Ask questions to The Digital Bits team (Bill Hunt, Jeff Kleist et.al.)

[iwanttobeabmoviestar]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Orders for items like these are placed months in advance, sometimes a year.
I was the one who handled that issue with Best Buy actually

For example, we saw the Iron Man Blu-ray share the wealth at Target, things are getting better, slowly. BB has steelbooks on the Bond titles, Blu-ray included as far as I know. Getting someone from BB on the phone is very difficult, so I haven't confirmed it yet. Honestly I expect speedy to scoop all of us on that one

seems that the canadian best buys and future shops get these all the time not that hard to just send to your us stores youd think and canadian storeslike bb.ca wont ship to usa but thanks on the update

[Jeff Kleist]

A big reason why you probably see the steelbooks in Canada first is because they're made in Canada. There might be some kind of incentive deal in place or something.

[HeavyHitter]

Hi Jeff,

Great to see you posting in the thread.

Any talks about a remastered Terminator 2 Blu-ray with lossless audio for next year to coincide with T4? I'm not sure of the condition of the source material, but the current U.S. Blu-ray T2 version seems a bit disappointing in terms of PQ.

[Jeff Kleist]

Geneon will be releasing the T2 DC, as far as I can tell with lossless in Japan December 5th. I have no doubts that LG is planning many a dip on T2 and coinciding with T4 would make sense

[FourToedStatue]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Geneon will be releasing the T2 DC, as far as I can tell with lossless in Japan December 5th. I have no doubts that LG is planning many a dip on T2 and coinciding with T4 would make sense

I Hope Fox/MGM re-release Terminator 1 as well. Loved the PCM soundtrack but the transfer seemed to be in bad shape.

[Jeff Kleist]

The Blu-ray looks better than any print I've ever seen (at least one was fairly new). It was a very low budget film in the early 80s, mostly shot at night, very guerilla style (in fact they "stole" a bunch of their pickup shots (shooting without a permit) because they were out of cash.

How ironic that he was handed the biggest budget in history for the sequel!

Basically, that's how Terminator looks in my experience and you can throw as many bits as you want at it, but it's still not going to help pull fine detail out of it.

Some have questioned the color timing on it, but so far as I know James Cameron approved the master used for the Blu-ray.

[Majoran]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Amadeus is one of the titles floating around in the ether. I'd expect it to be a Digibook title at some point next year for the 25th Anniversary.

Thanks Jeff for the reply ....Hopefully they did justice to the movie both picture and audio wise since it seems that one has been done for sometime and has just been looking for a release date....

[subgenius]

Is there any chance we'll see Goonies in the US this year? If not do you know why?

[Jeff Kleist]

No, you won't see Goonies here this year, along with at least 3-4 other WB titles (Gigli, American in Paris etc)

Their slate is full for Christmas. They'll be out here soon enough

[MerrickG]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

The Blu-ray looks better than any print I've ever seen (at least one was fairly new). It was a very low budget film in the early 80s, mostly shot at night, very guerilla style (in fact they "stole" a bunch of their pickup shots (shooting without a permit) because they were out of cash.

How ironic that he was handed the biggest budget in history for the sequel!

Basically, that's how Terminator looks in my experience and you can throw as many bits as you want at it, but it's still not going to help pull fine detail out of it.

Some have questioned the color timing on it, but so far as I know James Cameron approved the master used for the Blu-ray.

Van Ling said something along those lines. Basically its doubtful that The Terminator will ever look much better than it does now.

[Bullseye]

Jeff/Bill I know you are probably sick to the teeth hearing about WB and their lack of HD audio but who else can we annouy

I just picked up my copy of David Finchers Zodiac: Directors Cut. To my horror It only has a Dolby Digital 5.1 track. Surely by now WB should not be releasing these cheap ass discs. I have paid €30 ($41) for this disc and deserve HD audio.

[patrick99]

Jeff, thanks very much for your participation here.

I see that Wanted is announced in a "two-disc set" with the second disc a digital copy. Am I alone in feeling cheated with this type of presentation? A disc with a digital copy is worthless to me, and having all the special features crammed on the same disc with the movie, with the result that the movie is given less space, is very much a negative for me.

