"Club Penton" - Ask questions to Hollywood insider "Penton-Man"

[Agent Cooper]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

I see nobody has gotten Bingo on my first trivia query yet.

Oh, that would be Steve Bing of Shangri-La Entertainment then.

I see you are back with your usual flair for hints, driving us insane. Oh, the joy!

[IMind]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

I see nobody has gotten Bingo on my first trivia query yet.

Stephen Bing of Shangri-La entertainment? I'll admit I cheated and tracked it down.

[JAGUAR1977]

You know, it would be nice if Paramount and Universal, god forbid, actually uttered the words Blu-ray in public.

7th April now.........................nothing.

[STARSCREAM]

I agree with Jaguar1977, I guess I shouldn't have been in such a hurry to unload my Hd-a35 and my HDDVD collection. I thought for SURE we would have atleast announcements of release dates from them by now! Nope, not a freakin' peep.

[JAGUAR1977]

Let's not be greedy, we can't expect them to have release dates 2 months after HD-DVD collapsed!

But even talking about Blu-ray seems too much to ask.

Just give us a hello, everythings on track, publicaly, not cryptic responses through insiders or the likes of Bill Hunt, welcome as they are.

[savage1984]

Guys, lets try to keep the ranting in the ranting threads. Penton is well-aware of how badly all of us want announcements.

[WickyWoo]

None of our insiders have the ability to comment on the Paramount/Universal situation. It is very fluid at this time, and both studios are in lockdown on the subject of HD

Both studios are actively producing discs, and when they finally take off the sheets covering their plans, it's likely there will be a lot of discs very quickly. The Blu studios are shifting their schedules around to make sure there is enough authoring space for them to get their discs in, but HD media is not a fast process at all, especially for Universal who's starting from scratch

[GreenScar]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

None of our insiders have the ability to comment on the Paramount/Universal situation. It is very fluid at this time, and both studios are in lockdown on the subject of HD

Both studios are actively producing discs, and when they finally take off the sheets covering their plans, it's likely there will be a lot of discs very quickly. The Blu studios are shifting their schedules around to make sure there is enough authoring space for them to get their discs in, but HD media is not a fast process at all, especially for Universal who's starting from scratch

Even though we already know this, it sucks to hear it.

[NoQuestion]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

None of our insiders have the ability to comment on the Paramount/Universal situation. It is very fluid at this time, and both studios are in lockdown on the subject of HD

Both studios are actively producing discs, and when they finally take off the sheets covering their plans, it's likely there will be a lot of discs very quickly. The Blu studios are shifting their schedules around to make sure there is enough authoring space for them to get their discs in, but HD media is not a fast process at all, especially for Universal who's starting from scratch

wicky, glad to hear this, i know it is killing everyone that we arent hearing anything from these two studios. I hope you are correct about alot of disc quickly, hopefully it wont be along the lines like Universal did with hd-dud, id like to see some nice transfers out of them not rush jobs to get the discs out.

I see it like this, the longer it takes for them to announce something the better, it means that they are stock piling up the discs for release in big waves. Right now I am already struggling to keep up with the titles I want. As long as we get all of the titles that sold well on hd-dud by end of year and we get all the back titles plus some from paramount then I will be happy come end of year.

[SpaceDog]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

I see nobody has gotten Bingo on my first trivia query yet.

Stephen Bing

[Penton-Man]

I received an interesting PM query from a member in regards to potential pitfalls in PQ quality of home theater movies in regards to their future HD mastering in years to come.

First off, he wanted to know if there is more than one “type” of HD master currently in use or delivered by content providers to their clients.
Secondly, he was concerned that content providers (studios) might provide one generic HD master that would be “dumbed down” so that it could be used for both Blu-ray and electronic distribution -given possible bandwith restrictions of entities providing the later…..invoking things like pre-meditated DNR to accomplish this dual purpose.

I do not believe that this should be of concern for Blu-ray editions or any future packaged media because pristine PQ is an inherent selling point of storage media in the first place. In regards to electronic-distribution-specific HD masters in years to come ?
I have no idea whether there will be “dumbed down PQ” HD masters produced specifically for electronic distribution be it from cable companies, satellite providers, etc.

However, I will tell you for a fact that despite in cases of production being done in 24fps, there are such things as "air" masters of HD television shows which are sold and delivered by some networks as 1080/59i with 3:2 (assuming 24 frame acquisition).

So, potentially a gold standard HD master could later be *tweaked* by the content provider into an “air” master or some other variant of electronic master for distribution purposes to fit restrictions that are not of concern to Blu-ray encoding/authoring.

As to the above, with regards to real world scenarios, I think it best for foreign companies wishing to broadcast past U.S. television shows that were originally produced in 24p, to ask for and obtain the 24p masters with 5.1 audio, then take those masters to the best conversion facility they know of for the proper format conversion (24 to 25).

So, in essence, yes, there already are different forms of HD masters delivered by content providers running around the marketplace.

[BillCable]

Penton - any clue if the Batman Begins Blu-ray is an optimized encode, or just a port of the HD DVD?

[Scoob]

Originally Posted by BillCable

Penton - any clue if the Batman Begins Blu-ray is an optimized encode, or just a port of the HD DVD?

BUMP.

[WickyWoo]

It's not.

[TheRealBob]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

It's not.

It's not "an optimized encode"? Or it's not "just a port of the HD DVD"?

[Woody]

Originally Posted by TheRealBob

It's not "an optimized encode"? Or it's not "just a port of the HD DVD"?

It will not be reencoded. None of the announced previous HD DVD exclusives will be.

[jd213]

I'm going to be rather disappointed if that's the case. There were pics posted on AVS that showed that Batman Begins on HD DVD effectively has 720p resolution by taking a screenshot, shrinking it down to 1280x720, blowing it back up to 1980x1080 and comparing it with the original. I think the shots were taken down long ago due to pressure from HD DVD fanboys though

[WickyWoo]

I'm going to be rather disappointed if that's the case. There were pics posted on AVS that showed that Batman Begins on HD DVD effectively has 720p resolution by taking a screenshot, shrinking it down to 1280x720, blowing it back up to 1980x1080 and comparing it with the original. I think the shots were taken down long ago due to pressure from HD DVD fanboys though

The methods used by the pixel counters are dubious at best according to the engineers I've talked to. No I can't go into more detail because I don't remember enough of the specifics to explain why. It was a bit over my head

[blitz6speed]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

The methods used by the pixel counters are dubious at best according to the engineers I've talked to. No I can't go into more detail because I don't remember enough of the specifics to explain why. It was a bit over my head

It is general knowledge that the HD DVD of batman begins is very soft. The same "team" did Prestige and that is sharp as a tack. We blame VC-1 + hd dvd specs + warner DNRing to death. A re-encode would go a long way.

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

The methods used by the pixel counters are dubious at best according to the engineers I've talked to. No I can't go into more detail because I don't remember enough of the specifics to explain why. It was a bit over my head

Does that include the game "pixel counters"? There's a lot of controversy of that method being used to determine the non-scaled resolution of games, right?

Gary