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

[DetroitSportsFan]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

All this talk about the Wiimote and Natal with no mention of the PlayStation Move, which had a demo similar to the Minority Report interface.

So when is the Move getting released? Any price rumors?

[aygie]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

I think Natal is going to be awesome for OPTIONS.

I like the idea of it recognizing me when I log in. I like the idea of gesture control for the dashboard. I like the idea of scanning in my own items. I like the idea of being able to play an RTS on my console, potentially with more control than a mouse offers (albeit with tired arms ) I know that Peter Molyneux will make us dance like a monkey in Fable 3. I think

I think pure motion control is isolated to gimmicks and party games. Unless Force Unleashed 2 lets me wave around my toy lightsaber blocking blasters,slicing stormtroppers and use my hands to throw force blasts and stuff. In which case it'll be the greatest thing EVER

Interface wise i think there could be some possible awesome things done with Natal, have to agree with you there, but game wise, hmmmm I just can't get my head around no controller. It just doesn't seem like it could transition well from what we have now (controls with buttons we know and love) to the next stage of gaming control.


Plus I need to see some games on it, damn they just haven't showed anything!!

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

All this talk about the Wiimote and Natal with no mention of the PlayStation Move, which had a demo similar to the Minority Report interface.

Ta da!





Move is actually really exciting me lately, the way Sony are handling it seems like the way to go, you've got your party games for the family/Wii audience but then stuff like Socom 4 is massively appealing for the hardcore gamer plus when they show stuff they have things like the Minority report demo, thats just cool. Nah we won't force feed you tech crap lets show you the potential of what this thing can do. Good stuff.

...and the PS3 is the only console that plays Blu-rays. Just a reminder.

Always a good reminder.

[aygie]

Originally Posted by DetroitSportsFan

So when is the Move getting released? Any price rumors?

Rumour September, definitely under $100 with a game.

[Joe Cain]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

My only personal beef with Robert’s edited version is that he goes out of his way to give accolades to two other majors “Where Fox and Disney have been releasing gorgeous Blu-rays of their catalog titles…”, when as far as I’m concerned, (Sony) SPHE has been kicking butt in terms of Blu-ray quality consistently and without reservation for a long time now, leading the pack!

For what it's worth...he does call SPHE's release of The Natural "Perfect."

And it is pretty freakin' glorious. I guess I'm a sucker, but this film makes me cry.

[Buddy Christ]

This is a cool demo! PS3 Motion Controller

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th8_zKa0DKk

[Bobby Henderson]

I'm very interested in the Playstation Move. I don't know all of the technical specs, but it seems like it will be quite superior to the motion sensing system on the Wii. The controller's motions are tracked accurately in 3D space even with the controller moved behind your body and out of view of the Playstation Eye camera.

The only potential downside I see with the Move is the possibility of gamers getting their butts worn out or even developing sports injuries from playing against others online or just trying to win against some bots over a long period of time. Just think if you're having to perform the same motions to pitch a commanding curve ball in a PS3 baseball game. Next thing you're at the doctor's office in need of some Tommy John surgery!

[tvine2000]

Originally Posted by Oliver K

Got me there, sometimes I have a bit of a fatalistic view of things

Although I will still say that the number of people who are happy with subpar releases even in enthusiast forums is shocking at times so I am shuddering at the thought of what J6P would find acceptable.

And yes, Sony's track record for me is the best of all studios - in quality that is. You could use a lttlle more quantity

As a enthusiast,i am so glad to read this discussion.It is shocking what is considered acceptable pq on bd. In fact when i address this issue on forums ,they think i'm nuts!

In fairness there are a lot of us out here that want great looking blu-rays I and others have noticed since the format war ended most studios have given us a lot of sub-par bds. As you noted sony has been great.Disney has to,at least with disney titles.The rest of them noted univeral & warners have been putting out lot of s**t!.Paramount is hit & miss,fox not bad.

For what ever reason most studios are putting out crap,they need to know were not stupid. I know and can see a differance in bad dnr'd pq and a bd left alone with little clean up etc. IT only makes sense that the more hi def movies you watch,even the untrained eye can see somethings wrong with the pq on certain titles.

And as penton-man pointed out there only shooting themselves in the foot.they could sell more titles with a proper transfer.What gets me is they will spend the money on a proper transfer with gone with the wind[rightly so] and not with THE LOTR TRILOGY! dIDN'T THOSE 3 FILMS MAKE A TON OF MONEY FOR THAT STUDIO,WHY DO A SUB-PAR TRANSFER ON IT FOR BLU-RAY.

