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

[Bruuce]

Originally Posted by Flux88MPH

Hey Bill,

Will you be attending SXSW 2008 here in Austin next month?

P.S. Have you ever been here before to enjoy our award winning Alamo Drafthouse?

-Dave

Kinda off topic, but I feel the drafthouse gets wicked packed , even for older films like when I went to see friday the 13th part 3 in 3d. I try not to go there unless it's a movie I can't watch anywhere else.

[bluskies]

Originally Posted by Bill Hunt

Okay... deep breaths everyone. This isn't any kind of bomb... just a preview of some of what you can expect later in 2008 on DVD and Blu-ray. So you know... don't blow this thing up to be bigger than it is. I'm sure there will be cool title news, but let's not get expectations too high. Back in January 2007, Warner did something similar - they previewed the key titles planned for their 2007 slate. That's what this is, just for 2008. I should have all the details up on The Bits tomorrow night - probably fairly late Pacific time. Definitely they'll be up in time for Wednesday's early AM post.

LOL, Bill, you do know that when you mention special announcements coming, it's like watching an episode of "24" and then having to wait a week to find out how the riveting last few minutes turn out? We sit on the edge of our seat. : )

[Wendell R. Breland]

Does anyone know if the Digital Bits site is down?

[Slec]

Works for me... try this

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articl...hdm020508.html

It's a *new* section but not the main page... give a read while your at it!

[micks_address]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the Warners news.. its great to see so many titles in the works -

few questions if you dont mind..

Heat - is this coming to Blue Ray this quarter?

Any mention of the Matrix trilogy ? Perhaps as part of the 3rd quarter superhero collection? V for Vendetta?

The Batman Anthology sounds great.. Apart from the George Clooney one.. i thought the rest were decent enough.. especially the first 2..

Cheers,
Mick

[cory]

Well warner has got alot of old movies coming out thats great I'm greatful for the support on blu but still I would like to see some hotter titles

[Mr. Spiffy-Pants]

Originally Posted by cory

Well warner has got alot of old movies coming out thats great I'm greatful for the support on blu but still I would like to see some hotter titles

My thoughts exactly! I understand the delay of "The Wizard of OZ" and "Gone with the Wind" to coincide with their respective anniversaries, but I was really looking forward to these films THIS year, not next. In addition, I did not see any mention of the back-catalog titles previously only HD-DUD exclusive that I am still interested in ("Excalibur", "Casablanca", "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory", "Forbidden Planet", etc.). I hope this was just a general overview and was not fully representative of their back-catalog plans for the entire year. Otherwise, they might get my money for the Batman set/The Dark Knight, Harry Potter, and... Well, looking over the list, that's it. If I'm desparate, I might go for Dirty Harry, but I don't really see anything else there I want.

Bill, I'm sure they're going to release more of their back-catalog than what was listed last night, right?

[akbungle]

Sorry Bill but for the first time in over ten years of reading your two cents did not make sense to me. It seemed a bit too vague. Like is True Romance (in my all time top ten) coming to Blu or is it strictly a Sp. Ed. DVD release? Same with Heat and so on. You may want to clear that up in your post.
Thanks a million!

[Knight-Errant]

Looks like Warners are getting more of my money. Thanks for the heads up Bill.

[Slec]

Originally Posted by akbungle

Sorry Bill but for the first time in over ten years of reading your two cents did not make sense to me. It seemed a bit too vague. Like is True Romance (in my all time top ten) coming to Blu or is it strictly a Sp. Ed. DVD release? Same with Heat and so on. You may want to clear that up in your post.
Thanks a million!

Seemed like more of an overview of Warner's slate for the year. Bill's going to have blu-ray only release news for us very soon.

From the bits

We'll post details about the specific Blu-ray Disc catalog releases planned as part of Warner's 2008 slate soon, so keep checking back

[GarettP]

Bill,
any chance of a rebate/return program for those of us who have Goodfellas already, since I am sure the video and audio may be better on the Special Edition?

[tosvus]

I had a hard time figuring out some of the titles, whether they come to Blu-Ray or only standard DVD. Can you please clarify each title?

Also, what happened to the Matrix movies???????????

