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

[Maxwell Everett]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

Actually the anamorphics were used starting in season 1!

The shot when Picard goes between "ghost" crewman on the bridge of the USS Stargazer in "The Battle" is one. Another is in the first Ferengi episode "The Last Outpost". Quiz: I'll let you guess that one. No prizes.

Of course... I totally forgot about that! As for "The Last Outpost," that must be one of those close over the shoulder viewscreen shots with Picard and the Ferengi captain.

God, I'm a nerd.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by Maxwell Everett

Of course... I totally forgot about that! As for "The Last Outpost," that must be one of those close over the shoulder viewscreen shots with Picard and the Ferengi captain.

God, I'm a nerd.

Actually, it's the shot when Riker arrives on the planet and looks out over the cliff.

All these issues will show just how difficult it will be to transfer TNG to HD.

[Maxwell Everett]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

Actually, it's the shot when Riker arrives on the planet and looks out over the cliff.

All these issues will show just how difficult it will be to transfer TNG to HD.

Right you are. This is all starting to sound familiar now, was there a featurette on one of the sets detailing this trick Legato used? It was on the complete TNG set, right... the roundtable with the VFX supervisors?

[jd213]

Man, having all of TNG on BD would be sweet. Not sure I can sit through some episodes though, especially a lot of Seasons 1-2. It'd be nice if they started backwards with Season 7, but I guess there's not much hope for that.

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by jd213

Not sure I can sit through some episodes though, especially a lot of Seasons 1-2.

Hey, man... there's nothing wrong with the Binars that a few hundred thousand more pixels can't fix.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by Maxwell Everett

Right you are. This is all starting to sound familiar now, was there a featurette on one of the sets detailing this trick Legato used? It was on the complete TNG set, right... the roundtable with the VFX supervisors?

Cinefex.

[MerrickG]

Originally Posted by jd213

Man, having all of TNG on BD would be sweet. Not sure I can sit through some episodes though, especially a lot of Seasons 1-2. It'd be nice if they started backwards with Season 7, but I guess there's not much hope for that.

That is too much to hope for. Because it makes absolutely no sense to do so.

The first two seasons aren't all that bad. They had enough decent episodes to make them worth watching. Seasons 3,4,5 are the best of the series though, eventhough I felt that season 6 and season 7 had their fair share of great episodes, but they too often had episodes that had the crew mutating. The Pegasus is one of my all time favorite episodes.

[MerrickG]

Originally Posted by merrick97

Do you think that Nintendo's new console has now pushed development for a new Xbox and Playstation sooner than anticipated?

For the next gen consoles, I don't expect Sony and MS to use dramatically different architecture since I have a feeling that they want to keep the costs much lower this time around so they dont have to lose so much money per unit sold and frankly thats what I HOPE they will do so they can maintain backwards compatibility.

I played Crysis 2 and Mass Effect 2 on PC and it became so obvious to me how far consoles have fallen compared to the PC and I do now feel that this cycle is up and its time for the next gen to start being talked about.

Hey Jeff,

This post got lost in the TNG technical talk. I am curious for your thoughts.

[Jeff Kleist]

No, development isn't far enough along, not even close. 2013 is the earliest anyone will launch a new console, especially in this economy. No one will dare launch over $399, and if they're smart they'll try to get it as close to $299 as possible.

[MerrickG]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

No, development isn't far enough along, not even close. 2013 is the earliest anyone will launch a new console, especially in this economy. No one will dare launch over $399, and if they're smart they'll try to get it as close to $299 as possible.

Well Nintendo is launching one and it is supposed to be more powerful than the 360 and PS3, but i have read that it sans the hard drive so maybe that drops the cost quite a bit, but I have a hard time believing Project Cafe as its called will be anything less than $300 when it first comes out.

I disagree that they have to wait until 2013. Sony just proved that they can still sell a large number of previous gen consoles while the new one is out. Afterall the PS2 STILL sells well to this day. I see no reason why MS or Sony couldn't adopt this strategy. I do REALLY hope that Sony and MS go out of their way to maintain backwards compatibility this time around.

What I do expect to happen at E3 is for MS and Sony to announce price drops on their current consoles to $200. They have been priced at $300 for far too long and many people forget that the HUGE majority of PS2 and xbox sales occured when they were priced at $200

I do agree with your comment about no $400 consoles. Right on the money.

[Steedeel]

My personal opinion is that Nintendo will always be playing catch up to the PS and Xbox now. In fact i see them going the same way as Atari eventually.