I guess the next question is[which has been asked before]How can we make studios understand we want great looking bds? Or are we up againist a stone wall.It seems to me, so far all effort has not been heard. i know Bill hunt and jeff have tried to work with studios on this issue.I'm sure they have to walk a thin line when dealing with them. Sony seems to understand the issue and does a great job.Is it the others just don't care and don't have any pride in there product? Are they that greedy? Anyways thanks for listening.

[J6P]

Originally Posted by Oliver K

(...)
Although I will still say that the number of people who are happy with subpar releases even in enthusiast forums is shocking at times so I am shuddering at the thought of what J6P would find acceptable.(...)

Originally Posted by Torsten Kaiser TLE

The difference would be VERY noticeable even to "Joe6Pack" (...)

Honestly, what with the daily beating I take on this site I've no clue why I keep coming back.

[Jeff Kleist]

All this talk about the Wiimote and Natal with no mention of the PlayStation Move, which had a demo similar to the Minority Report interface.

Move is a more accurate, much better Wiimote, but it's still a Wiimote in terms of how you can use it. If you want to talk Minority report, Natal is potentially far closer because it conceiveably can handle that gesture based interface with the hands as seen in the film. Basically what you see in the video is it tracking two points, while you have the whole hand, fingers and toes going with the Natal route The tech for MR is actually based on a real thing BTW. They pretty much had him create his ideal version and put it in the movie

Either way, I think the tech still has its best uses in home and home theater automaton and not gaming. Walk into a room, it recognizes you. When the wife leaves the room it cranks the AC and the volume up to appropriate levels etc etc

And as penton-man pointed out there only shooting themselves in the foot.they could sell more titles with a proper transfer.What gets me is they will spend the money on a proper transfer with gone with the wind[rightly so] and not with THE LOTR TRILOGY! dIDN'T THOSE 3 FILMS MAKE A TON OF MONEY FOR THAT STUDIO,WHY DO A SUB-PAR TRANSFER ON IT FOR BLU-RAY.

As I explained before, LOTR has source limitations. The bottom line is that the ROI on catalog titles sucks to begin with, so they ask why they should drop 50 grand on doing a new transfer and cleanup on a title that at this point is likely to sell about 5000 copies its first week, especially on something they're likely to reissue down the road when they'll sell 30,000.That and there are too many suits running too many departments attached to creative who have little or no interest in anything other than the quarterlies. I hope the movie business figures out that's at the heart of what killed the music business (among with many other factors, I firmly believe the damage would not be near what it is today). It's fine to grab someone like that for accounting, and you need a pragmatist to keep the creative people from bankrupting the place (because they will ), but that pragmatist should also know the buis inside and out, and not just be someone from a chocolate company or something.

[al cos.]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

The bottom line is that the ROI on catalog titles sucks to begin with

Just curious, we've been hearing this for awhile. Are there any indications it's getting better? Or worse maybe? (and what kind of budget do they generally need for a basic, no-frills older release like say, Logan's Run?)

[Jeff Kleist]

There is no hard and fast budget, it's entirely film specific As I said a couple weeks ago, what one studio designates a success is a disaster for another, even with similar investments. They're selling more discs at generally lower prices. Is that a success to make the positive dollars flowing into the pocket big enough? Time will tell.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by tvine2000

In fairness there are a lot of us out here that want great looking blu-rays I and others have noticed since the format war ended most studios have given us a lot of sub-par bds. As you noted sony has been great.Disney has to,at least with disney titles.The rest of them noted univeral & warners have been putting out lot of s**t!.Paramount is hit & miss,fox not bad.

I don't understand this. Don't get me wrong, I agree with most of it but "I and others have noticed since the format war ended most studios have given us a lot of sub-par bds" this part. Obviously I agree with " As you noted sony has been great.Disney has to,at least with disney titles.The rest of them noted univeral & warners have been putting out lot of s**t!.Paramount is hit & miss,fox not bad."

So if Sony and Disney are great, Fox is not bad (I think it is great like Sony and Disney), then those did not change. Paramount is hit and miss and WB/Universal are bad. Then what has changed since the war is over? WB was always bad and the only reason someone did not see Paramount’s hit/miss and Universals mess on BD was that those messes were on HD DVD.

[Robert Harris]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

You perked my interest.
Yes, it now appears to be working fine; however, unless I speed-read Robert’s post too quickly and missed something, I now don’t notice that infamous statement…”best move for Universal is to halt all distribution of catalog titles. Stop transferring, mastering…If not for the sake of the films, do it for our planet.”

