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

[SpaceDog]

Originally Posted by bluskies

I like the digibooks on the whole, when they offer some insight to the making of the movie, not just ads and photos. But, on the whole, I think they are quite smart looking.

I still get surprised by some people who will chant, "Give me the full experience!!! 7.1 audio!!! 3-D!!! Bigger everything!!! Take me to places I have never experienced image and audio wise on my Blu-ray player!!! Knock my eyes out!!! Expand my world in EVERY conceivable way!!!!

...but make sure the Blu-holder matches every other Blu-ray holder on my shelf, not one centimeter difference in size."

Wholeheartedly agree. These holders are not terrible like the DVD Snapper case. These are actually quite nice looking.

[Brain Sturgeon]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

I am interested in an online poll on Blu-ray.com that inquires as to how the members feel about the positioning of subtitles for SPE Blu-ray movies. We are just checking public interest, nothing decided, nothing imminent.

Regardless of the outcome of the poll, or whether or not any changes with subtitle formatting will come to be, thanks a million P-Man for your prompt attention and follow up on this issue.

You da man...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXTly...eature=related

[Mr. Cinema]

Where is "The Incredible Hulk" in the all-time top 50 list? There is no way on this Earth that something as crappy as "Ghost Rider" has sold more units.

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by Mr. Cinema

Where is "The Incredible Hulk" in the all-time top 50 list? There is no way on this Earth that something as crappy as "Ghost Rider" has sold more units.

Good catch! I'd expect it to be somewhere toward the bottom of the top 20. How strange! An editorial oversight?

[Jeff Kleist]

That may be true, but don't these Blu-ray players have to live up to certain standards with regard how Java and other BD-related features are implemented? If some newer, cheap players are buggy with regard to how they handle a feature like vector-based subtitles they still could be firmware updated to fix the issue.

Yes and no.

It's a horsepower issue, not an "ability to interpret the contained data" issue. Putting ugly low-res text on screen- easy. Putting stuff that looks close enough to as good as the pre-rendered stuff- HARD. It's not the fonts. It's the aliasing and the shadowing. As many players have proven, especially on early models they had just enough power to handle the basics, but not much beyond that.

[Bobby Henderson]

It takes a lot more computing horsepower (particularly RAM) to deal with raster-based graphics than it does vector based graphics.

[Alan Gordon]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

That's a little "attitude" coming from me with what I deal with regularly in my day job. Just this morning someone brought in their logo for a project -saved in Microsoft Powerpoint. Throw in a few JPEG files and an odd MS Publisher document and that will make my day.

Throw in someone:

Faxing their logo and expecting you to scan it and use it, someone taking a photo in a dark room with no flash where the people are wearing the same color clothes as the background (sometimes with their skin the same color as well), expecting you to find clipart of some obscure object doing something with something else obscure, wanting you to use a certain font, but not telling which font it is, wanting you to use a digital photo, and giving you the low-res version that came off of one of the MANY photo software sites on the internet instead of the HQ version that came off the camera, the pain that comes from having to explain the difference, and a few other things that I can't remember off the top of my head, and you've just described a good portion of my work-week.

~Alan

[cjamescook]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

It takes a lot more computing horsepower (particularly RAM) to deal with raster-based graphics than it does vector based graphics.

Yeah, but think about how you would actually implement it:
You don't rasterize the vector-based fonts for each subtitle. When the user picks a font and size, you rasterize the character set into RAM. Then subtitles are just copying the rasterized version on the fly from your raster ram cache buffer to the screen buffer or output bitstream.

Am I missing something here?

It doesn't look like huge CPU demands if I am not.

[Bobby Henderson]

I don't know what kind of 2D/3D graphics acceleration capabilities are built into Blu-ray players. It would seem the players would have to at least have something in regard to that capability for extras like 3D models of Scottish battlegrounds planned for addition in the BD of Braveheart.

The core functions of the BD format, such as playback of full motion 1080p video have enormous graphical demands -far more than the computing horsepower required to handle basic vector letter shapes.

