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

[Arkadin]

thanks so much for that.
I really appreciate it.

[abintra]

Is Dirty Dancing a likely re-release candidate? Read a couple of comments about it having some compression issues and perhaps sourced from a 1080i master.

[Jeff Kleist]

I'd say with the sad loss of Patrick Swayze, all the studios have a new awareness of his catalog.

Fox has a long habit of releasing catalog in Asia or Europe before here. Guess this isn't any different (and guessing they still haven't taken my suggestion of offering subtitles for the long stretches of Japanese dialog as an extra feature )

[Arkadin]

thanks so much for the response.

[Bullseye]

Thanks for the info Grubert.

[MerrickG]

Well Jeff, it appears the DVD/BD combo decision for UP was a dramatic success in that 24% of the title sold was on bluray.

Is it YET time for the studios to consider releasing a DVD/BD combo of a new release in advance of the regular dvd?

It does look like DVD/BD combo thing ended up being a good thing.

[Pain]

Hi Jeff was worndering with The Sopranos season 1 coming out when will we get 3-5 on blu? Thanks

[phansson]

Hey Jeff and Bill,

Just wondering, do you think anamorphic Blu Rays will ever be made? I don't even know if it is possible with the format.

I also know that it wasn't quite as important for the format as it was for DVD (as the majority of HDTV's sold now are 16x9).

As a CIH enthusiast, it would be nice to bring anamorphic to Blu.

[MerrickG]

Originally Posted by phansson

Hey Jeff and Bill,

Just wondering, do you think anamorphic Blu Rays will ever be made? I don't even know if it is possible with the format.

I also know that it wasn't quite as important for the format as it was for DVD (as the majority of HDTV's sold now are 16x9).

As a CIH enthusiast, it would be nice to bring anamorphic to Blu.

Umm dude.

All blurays are anamorphic. They all have support for 16x9. I think you're getting anamorphic confused with....I dont know what.

But anamorphic means that the screen can be adjusted to fit into either a 4x3 TV or 16x9, which all blurays have the ability to do.

Except for those films that a 4x3 aspect ratio.

[SpaceDog]

Originally Posted by merrick97

Well Jeff, it appears the DVD/BD combo decision for UP was a dramatic success in that 24% of the title sold was on bluray.

Is it YET time for the studios to consider releasing a DVD/BD combo of a new release in advance of the regular dvd?

It does look like DVD/BD combo thing ended up being a good thing.

I think this would be great for BD, but I wonder if it would deflate the dual DVD sku business they are doing now - the single disc movie only and the 2 disc "special edition".

I'm all for consolidating new releases down to a single BD + DVD sku.

[WMAangel]

Originally Posted by merrick97

Umm dude.
All blurays are anamorphic.

Umm, no....
NO Blu-ray Discs are anamorphic....

Originally Posted by merrick97

They all have support for 16x9. I think you're getting anamorphic confused with....I dont know what.

But anamorphic means that the screen can be adjusted to fit into either a 4x3 TV or 16x9, which all blurays have the ability to do.

Except for those films that a 4x3 aspect ratio.

Sorry, but I think it is you who is getting confused about what anamorphic means...

[phansson]

Originally Posted by merrick97

Umm dude.

All blurays are anamorphic. They all have support for 16x9. I think you're getting anamorphic confused with....I dont know what.

But anamorphic means that the screen can be adjusted to fit into either a 4x3 TV or 16x9, which all blurays have the ability to do.

Except for those films that a 4x3 aspect ratio.

Sorry, I was under the impression that their are NO anamorphic Blu Rays. They might be listed as such (the studios are pretty bad about this) but they don't actually exist. Anamorphic does not mean 16x9 format.

An anamorphic dvd took all of the lines of resolution available on a dvd (480p) and used those lines for 2.4/ 16x9/ 4x3. Meaning that the bars on the sides or top and bottom were added by the player. That is really what anamorphic DVD's are. More information/better picture. This was needed when DVD's were released, because 4x3 sets were still the norm.

Blu Ray hard encodes the masking bars into the original material. So you do not have 1080 lines of resolution on a 2.4/2.35/2.37/2.0 movie, you would have around 800 of actual picture. Although, most tv's used with a Blu Ray are 16x9, most theatrical movies do not use all of the 1080 lines of resolution.

With Blu Ray it would really only benefit CIH users.....

[Alan Gordon]

Jeff,

I know movies get switched from studios every now and then, but I'm surprised to see "The Phantom" and "Hard Rain" coming to Blu-ray in February by Lionsgate. Looking on Amazon, Lionsgate previously released "Hard Rain" on DVD, but this is a first for "The Phantom".

Did Paramount sell some of their catalog to Lionsgate, or was Lionsgate involved with the films, and the home release rights switched to them?

