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

[Bobby Henderson]

Originally Posted by J.Cornelius

But I do not believe in the following:

"The main reason why CDs aren't selling so well is there's not very many worth buying."

Just look at what's selling: older people's music to put it bluntly. That can't be good for a business where youth is the core demographic. There isn't much new stuff out there that's close to ground-breaking, much less even memorable at all. I listen to a lot of different music and really want something new and different. Too many acts are spitting out 1990 over and over and over again.

You Shook Me (All Night Long) by AC/DC is a staple tune at many night clubs. I don't know why, but it is. The freaking album is 30 years old. When I was in college none of the night spots I visited were playing 30 year old music.

If new music was really selling well at all it would command popular culture and you wouldn't see so many "dinosaur" acts doing so well. Seriously. It's now reached the point to where even David Lee Roth and Edward Van Halen are patching things up to record a new album and go on tour. The new stuff isn't good enough to fill the gulf. The old acts are only too happy to step in and make whatever money can be had.

[Paul H]

Originally Posted by Doctorossi

Jeff or Bill,...............

Is the 3D copy that was rumored to be in the combo set being held for later or maybe a CE promotional exclusive?

These "promotional" exclusive 3D sets are becoming a real pain, and confusing to more than just the consumer.

High-Def Digest Example: Toy Story 3 - 3D (4-Disc Combo Pack) @ http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/3695/toystory33d.html

Paul

[SpaceDog]

Originally Posted by Doctorossi

Jeff or Bill,
Sorry if I missed it somewhere, but can you confirm if the DVD and "digital copy" (and packaging design, of course) is the only difference between the Toy Story 3 sets? Am I going to miss any extras if I go with the slimmer package?

Is the 3D copy that was rumored to be in the combo set being held for later or maybe a CE promotional exclusive?

Thus far none of the Disney or Pixar sets with Digital Copy/DVD have had any additional feature/content material. I doubt this will be any different.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by J.Cornelius

That is an excellent question and one that certainly can be debated. There was a very good article where author claims "If music executives sold bottled water they'd be calling for a ban on tapwater downloads." If the music industry executives spent more time in the beginning developing payment schemes for downloads instead of suing some 13 year old perhaps the illegal downloading could have be mitigated sooner.

Not really. They could charge $5 for an album and people would still seek out the "freebie".

Seriously, when someone asks you for a song you have do you make them a copy or direct them to buy it on iTunes?

[garyrc]

Originally Posted by kpkelley

Jeff,

After this site's review of Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, a few questions have been raised.

Did WB source the transfer from a 65mm print or a 35mm print?

Is this the same transfer that was supposed to have been released in 2007 on Blu-ray and HD-DVD?

TIA

I hope someone who knows answers this. I do know that the DVD version is not sharp in the crowd shots, and from the several compliments Branagh gives to the wonders of 70mm, I can only conclude that he hadn't seen the DVD for which he was doing the commentary.

The reviewer mentions that the BD was digitally scrubbed. To me, scrubbing 70 mm is gilding the lily, and not justified unless needed to cover some kind of degradation of the film, if then. In the case of Hamlet, the actors knew they were being filmed with a 65mm camera, so playing the vanity card would be graceless, and Branagh painstakingly gave some of them yellow teeth -- I really hope they didn't scrub the teeth white!

[Jeff Kleist]

The decline of Compact Disc sales is not a worthwhile argument for claiming the general public is souring on physical media.

CD sales are half what they were a decade ago because the music industry as a whole is suffering. A mere handful of multi-national media corporations have a strangle-hold in controlling what musical trends and styles get distributed to the general public. They have not been allowing popular music to change naturally. Up until 1990 major house-cleanings in style would occur at least every 3-5 years. That's great for music lovers. It's volatile, unpredictable and just plain risky to investors and business people. The companies controlling popular music production, distribution and airplay have been trying to spit out the same old thing for more than a decade. Not much has changed in popular music over the last 20 years. This is the fundamental reason why sales are in the toilet. The music is hardly interesting anymore.

This. MBAs who know nothing about music took over instead of the traditional ecosystem of the people who had been hauling bands around the country 10-15 years back, or had been artists themselves. For every band like Arcade Fire that makes it through, you've got 50 Killers or whatever other emo band is currently running. Artists have been shoved aside in favor of pre-packaged pap they can focus group.

The same thing ishappening to the movie industry. Too many people at the top who have no clue about making and marketing movies. And the games industry is right behind it. It's 100% true that kids today, desperite for good music have turned to the 60s-70s-80s, and I'm sure they'll pick up Pearl Jam and the other good ones from the 90s too

After this site's review of Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, a few questions have been raised.

Did WB source the transfer from a 65mm print or a 35mm print?