Originally Posted by Alan Gordon

Faxing their logo and expecting you to scan it and use it, someone taking a photo in a dark room with no flash where the people are wearing the same color clothes as the background (sometimes with their skin the same color as well), expecting you to find clipart of some obscure object doing something with something else obscure, wanting you to use a certain font, but not telling which font it is, wanting you to use a digital photo, and giving you the low-res version that came off of one of the MANY photo software sites on the internet instead of the HQ version that came off the camera, the pain that comes from having to explain the difference, and a few other things that I can't remember off the top of my head, and you've just described a good portion of my work-week.

Yep. I've personally dealt with examples of all those problems. D.I.Y. design done by so many people out there usually creates many more problems than it solves.

On another subject, is anyone else a bit thrown by the celebrity tragedies this week, especially today? I posted news about Farrah Fawcett's death in the "Film Yak" forum at Film-Tech just after noon. I wrote,"wow, we lose Ed McMahon this week and now Farrah. They say tragedies happen in threes. I hate to think of who could be next." Four hours later that question was answered: Michael Jackson. Geez.

[Alan Gordon]

Continuing the recent thread of Sony release "gushing", I just received my copy of "Ghostbusters" the other night... while I haven't watched the whole thing, I couldn't help but watch some... FANTASTIC DISC!!

Originally Posted by kefrank

I think a lot of people like the digibooks. It's just that those who don't like them are very vocal.

I'd have "How The West Was One", "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", and "The Shawshank Redemption" by now if it weren't for the digibook packaging. The sad thing is, I'm scared that if we're lucky enough to get "North By Northwest" and "Forbidden Planet" outside of WB's expensive box sets, it will be a digibook (I'm scared for "Heat" as well). I may pick up HTWWW this week while it's on sale anyway, because the eventual re-packaging might not contain the second disc...

Originally Posted by SquidPuppet

I see the review is up for Burn Notice. It's comforting to know I wasnt and that my eyes and DIY calibration must be somewhat OK.

I finally received my copy from Amazon the other day, and sampled multiple episodes. Some episodes are better than others, but every episode still looked far superior to the USA-HD broadcasts. The grain, while still annoying looking at times looks more like "grain" on the Blu-ray and less like a million mosquitoes buzzing around on your TV. Though it's slight, there is also, at times, more detail present than on USA-HD, and the shots of Miami look a MILLION times more impressive.

I generally see where Kenneth Brown comes from in his reviews, regardless of whether or not I agree, but the audio sounded MUCH stronger than the USA-HD broadcasts, and the picture considerably better. True, A LOT of people will be turned off by it's quality (I said so in The Digital Bits thread), but it's still superior to the DVD and HD broadcasts, and I considerably doubt it's going to look much better (even with the episodes spread out over more discs given the bitrates I sampled from time to time).

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

On another subject, is anyone else a bit thrown by the celebrity tragedies this week, especially today? I posted news about Farrah Fawcett's death in the "Film Yak" forum at Film-Tech just after noon. I wrote,"wow, we lose Ed McMahon this week and now Farrah. They say tragedies happen in threes. I hate to think of who could be next." Four hours later that question was answered: Michael Jackson. Geez.

Given EM's age, not too shocking, given FF's condition, not too shocking either, but even with his health problems over the years, MJ was a shock!

I really wish Farrah (whose High School was just down the road from the house my Mom spent most of her time growing up) and Ryan had gotten a chance to marry before this, but oh well, my prayers go out to him and her family and friends.

MJ's story was a tragic story, but for all his issues, and the things he had to endure, his music truly left an impression on the world.

Sad day, sad day...

~Alan

[Vincent Pereira]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Isn’t it just typical that when you click on that link, one gets slapped in the face with a bunch of advertisements.
Sheesh.

Somebody PM’ed your post before it evaporated. From what I recall, “Kram Sacul” ?sp is worse with his occasional jabs at RAH because instead of insinuating judgment tempered by financial interest, “Kram” just outright accuses RAH of reviewer incompetence from time to time...

Yes, Kram is a complete tool. I ripped into him in a thread over there some months ago and amazingly it was never deleted (I received a kudos for my post via PM over there actually), if you do a search you might find it (which I cannot do as I have been banned temporarily over there for a "crude and insulting" post). Kram recently attacked Robert in the GHOSTBUSTERS thread over there a couple days ago (because Robert- HORROR OF HORRORS!- gave a thunbs up to the beautiful filmmaker-approved BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA Blu-ray), too, and he was actually called out for his neverending absurd overstatements by FoxyMulder and I posted in agreement, but all of those posts from that thread have mysteriously vanished...