Batman movies and Dirty Harry will be great of course.

[The Don]

Originally Posted by Slec

Seemed like more of an overview of Warner's slate for the year. Bill's going to have blu-ray only release news for us very soon.

From the bits

ahh good....because seeing TDK in Q3 is impossible...the rest seems reasonable even though I'd like to see the other Batman movies in June...

[JBlacklow]

Bill:

Scott Hettrick had this to say this morning:

Word working its way around the Warner Bros. 85th anniversary event on the studio lot Tuesday night was that some electronics retailers are being flooded with returns of HD DVD players.

In fact, so many are being returned that some retailers are in possession of more returned HD DVD players than new stock.

I won't tell you who said what or which retailers we're talking about, but I will tell you that execs from Amazon.com and Best Buy were in attendance.

Did you hear the same thing?

[DaViD Boulet]

Hey Bill!

I second the notion that on the bits it would be great in "release news" to have a clear-cut list of Blu-ray releases separated out from the combined BD/DVD release news.

HD quality has spoiled me and honestly now I don't give two-cents (hehe) about what's coming out on DVD. I won't buy it, period.

The ONLY release news I care anything about is Blu-ray Disc. It would be awesome if at the bottom or somewhere of a release-news column you could summarize the BD release news so it won't be so confusing with some DVD titles being dual-release and others being DVD only.

Naturally we understand that many pro-DVD consumers visit your site so I'm not suggesting you cater to the BD crowd exclusively, but a quick "Blu-ray Releases" list summarizing/distilling the high-def releases for HD snobs like me would be great!

[makaveli21]

Originally Posted by GarettP

Bill,
any chance of a rebate/return program for those of us who have Goodfellas already, since I am sure the video and audio may be better on the Special Edition?

I'm pretty sure the Goodfellas Special Edition is DVD only--it never mentions there it is Blu-Ray (same with Heat, True Romance, etc.).

[The Don]

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

Hey Bill!

I second the notion that on the bits it would be great in "release news" to have a clear-cut list of Blu-ray releases separated out from the combined BD/DVD release news.

HD quality has spoiled me and honestly now I don't give two-cents (hehe) about what's coming out on DVD. I won't buy it, period.

The ONLY release news I care anything about is Blu-ray Disc. It would be awesome if at the bottom or somewhere of a release-news column you could summarize the BD release news so it won't be so confusing with some DVD titles being dual-release and others being DVD only.

Naturally we understand that many pro-DVD consumers visit your site so I'm not suggesting you cater to the BD crowd exclusively, but a quick "Blu-ray Releases" list summarizing/distilling the high-def releases for HD snobs like me would be great!

agreed, this is actually a good idea here...I hate SD now...

[Robert Siegel]

Bill, on last year's Warner chat on HTF, they mentioned The Music Man for 2008 release in high def, I don't see that on the list so far, but are there other titles that just weren't part of this presentation? I am hoping we finally get a few classic musicals from Warner and the MGM library. And I really hope Fox is going to do something in blu-ray with the Rodgers and Hammerstein movies, their latest editions were such good quality, I bet the blu-rays will blow us away. Very anxious for those.

I have to state again, when Warner releases these classic musicals, I really hope they use uncompressed sound. Same with Fox for that matter. Since we havn't seen anything yet (until Father's Day) from Fox's older catalog, I really hope they continue with the DTS Master tradition. In fact, it would be really nice of them to put Dolby True tracks on them too, because I would bet to say a good percentage of people can't play the DTS master tracks yet anyway.

[Nick Graham]

Originally Posted by JBlacklow

Bill:

Scott Hettrick had this to say this morning:

Did you hear the same thing?

I'm very curious of this as well (in terms of both online retailers and chains like Wal-Mart) and would like to hear it from an independent source like Bill as opposed to a paid spokesman like Hettrick.

[Bullseye]

Bill what’s your thoughts on the WB BD announcements? It looks pretty bare. Do you like me suspect there will be a hell of a lot more titles announced during the year including The Matrix and V for Vendetta?

Besides that I do feel that when you are setting this up as an event for the years releases you should use it to announce your big titles especially if they are already on HD-DVD.