Jeff,

On another note i notice more and more catalog releases seem to be coming this year, and i was wondering if we may see a Region b release of the following:-

Carrie (region b)
Straw dogs (region b)
Halloween 2 (original region b)

Finally do you think bluray will still be around in 2020, as that seems to be the date that all the download half wits seem to quote when talking of completely eliminating Bluray?

[Jeff Kleist]

Well Nintendo is launching one and it is supposed to be more powerful than the 360 and PS3, but i have read that it sans the hard drive so maybe that drops the cost quite a bit, but I have a hard time believing Project Cafe as its called will be anything less than $300 when it first comes out.

Most people expect $349. With the controllers they're proposing, those things are going to be very expensive

I disagree that they have to wait until 2013. Sony just proved that they can still sell a large number of previous gen consoles while the new one is out. Afterall the PS2 STILL sells well to this day. I see no reason why MS or Sony couldn't adopt this strategy. I do REALLY hope that Sony and MS go out of their way to maintain backwards compatibility this time around.

When you put out a new console, the old one is put on life support. No one has really made the money out of this gen except Nintendo, because they shipped the same console again with a small upgrade. MS will likely stay on the PowerPC platform, but I don't know about Sony. They got burned pretty hard on the CELL. Whatever happens, the era of helper cores is probably at an end, and that will probably be the biggest obstacle to backward compatibility for PS4

MS can afford to drop a lot more than PS3 can, but $100 is probably a little high. The best thing MS can do is split the difference and drop $50, and price the hard drives at $59.99 for the 250GB. The best thing Sony can do is price drop big time, start some major sales on PSN and take a royalty dive to the third parties.

The best thing Nintendo can do is pray. Assuming the whole ipod touch VMU thing is true, they're very frightened of Apple taking the kids away. Kinect and move are both better motion gimmicks than they have, and both also have the advantage of being moveable to a new console just like the Wiimote. They'll continue to sell consoles to the same people they sell them to every cycle, but another Wii? Forget it. Nintendo probably has another 10 years before they're going to have to make some hard choices, which I think will end up being a merger with Sony to re-invigorate the playstation brand

[Jeff Kleist]

On another note i notice more and more catalog releases seem to be coming this year, and i was wondering if we may see a Region b release of the following:-

Carrie (region b)
Straw dogs (region b)
Halloween 2 (original region b)

Sorry, I don't know anyone in region b really, not at major studios anyway

Finally do you think bluray will still be around in 2020, as that seems to be the date that all the download half wits seem to quote when talking of completely eliminating Bluray?

I think DVD will still be around in 2020, and Blu-ray too. Physical rental, dead as a doornail in 5 years outside of a few specialty shops (art house and porn). People are always going to want physical items no matter how much the content industry wants you to go digital. Nothing gets people spending like a good gimmick (yes, I'm looking at everyone, including me that dropped $60 on the lame Tron disc, you know you did it!). Is Blu-ray ever going to get the spread DVD did? Never. Is it a healthy, growing market that will continue to play an important role in home theater for years and years to come? Definately.

[PaulGo]

Sony did recently spend some big bucks buying the cell processor plant back from Toshiba.

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by merrick97

Well Nintendo is launching one and it is supposed to be more powerful than the 360 and PS3, but i have read that it sans the hard drive so maybe that drops the cost quite a bit, but I have a hard time believing Project Cafe as its called will be anything less than $300 when it first comes out.

Why do you have a hard time believing that a console with ~360/PS3-level hardware (in other words, already 6 years old), will launch in 2012, for less than $300, from a company that's never launched a console for more than $249?

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

The best thing Nintendo can do is pray. Assuming the whole ipod touch VMU thing is true, they're very frightened of Apple taking the kids away. Kinect and move are both better motion gimmicks than they have, and both also have the advantage of being moveable to a new console just like the Wiimote. They'll continue to sell consoles to the same people they sell them to every cycle, but another Wii? Forget it. Nintendo probably has another 10 years before they're going to have to make some hard choices, which I think will end up being a merger with Sony to re-invigorate the playstation brand

If the Wii had failed (an overclocked GameCube at that) they would more than likely have gone the SEGA route.

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Assuming the whole ipod touch VMU thing is true, they're very frightened of Apple taking the kids away.

Whether or not they are, they should be.

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

If the Wii had failed (an overclocked GameCube at that) they would more than likely have gone the SEGA route.

I really doubt that a single primary product failure would've scared them out of hardware.

[MerrickG]

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[Jeff Kleist]

Nintendo is run by a bunch of cantankerous old bastards who will go down swinging. Yamauchi is going to have to die, as well as most of his disciples in the company before such a move would ever even be considered

No matter what MS wants, they will never merge with a non-Japanese company, and that leaves Sony, who is probably better equipped to help exploit their brands anyway.