Archived: Insiders Thread

[Josh]

Originally Posted by dobyblue

Can you explain how they are the studio distributing Ice Age 2, Fantastic Four, etc.. and why they will not be able to release these on HD DVD?

I will defer to the experts at AVS:

Originally Posted by Azumi

Fox Pathé Europa (mostly known as FPE) is a French homevideo conglomerate formed by 20th Century Fox (which is the majority shareholder), Pathé and Luc Besson's Europacorp.

That said, they are not a distributor, they simply represent those companies. So Fox will still release their stuff on Blu-ray (and not HD DVD) because they tell Fox Pathe Europa what and how to publish.

[dobyblue]

Sweet stuff! Thanks for clearing that up.

[JTK]

For those of us a bit out of the loop: Who is Azumi at AVS and who is he with?

[Josh]

Originally Posted by JTK

For those of us a bit out of the loop: Who is Azumi at AVS and who is he with?

I don't know, but he had a bunch of good information on this specific subject (I didn't mean to suggest he was an insider). Basically, FPE acts in the best interests of its owners, so they will only release Fox titles in Blu-ray unless Fox says otherwise.

[JTK]

Originally Posted by joshd2012

I don't know, but he had a bunch of good information on this specific subject (I didn't mean to suggest he was an insider). Basically, FPE acts in the best interests of its owners, so they will only release Fox titles in Blu-ray unless Fox says otherwise.

Thanks. I'll make a point of adding him to my "make sure you read this guy's posts" list over there.

[Jack Torrance]

Paidgeek:

Saw this post from Amir over on AVS:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&page=73&pp=30 (post #2173)

Please note that should SC decide to produce a BD title, I hope there is no expectation for me to come here to pre-announce it. I am sure Sony/Paid would not do this, should Disney decide to do the same . Their plans are theirs and only they can announce them.

Is Amir insinuating something about Disney releasing in HD-DUD? Disney are still exclusive and Amir is delusional, correct?

[LFletcher]

Originally Posted by Jack Torrance

Is Amir insinuating something about Disney releasing in HD-DUD? Disney are still exclusive and Amir is delusional, correct?

No, he is saying that if Disney were to announce a title (on Blu Ray) he wouldnt expect Paidgeek to announce it to the forum as he works for Sony not Disney. Therefore Amir is saying that he wont be announcing Studio Canal titles (for Blu Ray) as he doesnt work for SC and also wouldnt want to promote Blu Ray.

[What'sHD]

Edit: Whoops, didnt realise I was posting in the Insider's thread. Deleted, my bad.

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by dobyblue

Paidgeek - I see Sony just announced Stephen King's Secret Window with Johnny Depp.
Any idea of the codecs to be used on this one?

First off, sorry for the very belated response. I've been getting very little computer time in lately.

I am almost certain that "Secret Window" is an MPEG2 title and that the master was good to very good. I'll try to confirm.

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by blitz6speed

Paidgeek

Any chance the PS3 team will allow NTFS external hard drives to finally work on the ps3? FAT32 sucks with its 4 gig limit.

I'll ask...

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by WriteSimply

When players/receivers with advanced audio codec decoding are out, what will SPE do with regards to audio? Still do PCM or try out TrueHD/HDMA?


fuad

We have still not reached a final decision on this. Even with receivers coming out that support lossless codecs, there is still an issue of the players not having HDMI v1.3. Without it, the players cannot transmit the audio stream to the receiver. There are also arguments to be made in favor of letting the player decode the audio and output LPCM, such as secondary audio stream mixing. I am in favor of testing Dolby THD. We will likely release a title with it soon and include LPCM as well until we can gauge the customer response.

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by dobyblue

paidgeek, can you shed any light on Fox Pathe Europa's decision to release on HD DVD jsut as Studio Canal announces neutrality as well?
Does this mean all Fox produced movies will be on HD DVD in Europe?

I don't know. The next time I speak with a friend from Fox I will ask.