Vincent

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by Alan Gordon

I really wish Farrah (whose High School was just down the road from the house my Mom spent most of her time growing up) and Ryan had gotten a chance to marry before this, but oh well, my prayers go out to him and her family and friends.

I thought I read a few days ago they did marry.

[Vincent Pereira]

No, what happened was is he proposed to her and she nodded yes but they didn't actually get to marry before she passed

That video today of him leaving the hospital and telling the reporters "Farrah's gone" shortly after she died was just heartbreaking, you could see him just about fall apart as he drove away in the car

If anything good can come out of this, hopefully it will light a fire under Redmond and he'll straighten himself out and make both Farrah and Ryan proud. My brother is an addict and it's not easy dealing with that.

Vincent

[Alan Gordon]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

I thought I read a few days ago they did marry.

What Vincent said...

Vincent, I thought of the same thing about Redmond as well...

~Alan<~~~~~~~~Who's probably glad he didn't see the video of Ryan today...

[Oliver K]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Yeah, I also plan on walking on water the first week in July when I’m scouting a location up in Vancouver.

Walking on water sounds cool, must be a location for some kind of bible film

For quite some time I have known DVD software players that allow me to choose size, color, font and position of DVD subtitles or closed captions. Ever since the launch of the HD-DVD and later the Blu-Ray format I was surprised by the limited functionality offered in this regard from new and supposedly advanced formats. It seemed to me that with all the other added functionality like picture in picture and BDlive the handling of subtitles should be rather trivial in comparison or at least I would not have compared it to walking on water.

But to give you credit where it is indeed due and until you get the hang of that walking on water thing I'd like to say thanks for the sub poll on here. I voted for all subs in the picture - and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't make them too big

[Oliver K]

Originally Posted by Vincent Pereira

Yes, Kram is a complete tool. I ripped into him in a thread over there some months ago and amazingly it was never deleted (I received a kudos for my post via PM over there actually), if you do a search you might find it (which I cannot do as I have been banned temporarily over there for a "crude and insulting" post). Kram recently attacked Robert in the GHOSTBUSTERS thread over there a couple days ago (because Robert- HORROR OF HORRORS!- gave a thunbs up to the beautiful filmmaker-approved BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA Blu-ray), too, and he was actually called out for his neverending absurd overstatements by FoxyMulder and I posted in agreement, but all of those posts from that thread have mysteriously vanished...

Vincent

Kram needs to let go of that Dracula thing, it is an obsession with him.

You should keep posting on AVS - it is nice to have some balance in some of the heated discussions and a lot of threads turn into two opposing sides taking jabs at each other very fast. It is not enough to say that a disc has issues but that it is still a significant improvement over the DVD, but instead it is either a disgusting travesty or like a fresh clean print (whatever that is) for many members.

[Jeff Kleist]

I don't know what kind of 2D/3D graphics acceleration capabilities are built into Blu-ray players. It would seem the players would have to at least have something in regard to that capability for extras like 3D models of Scottish battlegrounds planned for addition in the BD of Braveheart.

No 3D capability. It's faked like ST:TOS's Enterprise tour. It works, but there's no real time rendering going on

[Objectivity]

Originally Posted by Alan Gordon

Throw in someone:

Faxing their logo and expecting you to scan it and use it, someone taking a photo in a dark room with no flash where the people are wearing the same color clothes as the background (sometimes with their skin the same color as well), expecting you to find clipart of some obscure object doing something with something else obscure, wanting you to use a certain font, but not telling which font it is, wanting you to use a digital photo, and giving you the low-res version that came off of one of the MANY photo software sites on the internet instead of the HQ version that came off the camera, the pain that comes from having to explain the difference, and a few other things that I can't remember off the top of my head, and you've just described a good portion of my work-week.

~Alan

It's nice to see, despite our differences, that we all live in the same world.

[DenonCI]

Penton,

Finally got a chance to watch "Ghostbusters." My compliments to Sony on a great job.

Best,

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by DenonCI

Penton,

Finally got a chance to watch "Ghostbusters." My compliments to Sony on a great job.

Best,

Thank you.
Grover will be pleased.

One of these days (not too soon!) you should consider letting people here know who you write for.
I think it would be a hoot.
Until then, we'll keep 'em guessing.