Warner Brothers and missed opportunities

[ClaytonMG]

Originally Posted by Alan Gordon

LOL!!! Some of them did! I had over 30 (getting close to 40) before I sold them, and some of them looked great. Could some of them have benefitted from a higher bitrate encode, sure, but they still looked pretty darn good. Personally, I favored my Universal/Paramount titles over my WB titles even on HD DVD. I felt they often looked superior to WB's titles.

UPCOMING (ANNOUNCED) WB RELEASES

The Perfect Storm - Dolby TrueHD
The Lost Boys - Dolby TrueHD
Lost Boys: The Tribe - Dolby Digital 5.1?
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - Dolby Digital 5.1
Justice League Of America: Season One - ????????????
Pale Rider - ?????????
The Adventures Of Robin Hood - Mono
Under Siege 2: Dark Territory - Dolby Digital 5.1?
Outbreak - Dolby TrueHD
The Gauntlet - Dolby TrueHD
Every Which Way But Loose - ?????????????
Eraser - Dolby TrueHD
Smallville: Season Seven - Dolby Digital 5.1
How The West Was Won - Dolby Digital 5.1?
Cool Hand Luke - ??????????
Speed Racer - Dolby Digital 5.1?
Risky Business - Dolby Digital 5.1?
Another Cinderella Story - Dolby Digital 5.1?
Pushing Daisies - Dolby Digital 5.1
Beetlejuice - Dolby TrueHD
L.A. Confidential - Dolby TrueHD
Blow - Dolby TrueHD
Rest Stop - Dolby TrueHD
Rest Stop: Don't Look Back - Dolby TrueHD
Otis - Dolby Digital 5.1?
A Christmas Story - Mono?
The Shawshank Redemption - Dolby Digital 5.1?

Note that two titles above have no audio listed, but rather "?" by them. These titles are titles I could not find tech specs for the audio on. Also note that on the above list, several titles with "lossy" have "?" by them. These titles are titles where we don't know whether they will be receiving a "lossless" track or not. Though some have had rear artwork released showing a "lossy" soundtrack... well, we all know what happened with "The Perfect Storm" and "Blow" do we not?

The point is, WB is getting better in regards to "lossless", but if you're favorite movie is released in the meantime while they are working their problems out, it doesn't mean as much. That being said, I can deal with it for now, but I don't have as much hope in them straightening out their PQ issues as quickly...

~Alan

Paramount and Universal titles did kill most WB titles on HD DVD. And yes, although people here don't think so, some HD DVD's actually did look awesome... though they were pretty much all lacking lossless audio which is probably why the PQ looked so good.

As for that list, I don't think we can go by the announced specs right now though. I think that it's all pretty screwey. As they said, some of their announced specs were wrong. BD-25's are BD-50's, Dolby Digital is Dolby TrueHD... We can't go by their announcements or even the back cover art for that matter (as you even said on Blow and The Perfect Storm). Plus there are probably still some HD DVD created movies that haven't seen the light of day yet, so those might pop up. But I think pretty much all the future manufactured WB titles will be on BD-50's (where required) and feature Dolby TrueHD.

Now if they could just stop DNRing stuff and quit using 16-Bit tracks instead of 24 and stop DialNorming the tracks, that would rock...