Warner's Future Blu-ray releases

[ZeeMan84]

I was wondering if Warner would do justice to Blu by providing superior transfers and uncompressed audio for future releases like THE MATRIX, BATMAN BEGINS or are they simply just rehash HD DUD quality with In-Movie Experience?

Because they havent changed their video CODECS to AVC from VC-1 or provided lossless audio on recently announced releases like THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES..., so I was wondering is Warner just supporting Blu-ray simply for financial considerations (which they most surely are) or are they also gonna step up their HD releases with quality to match Disney/Sony and redeem their reputation?

[OokieSpookie]

When they no longer have to cover the lowest denominator then you will see them focusing more on the strengths of blu.
It would be asinine for them to do two seperate encodes of their movies at this point considering the small amount of sales in the grand scheme of things.

[ccplant]

Originally Posted by ZeeMan84

I was wondering if Warner would do justice to Blu by providing superior transfers and uncompressed audio for future releases like THE MATRIX, BATMAN BEGINS or are they simply just rehash HD DUD quality with In-Movie Experience? ?

Both movies already have lossless sound, Dolby True, which is just as good as uncompressed PCM. Bit by Bit identical.

Though I do hope the crank up the Video Bitrate. That would be nice.

[Noshame]

they are gonna use the same stuff. it's more convenient. I would be more concerned about fox using mpeg 2 for some of their upcoming library titles...

[EricJ]

As Bill Hunt puts it:

First, Warner has revealed that the Twister: Special Edition will be among the studio's last HD-DVD catalog releases. It's just been officially announced for DVD and Blu-ray on 5/6, and the HD-DVD version is now slated to follow on 5/27. Given that Warner's HD-DVD support ends on 5/31, that would seem to be it.

After that, as soon as we get the June street-date announcements...we'll know.
That won't be this week, though.

[Beta-guy]

I was hoping that Warner would do seperate encodes now that they've announced thier move, I am Legend would look awesome if done to make use of what Blu-ray has to offer, but it'll still look good if they leave it to what HD-DVD can provide I guess...

[ZeeMan84]

I'm really hoping they start catering to BLUs standards than still try to make it for the lowest denominator. like they can cut out some special features or lossless sounds from HD DVD releases but provide higher bit rate video and uncompressed audio for all Blu-ray releases.

[Sonny]

Every BD should have AVC & lossless

[ClaytonMG]

Originally Posted by ccplant

Both movies already have lossless sound, Dolby True, which is just as good as uncompressed PCM. Bit by Bit identical.

Though I do hope the crank up the Video Bitrate. That would be nice.

Not true actually, due to WB using DialNorm. I've compared PCM and Dolby TrueHD on their titles and after level matching there is still a very noticable difference.

As for AVC, I keep saying this over and over and over again. VC-1 is just as capable as AVC. AVC isn't the god of all codecs like people seem think it is here. VC-1 has actually recieved a bad rep because of WB's ports (but I understand completely why they were doing what they were doing). So it doesn't matter if they use AVC or VC-1, as long as the bitrate is high enough and the encoder knows what they're doing.

[DetroitSportsFan]

I'm betting titles like Batman Begins, Matrix, and other unreleased WB films will be HD-DVD ports. I hope I'm wrong.

[ben7ben3]

Originally Posted by DetroitSportsFan

I'm betting titles like Batman Begins, Matrix, and other unreleased WB films will be HD-DVD ports. I hope I'm wrong.

im thinking the audio will be better. frankly teh video could not get better on the matrix, batman, AND v for vendetta. they are 3 of the 5 best hd dvd transfers and frankly on par with the best blu rays. def need better audio for them tho

[ClaytonMG]

V For Vendetta could look better actually. If you look at the walls with color on them you'll actually notice compression artifacts.

[jd213]

Batman Begins is so soft it's essentially 720p going by comparisons from a screenshot reduced to 720p and then blown back up to 1080p. If that's what the master is like then I guess not much can be done, but I certainly hope it can look better.

[KingDeezie]

I think I heard somewhere while reading in on some posts over at highdefdigest.com that Warner is increasing the bitrate for the Bluray release of Batman Begins...

Take that with a grain of salt though because I have no idea who the source was....

Shootem'up is a great example of how good VC-1 can look if given enough room and juice...

I look foward to getting more titles from Warner using VC-1 if they continue the trend of giving us the maxed out bitrates.

[sonicbox]

Insiders at GDMX (one Warner compression team) have confirmed that Warner's VC-1 video compression work will have higher bitrate targets for new titles when Warner is Blu-ray only, but they believe it will just ease the compression work a little and lower the cost. Though the encoding tools have drastically improved since launch, having to spend less time hand tweaking sure can't hurt!

I bet you can also expect more Lossless soundtracks, even if Warner itself believes there is little to no improvement in many cases. The space/bandwidth is there on BD50, so why not deliver it? It's good marketing and, as we all know, there are Lossless addicts out there that think anything else is awful.