'Open Season' on Blu-ray This January

[Jeff®]

Growing up can be a confusing journey fraught with difficult choices. Boog (Martin Lawrence) is a domesticated Grizzly Bear who leads a perfectly happy life inside of Park Ranger Beth's (Debra Messing) garage, but a chance meeting with an overly energetic mule deer named Elliot (Ashton Kutcher) quickly changes everything and lands Boog high in the forest a few days before the opening of hunting season. Devoid of even the most basic survival skills, Boog and Elliot stumble through the woods and find themselves at the mercy of every forest animal from skunks to chipmunks as well as an evil hunter named Shaw (Gary Sinise). After unintentionally inciting and endangering an entire forest full of clever animals, Boog and Elliot come to the realization that only by banding together do the forest animals stand a chance of outsmarting the hunters and ensuring their own survival.

Open Season Blu-ray
Open Season Blu-ray Review

[phloyd]

I saw the trailer for this at the Sony Store the other day and it looked really good. Image Quality that is.

[Blackraven]

I've seen the IMAX 3D version and I can say that it does look neat. Maybe the story isn't that legendary but it didn't fail any of my expecations.

Definitely picking this up on Blu-ray next year.

[dialog_gvf]

Chad's review of Open Season

Congratulations paidgeek! Sony hits a home run with their first AVC title.

Gary

[JTK]

Boy, I'll bet that's something to behold.

[Amon37]

Sounds like I may have to pick that up.

[ProvenFlipper]

I had planned on picking this up anyways, but now I'm actually kinda excited about it and will probably watch it on the first day I get it, which is a rarity for me.

[Josh]

Amazing video (AVC) and audio (PCM) on a BD-25 with all the extras. Why the hell can't Warner do this with VC-1?

[GoldenRedux]

Originally Posted by joshd2012

Amazing video (AVC) and audio (PCM) on a BD-25 with all the extras. Why the hell can't Warner do this with VC-1?

Because VC-1 sucks and Warner has their heads ups their Ar**s?

[Maximus]

Originally Posted by joshd2012

Amazing video (AVC) and audio (PCM) on a BD-25 with all the extras. Why the hell can't Warner do this with VC-1?

Well the Departed is a start at least, hopefully we will see more PCM tracks from now on.

If LOTR came with a PCM track on the BD side of the DualDisc HD DVD zealots would go nuts.

[dialog_gvf]

Off topic (LOTR and LPCM):

LOTR: ROTK-EE is 251 minutes. That's a 26.5Mbps bit budget from a BD50.

48/20 7.1 LPCM is 7.7Mbps (it deserves it) -> 18.8Mbps ABR for the video

Wow, that would actually work with VC-1 or AVC! AMAZING! Heck, Sony has put out 18Mbps MPEG-2 that didn't look too bad. But, of course you wouldn't do that for LOTR.

HD DVD is doomed by one title. Hilarious.

-----------

Possible reasons for TL51

- A last desperate attempt to gain studio support
- Statmux is simply not going to cut it from a workflow perspective
- LOTR: ROTK-EE just won't fly on a single disc with HD DVD

When the classic of our time would be held back in grandeur due to the limitations of new technology, that is SCREAMING that this technology is insufficient.

Gary

[TallCoolOne]

Originally Posted by joshd2012

Amazing video (AVC) and audio (PCM) on a BD-25 with all the extras. Why the hell can't Warner do this with VC-1?

well this movie is only 99 mins, so that might have something to do with it (not to steal any of the thunder here tho )

[DaViD Boulet]

Just got this BD this afternoon. Look for my review at dvdfile shortly. I'm off to see what Chad has to say!

dave

[Longshot]

Imagine that, a reference title that is not VC-1!

The MS mouthpieces are already downplaying Chad's review. "It's only one title", "I'm sure it would look just as god or better in VC-1". These guys are really starting to get under my skin.

[Esox50]

Originally Posted by Longshot

Imagine that, a reference title that is not VC-1!

The MS mouthpieces are already downplaying Chad's review. "It's only one title", "I'm sure it would look just as god or better in VC-1". These guys are really starting to get under my skin.

Yeah, I saw Ben's comments. "We could probably do at least as good in Vc-1." These guys are becoming more and more unprofessional by the day. That's basically calling the folks at SPE, who did the title and put the sweat and tears into it, incompetent.

I wouldn't let it get under your skin. There's simply no point. They will get noisier and noisier as they continue to lose ground to BD. They know this, and they know that we know this.

