Archived: Insiders Thread

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by WriteSimply

To the geek in the pink: Any reason why The Legend Of Zorro gets a release date first than The Mask Of Zorro? Why not release them both? (puts a tenner in the coffer)


fuad

At one point the new transfer of "The Mask of Zorro" was still not complete when Legend was put on the schedule. I'm not sure why they are still staggered, possibly to develop some added value with Robert Rodriguez.

[LembasBread]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

At one point the new transfer of "The Mask of Zorro" was still not complete when Legend was put on the schedule. I'm not sure why they are still staggered, possibly to develop some added value with Robert Rodriguez.

What does Rodriguez have to do with the Zorro films?

[pro-bassoonist]

Dear Mr.Paidgeek:

I just wanted to note how utterly impressed I am with the UNDERWORLD disc. Please pass along to the appropriate party at SONY my most sincere thanks for a job (more than) well done. Your tech team, to which you belong, is something special. Thanks And please keep it up!!

Sincerely yours,

Dr. A

[pro-bassoonist]

Originally Posted by LembasBread

What does Rodriguez have to do with the Zorro films?

I am going to take a wild guess that the gentleman was thinking of Once Upon a Time in Mexico at the time when he typed up his reply. OUTIM was recently announced for a release in Italy, so obviously a US date is to be expected as well, hence his reply/mix-up.

I could well be wrong though.

Pro-B

[kowhite]

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

I am going to take a wild guess that the gentleman was thinking of Once Upon a Time in Mexico at the time when he typed up his reply. OUTIM was recently announced for a release in Italy, so obviously a US date is to be expected as well, hence his reply/mix-up.

I could well be wrong though.

Pro-B

Well Rodrigeuz was attached to direct Zorro at one time, but he didn't...so I suspect you're right.

[aygie]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

I checked with the authoring center and these are supposed to be the same MPEG2 encode.

????? US Version is AVC & a lot better, there's a few threads on this at the moment. what's happened?

[LynxFX]

Originally Posted by LembasBread

What does Rodriguez have to do with the Zorro films?

After doublechecking to see if Rodriguez had anything to do with Mask of Zorro I noticed that Spielberg was an exec producer on it. I never knew that. Seems like he has had his hand in many of my favorite films, and yes I would love to pick it up on BD. The sequel...not so much.

Paid and Penton, I just wanted to thank you for all of your responses in this thread, especially over the past couple days. Seeing a dozen posts in a row from you answering nearly everyone's question that you possibly can is a huge asset to this community. Just as you wanted to pass on the appreciation those putting out the discs, I thought you deserved a bit as well.

[Merlins]

I'm waiting for release dates of these Sony movies in USA:

Legends of the Fall
Once Upon a Time in Mexico

Will they be released in US this year?

[Kris Deering]

Hey Paidgeek

Watched Surf's Up last night and have to say it is one of the best video transfers I've seen in awhile. You had mentioned in an AVS thread that this title would have a full 24 bit PCM soundtrack but it is only 16 bit. Any reason it was truncated? Still sounded great, I was just curious.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Kris Deering

Hey Paidgeek

Watched Surf's Up last night and have to say it is one of the best video transfers I've seen in awhile. You had mentioned in .........that this title would have a full 24 bit PCM soundtrack but it is only 16 bit. Any reason it was truncated? Still sounded great, I was just curious.

I didn’t know that you were a member of our Blu piece of heaven, a belated welcome.
See if you can post some pics of your new home theater set-up on an appropriate thread here.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by TheLion

I just received "Surf's Up" and found it to be the first title to feature an icon for PS3 users to see on their menu.

This is a very nice little touch and highly appreciated.

btw outstanding PQ and SQ with Surf's Up - Kudos to SPE once again...

Lion, if you or other readers are really interested in Animation, this title and such, a very interesting course was given down in San Diego during Siggraph last August by the production team…………

(click on the……. here by Sony Imageworks phrase).
http://www.185vfx.com/2007/08/surfs-...e-at-siggraph/

[Kris Deering]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

I didn’t know that you were a member of our Blu piece of heaven, a belated welcome.
See if you can post some pics of your new home theater set-up on an appropriate thread here.

I keep an eye on any insider thread but I try not to dabble too much in the general forum area. I am a HUGE fan of Blu-ray and the software released on the format, but I am a big fan of HD DVD as well and like a lot of what they bring to the table. Both have their merits, both have their shortcomings. Personally, I think a fusion of the two formats in their stronger areas would have been ideal, but this is the real world and stuff like that never happens. At the end of the day I am a huge fan of high definition movies and both formats are cheap enough that I can enjoy both without breaking a sweat. My last 3 DVD players cost several times more than what it costs me to buy a player from both of these formats, so it is a no brainer for me.

[TheLion]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Lion, if you or other readers are really interested in Animation, this title and such, a very interesting course was given down in San Diego during Siggraph last August by the production team…………

(click on the……. here by Sony Imageworks phrase).
http://www.185vfx.com/2007/08/surfs-...e-at-siggraph/

Thank you very much - interesting indeed.

