptable.
Warner don't get anywhere near the criticism they should for what they've released. Their disgusting attitude to the consumers who actually buy their discs - "only the enthusiasts will notice the missing grain, but they only make up 3% of the home video market" sums up their studio, it's no wonder they produce the most pathetic releases. Absolutely disgraceful.
I know it's not a Warner title, but Shooter is the last title I'm buying (I just received it) without a lossless track. Only exception I'll make is TV shows (at least this year) and mono only tracks I think.
Fortunately, we shouldn't have to worry about the lack of lossless coming from Paramount anymore. That can be said about every major studio except for Warner.
Warner has a different view of the home video market than the other studios. They are simply trying to be the McDonald's of Blu-ray. Cheap, fast, and lower quality with their releases. I can understand the business decision to use the HD DVD limited encode when they were releasing for both formats even though I didn't like it.
But not re-encoding Batman Begins is a boondoggle of the highest order. We unfortunately have never seen the full glory of a realized Blu-ray encode of Batman Begins and probably won't see it now for another four years at least. The number of copies a title like Batman Begins sells means the cost of a new encode could have been easily amortized to pennies added to the cost of the disc.
I see 10,000 BC is missing from that list (At least I didn't see it on there). That film showed color banding in some scenes and people looked over it.
But I guess I don't understand the point of the thread. A change can't be made magically over night. These discs people are talking about have already been manufactured. Now, if in a year the releases are still getting screwed over, then I'd complain. But to me, WB is going to need some time to change. Look at the upcoming Perfect Storm disc, that has an entirely new encode due to the problems with the HD DVD encode. You just have to give them time to change and see the problems.
I see 10,000 BC is missing from that list (At least I didn't see it on there). That film showed color banding in some scenes and people looked over it.
But I guess I don't understand the point of the thread. A change can't be made magically over night. These discs people are talking about have already been manufactured. Now, if in a year the releases are still getting screwed over, then I'd complain. But to me, WB is going to need some time to change. Look at the upcoming Perfect Storm disc, that has an entirely new encode due to the problems with the HD DVD encode. You just have to give them time to change and see the problems.
But that's the point. WB had a whole year to re-encode BB. And they failed. WB is just like most corporate American companies: make as much money as you can with little or no expenditure. I can smell the double dip from here.
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Warner Brothers and missed opportunities
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