~Alan

[MerrickG]

Originally Posted by phansson

Sorry, I was under the impression that their are NO anamorphic Blu Rays. They might be listed as such (the studios are pretty bad about this) but they don't actually exist. Anamorphic does not mean 16x9 format.

An anamorphic dvd took all of the lines of resolution available on a dvd (480p) and used those lines for 2.4/ 16x9/ 4x3. Meaning that the bars on the sides or top and bottom were added by the player. That is really what anamorphic DVD's are. More information/better picture. This was needed when DVD's were released, because 4x3 sets were still the norm.

Blu Ray hard encodes the masking bars into the original material. So you do not have 1080 lines of resolution on a 2.4/2.35/2.37/2.0 movie, you would have around 800 of actual picture. Although, most tv's used with a Blu Ray are 16x9, most theatrical movies do not use all of the 1080 lines of resolution.

With Blu Ray it would really only benefit CIH users.....

Ok, I see what you are saying.

You are asking if there any films that use the 2.35:1 aspect ratio could they be worked so that they would fit into a theoretical TV that used that amount of resolution.

I doubt it cuz there are different aspect ratios.

1.78:1 is pretty the meet in the middle.

I really dont see them making any new TV sizes for quite some time. Philips made that 21:9 res TV, but I doubt they will ever get mass produced.

[wallendo]

Originally Posted by merrick97

Umm dude.

All blurays are anamorphic. They all have support for 16x9. I think you're getting anamorphic confused with....I dont know what.

But anamorphic means that the screen can be adjusted to fit into either a 4x3 TV or 16x9, which all blurays have the ability to do.

Except for those films that a 4x3 aspect ratio.

Actually, blu-ray discs primarily use square pixels, and therefore are not generally anamorphic (there is no squeezing or stretching of the image). The blu-ray format does support a 1440x1080 format which is anamorphic (The 1920x1080 image is squeezed to 1440x1080 and the playback unit stretches it back out to 1920x1080. A number of AVCHD camcorders use this format.

"Enhanced for 16x9" DVD's are actually anamorphic, in that the 720x480 image is stretched out to 854x480 for playback. Of course, "fullscreen" DVD's are also technically anamorphic since the 720x480 image is squeezed down to 640x480. Blu-rays support 1920x1080 natively, so no anamorphic manipulation is required.

[DMC86X]

Hey Jeff I was wondering if you could give me some info. on Iron Man 2. Do you know if any scenes were filmed with Imax cameras that would lead to shifting aspect ratios on the Blu Ray like Dark Knight and Transformers 2?? I think it would be awesome to have the screen open up wide in an Iron Man movie. Thanks man.

[spartanstew]

Originally Posted by merrick97

I really dont see them making any new TV sizes for quite some time. Philips made that 21:9 res TV, but I doubt they will ever get mass produced.

People that really enjoy movies (and the theater experience) don't watch them on TV's, so that point is irrelevant.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by phansson

Hey Jeff and Bill,

Just wondering, do you think anamorphic Blu Rays will ever be made? I don't even know if it is possible with the format.

I also know that it wasn't quite as important for the format as it was for DVD (as the majority of HDTV's sold now are 16x9).

As a CIH enthusiast, it would be nice to bring anamorphic to Blu.

It would require a new spec and new players. DVD 16x9 was there from the birth of the format.

Originally Posted by spartanstew

People that really enjoy movies (and the theater experience) don't watch them on TV's, so that point is irrelevant.

Not sure what you're saying here.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by DMC86X

Hey Jeff I was wondering if you could give me some info. on Iron Man 2. Do you know if any scenes were filmed with Imax cameras that would lead to shifting aspect ratios on the Blu Ray like Dark Knight and Transformers 2?? I think it would be awesome to have the screen open up wide in an Iron Man movie. Thanks man.

Um, you mean open up tall. Iron Man was 2.35 widescreen 'scope.

[Jeff Kleist]

UP is a kid's title, I know they're doing it on catalog titles a bit, but I don't see it becoming mainstream until DVD is starting to gasp a bit.

I wouldn't credit the DVD being in there on up with those numbers. Pixar and CG movie= high quality HD porn that the fencesitters that split their purchases, combined with the price war

Hi Jeff was worndering with The Sopranos season 1 coming out when will we get 3-5 on blu? Thanks

What about 2?

Eventually yes, how fast depends on sales

Just wondering, do you think anamorphic Blu Rays will ever be made? I don't even know if it is possible with the format.

I also know that it wasn't quite as important for the format as it was for DVD (as the majority of HDTV's sold now are 16x9).

As a CIH enthusiast, it would be nice to bring anamorphic to Blu.

Maybe a few specialty ones, but as a rule no. It's not part of the spec, and the number of people willing to throw down $8000 on a CIH setup is pretty low, and 21:9 TVs will never be more than a curiosity to the mainstream. Everyone else covered merrick well so I won't touch on that. Any anamorphic Blu-rays would not be backwards compatible on other players like the anamorphic laserdiscs that came out.