Is this the same transfer that was supposed to have been released in 2007 on Blu-ray and HD-DVD?

I'm certainly going to try to find out.

[Bobby Henderson]

Considering Hamlet, a very long movie, was crammed into a single disc I strongly suspect a lot of detail was deliberately blurred/smoothed to make it easier to encode at very severe compression levels.

5-perf 65mm photography has the capacity for capturing an incredible amount of spatial detail. Just like fine grain (or noise), lots of intricate detail common with large format cinematography is very challenging to data compress. It requires a lot more data bits to preserve all the fine details. If you "turn up the DNR knob" you'll end up with an image, a compromised one, that is more kind to the bit budget.

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

I strongly suspect a lot of detail was deliberately blurred/smoothed to make it easier to encode at very severe compression levels.

Sounds like you suspect this may have been an old compression, perhaps with a target other than a BD50. Yes?

[Bobby Henderson]

Hamlet is literally a 4 hour long movie. Even using AVC or VC1 it's going to be pretty difficult to preserve really intricate details common to 65mm photography and expect to have a 4 hour movie, plus extras, crammed into one BD50. Minority Report has a running time much closer to standard releases and it used up all the capacity of disc #1 in that 2-disc release. If this release of Hamlet is like so many WB titles, it wouldn't surprise me if the disc had another 10GB or so of blank capacity to spare.

[Nick Graham]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Bingo.

I have to suggest FireFox and the NoScript plugin, the latter is the best anti-virus out there because it doesn't allow anything to run you don't specifically enable. I've been using it for 3 years and haven't even had the anti-virus burp at me since. They can't malware your computer if their code won't run

I forgot to mention Firefox - Firefox is a must to maintain the virus-free/malware free experience.

[Jeff Kleist]

Those asking about Toy Story 3 3D, they're probably going to wait for a 3D box of all 3 down the line, but I'm waiting for official answer

[garyrc]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

Considering Hamlet, a very long movie, was crammed into a single disc I strongly suspect a lot of detail was deliberately blurred/smoothed to make it easier to encode at very severe compression levels.

It would have killed them to put it on two disks? I would have been willing to pay the extra 69 cents, or whatever, to reimburse them for an extra disk, packaging and freight.

Have the MBAs Jeff talked about completely taken over the asylum?

Hopefully, they won't try to put all 212 minutes of Ben-Hur on one BD. Last time (DVD) they used two disks, and threw in two more for special features.

Speaking of Shakespeare, and MBAs, can it be true that Chimes at Midnight, directed by Orson Wells, isn't even on DVD, let alone BD? How could they have ignored for all these DVD years a film by one of the most acclaimed directors, with an Original Author like that?

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by Nick Graham

I forgot to mention Firefox - Firefox is a must to maintain the virus-free/malware free experience.

IE8 here, no virii. Norton plug-in works wonders.

[Bobby Henderson]

I've mostly been using Google Chrome in recent months. Firefox has just been lagging too much. The NoScript plug-in for Firefox is very effective though.

Another tip for staying virii-free on a PC: don't surf the web using an account with administrator privileges, use a guest account instead. That move, along with using web browsers that don't utilize Active X and keeping anti-virus software up to date will leave a Windows-based PC very well protected.

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Those asking about Toy Story 3 3D, they're probably going to wait for a 3D box of all 3 down the line, but I'm waiting for official answer

Thanks, Jeff!

[johndoyle123]

ok try again

have paramount given up on us or are they just making us wait for announcements when it comes to catalog titles ...

mostly classics that they need to release they where such a strong compnay and now there taking the piss abit ...

every other studio has a good catalog line up and thats only up to october !!
theres bound to be more to come ....

so whats going on guys ??? the day i consider buying dvd,s of those films has come and i am 100 % blu so its getting a tad annoying now

[Jeff Kleist]

Are you asking about classics as in old movies or just general catalog?

Paramount is not in the best of financial shape at the moment. There is more catalog but it keeps moving around, some if it is out in other territories already.

[Batman1980]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Are you asking about classics as in old movies or just general catalog?

Paramount is not in the best of financial shape at the moment. There is more catalog but it keeps moving around, some if it is out in other territories already.

Wow I really hope their financial situation doesn't get as bad as MGM's, that would hurt their ability to produce new movies and to give us more catalog titles, not to mention damage the economy as a whole.

[MerrickG]

Well Jeff,

Sir Lucas has apparently announced Star Wars for 2011. It appears that you were "wrong" about nothing big happening at this years Star Wars Celebration.

https://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=4996

My question to you is:
Did you actually know and expect this, but hesitated to say anything for obvious reasons?

[Jeff Kleist]

Star wars coming in 2011 has been public for months.......