[Jeff Kleist]

That Zodiac disc was likely finished a long time ago and bumped. Seriously. The message has been sent and received and accepted, things just need to shake out from the production chain.

I'm really not that concerned for the most part with things being crammed onto one disc. Most of the stuff is on the PiP track, which is almost certainly SD anyway.

Blu-ray is not like DVD where it was very much bandwidth limited.

You could have the main feature (Wanted is 110min) and a PCM track running 22mbps video (20% more than the Pirates movies), which is a very comfortable video bitrate and still only take 21GB, and running 30 is still only 28 (including PCM track)

Even if you were to put it at max bitrate (40mbps video plus a PCM tracK) it's still only 36GB.

That's bare minimum 15GB for extras.

I hope that assuages your fears about compromising video quality for extras

[HeavyHitter]

Hi Jeff,

It appears Warner is listing Fellowship of the Ring as a "coming soon" title. Any word on this?

[Bullseye]

Any idea why Universal is releasing Wanted DVD on 20th October but not the BD until 1st December?

[Bullseye]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

That Zodiac disc was likely finished a long time ago and bumped. Seriously. The message has been sent and received and accepted, things just need to shake out from the production chain.

I'm really not that concerned for the most part with things being crammed onto one disc. Most of the stuff is on the PiP track, which is almost certainly SD anyway.

Blu-ray is not like DVD where it was very much bandwidth limited.

You could have the main feature (Wanted is 110min) and a PCM track running 22mbps video (20% more than the Pirates movies), which is a very comfortable video bitrate and still only take 21GB, and running 30 is still only 28 (including PCM track)

Even if you were to put it at max bitrate (40mbps video plus a PCM tracK) it's still only 36GB.

That's bare minimum 15GB for extras.

I hope that assuages your fears about compromising video quality for extras

Thanks for the response Jeff. Much appreciated.

[Jeff Kleist]

It appears Warner is listing Fellowship of the Ring as a "coming soon" title. Any word on this?

Nothing I would call "soon", and no word on whether they're going theatrical or extended (my money is on theatrical, extendeds with Hobbit).

Any idea why Universal is releasing Wanted DVD on 20th October but not the BD until 1st December?

Sorry, nothing concrete.

[Marine Mike]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Nothing I would call "soon", and no word on whether they're going theatrical or extended (my money is on theatrical, extendeds with Hobbit).



Sorry, nothing concrete.

I waited it out to buy the DVDs until they released the Extended editions and I can wait again to buy the Blu-Ray Extended editions.

Good to know, thanks Jeff!

[patrick99]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

That Zodiac disc was likely finished a long time ago and bumped. Seriously. The message has been sent and received and accepted, things just need to shake out from the production chain.

I'm really not that concerned for the most part with things being crammed onto one disc. Most of the stuff is on the PiP track, which is almost certainly SD anyway.

Blu-ray is not like DVD where it was very much bandwidth limited.

You could have the main feature (Wanted is 110min) and a PCM track running 22mbps video (20% more than the Pirates movies), which is a very comfortable video bitrate and still only take 21GB, and running 30 is still only 28 (including PCM track)

Even if you were to put it at max bitrate (40mbps video plus a PCM tracK) it's still only 36GB.

That's bare minimum 15GB for extras.

I hope that assuages your fears about compromising video quality for extras

Thanks for the response, Jeff. I do think, as you have said before, that Universal seems to be trying to put out a quality product, but the only time I feel somewhat comfortable is when there are no special features (other than an audio commentary) on the same disc with the movie.

[neo_reloaded]

Originally Posted by patrick99

Thanks for the response, Jeff. I do think, as you have said before, that Universal seems to be trying to put out a quality product, but the only time I feel somewhat comfortable is when there are no special features (other than an audio commentary) on the same disc with the movie.

Wow, a 50 GB encode would only make you feel somewhat comfortable? I mean no offense by this, but sometimes I can't help but get the feeling that all your posts are part of some elaborate joke.