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by Jack Torrance

Paidgeek:

Saw this post from Amir over on AVS:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&page=73&pp=30 (post #2173)

Please note that should SC decide to produce a BD title, I hope there is no expectation for me to come here to pre-announce it. I am sure Sony/Paid would not do this, should Disney decide to do the same . Their plans are theirs and only they can announce them.

Is Amir insinuating something about Disney releasing in HD-DUD? Disney are still exclusive and Amir is delusional, correct?

We have almost constant communication with Disney and they appear to be totally devoted to the work they are doing on Blu-ray. I have no reason to believe they are entertaining the idea of releasing anything on HD-DVD. This has been implied and subsequently denied by Disney numerous times now.

[onyxx]

Addressing Paidgeek:

I feel stupid for asking about individual titles like this but I feel like there is nobody else to ask this. One of my favorite movies is Jacob's Ladder which was distributed by TriStar, and I am wondering if SP has even considered releasing it on BD? If you have seen the source and can tell me if it is HD material or know anything else about this title hitting BD please let me know.

Anyway, thank you for providing us with nice insider stuff!

[Esox50]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

I am in favor of testing Dolby THD. We will likely release a title with it soon and include LPCM as well until we can gauge the customer response.

If that title is what I think it is (remember a certain poll I did on another forum?), then thank you very much!!!

[LembasBread]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

We have still not reached a final decision on this. Even with receivers coming out that support lossless codecs, there is still an issue of the players not having HDMI v1.3. Without it, the players cannot transmit the audio stream to the receiver. There are also arguments to be made in favor of letting the player decode the audio and output LPCM, such as secondary audio stream mixing. I am in favor of testing Dolby THD. We will likely release a title with it soon and include LPCM as well until we can gauge the customer response.

I can give you this customer's reponse (as in me ): stick with PCM, please! It's speaks of quality, to me as an audio purist, and is compatible with everything! I believe I speak for a lot of people on and off this forum.

We, as consumers, now have a home video format capable of delivering multi-channel uncompressed audio and it would be a shame to let that ability go to waste.

[LembasBread]

Paidgeek,

I don't know if this has been suggested before, but do you think you could talk with the marketing department (or whoever's in charge of box art specs) and have them take a cue from Disney. I like that Disney states the specs for audio, i.e. 24-bit or 16-bit audio, and maybe SPHE home video releases could let us know the same.

They already say things like, "English PCM (uncompressed)" and I think that the "uncompressed" is a little redundant. It would be nice to maybe include the bit depth and sample rate to let us now what quality of uncompressed, lossless audio we're getting. Especially if SPHE decides to start using higher resolution audio on upcoming titles whether it's PCM or TrueHD/DTS-HD MA and even more so if there are multiple lossless audio codecs with differing resolutions on the same disc.

Just a thought...thanks.

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by onyxx

Addressing Paidgeek:

I feel stupid for asking about individual titles like this but I feel like there is nobody else to ask this. One of my favorite movies is Jacob's Ladder which was distributed by TriStar, and I am wondering if SP has even considered releasing it on BD? If you have seen the source and can tell me if it is HD material or know anything else about this title hitting BD please let me know.

Anyway, thank you for providing us with nice insider stuff!

I have not reviewed this master, but I will keep an eye out for it...

[Jack Torrance]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

We have almost constant communication with Disney and they appear to be totally devoted to the work they are doing on Blu-ray. I have no reason to believe they are entertaining the idea of releasing anything on HD-DVD. This has been implied and subsequently denied by Disney numerous times now.

Thanks for the clarification, Paid. Amir talks out of both sides of his mouth sometimes so it's sometimes hard to know when he's spouting FUD or actually trying to make a valid point.

[WriteSimply]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

I am in favor of testing Dolby THD. We will likely release a title with it soon and include LPCM as well until we can gauge the customer response.

Hopefully the TrueHD track will be have the 20/24-bit sampling rate.


fuad