[Esox50]

Originally Posted by dialog_gvf

Possible reasons for TL51

- A last desperate attempt to gain studio support

I think this is what it is Gary. Somehow, Microsoft now has Disney using VC-1, at least on some titles. But if I'm not mistaken, the Flightplan VC-1 encode will not work on HD DVD due to the high peaks. And if early reports of the VC-1 peaks on CasaNova are true, they have the same problem there. I suspect we'll be seeing high bitrate VC-1 encodes from Disney on BD50's for titles like Pirates, etc. To me, then, clearly the TL51 is an attempt to get Disney aboard. The 1.5x speed and 51 gigs will allow the HD DVD camp to go to Disney and say, "what do you have to lose by porting over your BD50 discs to HD DVD?" This is how they are going to try to get studio support, at least from Disney. It will be interesting to see how Disney reacts to this.

Right now, I suspect the HD DVD camp is desperately trying to keep Universal from going neutral at some point in 2007 in order to give them enough time to make this last ditch effort to get Disney neutral. But I still question why anyone would buy an HD DVD player if both Universal and Disney go neutral...

[Longshot]

Originally Posted by Esox50

I think this is what it is Gary. Somehow, Microsoft now has Disney using VC-1, at least on some titles. But if I'm not mistaken, the Flightplan VC-1 encode will not work on HD DVD due to the high peaks. And if early reports of the VC-1 peaks on CasaNova are true, they have the same problem there. I suspect we'll be seeing high bitrate VC-1 encodes from Disney on BD50's for titles like Pirates, etc. To me, then, clearly the TL51 is an attempt to get Disney aboard. The 1.5x speed and 51 gigs will allow the HD DVD camp to go to Disney and say, "what do you have to lose by porting over your BD50 discs to HD DVD?" This is how they are going to try to get studio support, at least from Disney. It will be interesting to see how Disney reacts to this.

Right now, I suspect the HD DVD camp is desperately trying to keep Universal from going neutral at some point in 2007 in order to give them enough time to make this last ditch effort to get Disney neutral. But I still question why anyone would buy an HD DVD player if both Universal and Disney go neutral...

This makes perfect sense. Disney is HD DVD's only shot. Hopefully Disney will use AVC for the majority of their titles. If Open Season is an indication of how good AVC can be no reason for Disney to use VC-1.

[Jack Torrance]

Originally Posted by Esox50

I suspect we'll be seeing high bitrate VC-1 encodes from Disney on BD50's for titles like Pirates, etc. To me, then, clearly the TL51 is an attempt to get Disney aboard. The 1.5x speed and 51 gigs will allow the HD DVD camp to go to Disney and say, "what do you have to lose by porting over your BD50 discs to HD DVD?" This is how they are going to try to get studio support, at least from Disney. It will be interesting to see how Disney reacts to this. ...

But if HD-DVD starts releasing titles in triple layer, won't that make all current players out in the market right now obsolete as they can only read two layers? May not be accurate as it is somthing I just heard. And please correct me if I heard wrong.

But if true, heck... let them do it and have all those M$ fanboys rebuy their players.

[blitz6speed]

Originally Posted by Esox50

I think this is what it is Gary. Somehow, Microsoft now has Disney using VC-1, at least on some titles. But if I'm not mistaken, the Flightplan VC-1 encode will not work on HD DVD due to the high peaks. And if early reports of the VC-1 peaks on CasaNova are true, they have the same problem there. I suspect we'll be seeing high bitrate VC-1 encodes from Disney on BD50's for titles like Pirates, etc. To me, then, clearly the TL51 is an attempt to get Disney aboard. The 1.5x speed and 51 gigs will allow the HD DVD camp to go to Disney and say, "what do you have to lose by porting over your BD50 discs to HD DVD?" This is how they are going to try to get studio support, at least from Disney. It will be interesting to see how Disney reacts to this.

Right now, I suspect the HD DVD camp is desperately trying to keep Universal from going neutral at some point in 2007 in order to give them enough time to make this last ditch effort to get Disney neutral. But I still question why anyone would buy an HD DVD player if both Universal and Disney go neutral...

They'd have to up the bandwidth of the players as well, and that is not going to happen. If it does, then all new hardware will be needed, and at that point, why would anyone switch from a 30gb format to one thats 51gb when theres already a 50gb format with tons of compatible movies already available? Just doesn't makes sense. Nothing adds up to anything that would seem like a good business decision. Its all last ditch effort to try and make some noise, even tho the world isnt paying attention.

[Polyh3dron]

Originally Posted by dialog_gvf

Chad's review of Open Season

Congratulations paidgeek! Sony hits a home run with their first AVC title.

Gary

I am very happy that Sony has seen the light and decided to start using AVC. I just hope that this isn't some one-off experiment. They need to do all of there titles from now on in AVC. And it really sucks that the first film they do it with is CRAP. Oh and TL51 HDDVDs will NEVER happen because none of the current HDDVD players are capable of playing them.. they would basically have to make HDDVD 2.0 players or something and that would be yet ANOTHER format. All the HDDVD people would have to buy a new player again to enjoy all of their HD movies.