As well as other more candid and colorful comments in the original piece.
Not to worry Robert, I'm told that sort of *editing* without a notice of public retraction is also going on at other forums (other than HTF), like for instance AVS.

Apparently, someone somewhere on this page originally blamed and publically called out Ned Price (of WB) for the perceived DNR degradation of Dr. Zhivago here….
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...8&postcount=57

and now, apparently that comment has also disappeared with no evidence of an “edited by…” public notification.

I love some of these outside forums for journalistic transparency.

The problem is that probably something like 95% of the viewers that ever read these threads only read the original posts and never really go back and read the ‘edited version’.

Reminds me of a certain motion picture…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK2CB...eature=related

My only personal beef with Robert’s edited version is that he goes out of his way to give accolades to two other majors “Where Fox and Disney have been releasing gorgeous Blu-rays of their catalog titles…”, when as far as I’m concerned, (Sony) SPHE has been kicking butt in terms of Blu-ray quality consistently and without reservation for a long time now, leading the pack!

P.S.
This is for you and Bobby H. (a good educational set of video clips from Abel Cine Tech)…
http://www.youtube.com/abelcinetech#p/u/11/5ls6TNtyFoQ

Part II is somewhere further on up the menu on the page.

Penton,

The "stop mastering..." comment was a part of the Elizabeth "few words," as opposed to Spartacus. I've taken down both Eliz, as well as Africa, as IMHO, they were creating what amounted to pink noise, and affecting the Spartacus message.

As to not mentioning Sony and quality, you're quite correct. However, you're taking the omission out of context. My words were relevant to being improved, after the likes of Patton and Gangs. Sony cannot be improved at this point, as with the exception of a few problematic early releases based upon old elements, there have been no problems such as those from the other studios.

RAH

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by DetroitSportsFan

So when is the Move getting released? Any price rumors?

Hopefully sometime in the not too distant future, if everything stays on schedule -

demo this week from down under -
http://player.video.news.com.au/dail...ph/#1496911048

[MerrickG]

Well Jeff it appears you were right about the new Prince of Persia getting little press. So far all of the attention has been on RDR and to a lesser extent Alan Wake. PoP is barely even getting any reviews on release day.

IGN did give it an 8 though.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Hopefully sometime in the not too distant future, if everything stays on schedule -

demo this week from down under -
http://player.video.news.com.au/dail...ph/#1496911048

^
I don't know what's up with that link or my computer (), as I'm not getting any sound, so click on the video included here, which has the audio...
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/t...-1225868385612

[Monkey]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

I don't understand this. Don't get me wrong, I agree with most of it but "I and others have noticed since the format war ended most studios have given us a lot of sub-par bds" this part. Obviously I agree with " As you noted sony has been great.Disney has to,at least with disney titles.The rest of them noted univeral & warners have been putting out lot of s**t!.Paramount is hit & miss,fox not bad."

So if Sony and Disney are great, Fox is not bad (I think it is great like Sony and Disney), then those did not change. Paramount is hit and miss and WB/Universal are bad. Then what has changed since the war is over? WB was always bad and the only reason someone did not see Paramount’s hit/miss and Universals mess on BD was that those messes were on HD DVD.

Exactly! The status quo hasn't changed much. Sure Universal has improved some (typically better audio at least) but they are still far behind the Sony, Disney and Fox in terms of quality.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by J6P

Honestly, what with the daily beating I take on this site I've no clue why I keep coming back.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Monkey

Exactly!

And Anthony didn't even bring up the slooooooow evolution for some studio/content providers in regards to AUDIO!

[Jeff Kleist]

I'm thinking UbiSoft is hoping that it'll pick up when the movie comes out next week. Last night at Gamestop not a single person out of about 60 was grabbing PoP

I haven't touched Red Dead yet, but Alan Wake is incredible. They need to send a copy to Roger Ebert stat. The atmosphere and tension in the game is superb, the acting is decent, not great, and the environments are spectatcular

It also serves as a great example of how the screenshot science of the digital foundry guys is such BS. Sure the game may only be running in 540p, but thanks to all the filtering and lighting FX you don't really notice or care, because the total package is far greater than the sum of its parts. The same kinds of tricks are used all the time in hollywood FX work

I did love back in the day when our own home grown scientists were trying to use those same pixel counting techniques to determine actual resolution of a Blu-ray. *snort*.