The waves are a sight to behold - off I go in a hopeless attempt to reproduce something like that in Maya

[jangofett]

Question for Paidgeek/penton: I was wondering whether or not any manufacturer could make a BD player without getting sued or otherwise get the permission of the BDA first. What I am trying to get at is whether or not the XBOX360 *could* eventually include a BD-player as part of its features.

Any takers?

[Penton-Man]

O.K.

I’ve started to whittle away at my PM message box (in reverse order), since I’m quite bored while recuperating from this knee injury…… punctuated by torture bouts from the Nazi I have as rehab specialist sent to this world to make my life as miserable as possible.

Anyway, I’ve gotten a boatload of questions about the new Blu-ray title Bram Stoker’s Dracula . I’ve spoken to several people involved on the creative end (I still haven’t been able to get in touch with Dale Grahn regarding the original theatrical presentation) but the bottom line is that the director (F.F.C.) was never really happy with the Superbit home video version of this title to begin with………..that should at least give the speculators a hint as to whaz up.

I’m going to call paidgeek today, since he is as “official” a source as you will probably get regarding the technical production of this title (from SPE’s viewpoint) and ask that if he will, in the next couple days, give as detailed as explanation as he can regarding the new transfer of this title.

If he doesn’t manage to get to it in the next several days, I’ll address the situation myself with another post.
Meanwhile if those true Count Dracula fans have a spare 80 million lying around….
Get your bids in –
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/...06/pdrac06.xml

[WickyWoo]

Question for Paidgeek/penton: I was wondering whether or not any manufacturer could make a BD player without getting sued or otherwise get the permission of the BDA first. What I am trying to get at is whether or not the XBOX360 *could* eventually include a BD-player as part of its features.

Yes and no.

They could do what LG did, and include some kind of kludge that would just play the video streams, but I frankly believe that this new revised HD DVD drive they're putting together is going to include the hybrid laser you see in a lot of BD-ROMs these days. That way all they have to do is toss together a software package when HD dies, and charge you $10 or whatever on Xbox live for it. Since all the expensive stuff like codecs are already paid for on the console itself, it's the smartest thing to do.

They cannot however just write a playback program and toss it out there.

[LynxFX]

Oh yeah and I didn't mean to leave Penton-Man out of my praise above. Silly insiders starting with the letter "P".

[Penton-Man]

Whew, my physical terrorist finally took a coffee break, so…………..

Here’s a quick heads-up to film fans regarding a title that isn’t out on Blu-ray yet but is particularly appropriate regarding the fact that you are seeing images of monks protesting in the streets of Myanmar and people actually spoke about it at the General Assembly of the United Nations today.

For those not too current on their geography, Myanmar is the new (relatively) name for the country many of us learned in school as “Burma”.

Anyway, Beyond Rangoon is a film (1995) by John Boorman (his son has a cameo role actually) starring Patricia Arquette set back in the time when Burma had their own Tinneman Square *incident*, only thing is….. few Americans ever heard about it. The motion picture itself received mixed reviews from the *critics* .

I recommend it to you all if only for the stunning cinematography of Malaysia (where it was actually shot) but, also especially because of the current events happening today, as we speak.

People tell me it has been playing on HDNet Movies? recently (it could even be on schedule for today or tomorrow?) and the PQ is quite good given the cable compression. You may also want to pick rent it on DVD from your local Blockbuster or what not.

Back to the rack.

[Nick Graham]

Paid/Penton - aside from all the net controversy around Dracula (which appears to have been done at the discretion of the films creator), we've got yet another prominent horror title on Blu with some controversy attached.

Halloween appears to have been taken from the Divimax transfer that Anchor Bay did for the film's anniversary. Unfortunately, unlike Anchor Bay's earlier transfer of Halloween, this one was not overseen by the film's legendary cinematographer Dean Cundey, and all of the deep blues he used in regards to the lighting of the night time scenes got stripped completely out. The Divimax tranfer also stripped away the orange tinting he used for the daytime scenes, but thankfully that seems to be restored on the Blu. On the night time scenes, the difference is still very drastic.

Anyway, I'm wanting to organize a respectful campaign to Anchor Bay, the goal of which would be to thank them for jumping in Blu and using it to the fullest (BD50, PCM soundtracks, plenty of supplements) , but at the same time get them to correct the issue and possibly offer a voluntary mail-in program like SPHE did for The Fifth Element. One of my concerns (and I would bet one of theirs) would be the cost factor of authoring/replicating replacement BD50 discs - is there a chance a company like SPHE could reach out to them and help out with this if they wanted to act on the problem?

I'm also looking for any snail mail addresses to relevant people at Anchor Bay/Starz to send correspondence (I'm thinking like postcards respectfully requesting them to correct the issue and thanking them for jumping into high def head first).

[bighitter]

LynxFX.....luv your sig