Ask questions to The Digital Bits team (Bill Hunt, Jeff Kleist et.al.)

[MCT]

Jeff, I havent looked through this thread at all, but I just wanted to ask if you've heard ANYTHING regarding the Alien franchise coming to BD this year, or next. I'm absolutely dying to have the first three movies in hi def. Any tidbit of info would be appreciated.

[RustyK94]

Do you have any idea when Chinatown is due for release. It's my fav film and i have heard that paramount plan to have it out this year.

[Nathan P]

Originally Posted by Esox50

That is not correct. You're thinking of DialNorm, where the change can be offset by a twist of the volume knob. This is the actual "compression" mode that I am talking about.

Does this mean that there are different ways of compressing the lossless track? or am i now getting really confused

[Nathan P]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Unfortunately most people still listen through their TV speakers, and DRC makes their lives a lot easier and prevents blowouts (New Line cooked the LOTR FOTR bass so much on the first disc that it literally rattled the internal speaker on my friend's set off its mounting). That's the method to the madness.



Well, apparently Lowry is going to have a shot at it, but how much success they have will almost certainly be fairly limited due to the original photography. Low (almost no) budget, shot at night, it's amazing it looks as good as it does.

Thanks for that Jeff, it will be interesting to see if Lowry manage to work any of their ususal magic on this one, Is there any idea of when its likely to hit the street? I would be guessing sometime next year if they have yet to start work on it

[bbeck]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Once it's off, it should remain off. If your's is kicking on automatically you should call your avr manufacturer about doing a firmware update to change that

Sadly, that's a "feature" of all Onkyo/Integra receivers - the DRC always defaults to "Auto" at startup, meaning that any TrueHD track with the DRC flag switches the receiver to nighttime mode. You have to remember to turn it off every time.

I won't acquaint you with the hundreds of thread pages dedicated to firmware update issues with those receivers over at AVS, but suffice it to say that company isn't exactly known for great customer service.

I love my 805, but that "feature" still bugs me a bit.

[Esox50]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Once it's off, it should remain off. If your's is kicking on automatically you should call your avr manufacturer about doing a firmware update to change that

I have the Integra DTC-9.8 Pre/Pro, and once I move it to "off" it will stay off for that viewing session. However, if you put the pre/pro into standby, and come home from work the next evening and fire it up again...it defaults to "Auto". And in the case of the Iron Man disc, the disc is further telling the pre/pro in "auto" mode to engage night compression to "on". So, you have to make sure it's off. I got so frustrated that I just manually turn the compression to "off" every time I turn the pre/pro on. So, to summarize:

Off - once you set it to off, it will stay off until you power down and then power back up for your next viewing session (say, the next day).

Auto - this is the default setting when you turn the unit on every day. Some discs (Iron Man for example) further instruct a pre/pro in "auto" mode to go ahead and engage night compression to "on". If you don't know this, you wouldn't know to go and manually set it to off.

On - you either have to manually turn it "on" or, again, some discs will instruct it to go from "Auto" mode to "on".

The whole thing is a pain. Again, the safest best is to just manually make sure it's off every time you fire the unit up.

Good luck getting Onkyo/Integra to release a firmware update. Their process is that they don't even officially acknowledge there are firmware updates. @ Onkyo/Integra

[PeterTHX]

To those complaining about DRC:

Well, it seems that you don't have guests, or neighbors, or family members who complain when things get "too damn loud". A good example is a certain lady friend of mine doesn't like it when things get too loud. I don't want to sit there and toggle the volume all the time, DRC takes care of it for me. Same when I have my parents come over. My Dad doesn't mind it but my Mom does. We were able to watch Iron Man at a comfortable (for her) level that day, but Wall*E was impossible: it was either too high or too low so the terrific effect of the sound design was lost to them.
Contrast that experience to when I had my lady friend and her 3 year old son over to watch Cars. Rather than run it in 5.1 LPCM I ran it in DD 5.1 and they were more than happy because it was neither too loud nor too soft, and she didn't worry about her son's hearing.

I would be love to be able to watch Fox or Universal titles late at night, but it's a pain. Incredible Hulk after 10PM? Nope!

[spartanstew]

Nobody complains it's too loud in my HT. No different than if they went to the movies. They wouldn't complain to the usher. Volume is expected to be close to reference.
At night? No problem either, as you can't really hear sounds from the HT anywhere else in the house.

[Jeff Kleist]

Nobody complains it's too loud in my HT. No different than if they went to the movies. They wouldn't complain to the usher. Volume is expected to be close to reference.

I think you'll find that's very much not true, that's why most theaters have their sound turned down these days

My theater dropped the THX certification after the tech came back to re-cert the next year and told them they had to turn it back up and leave it there. It wasn't worth the headache to them.

[J6P]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

I think you'll find that's very much not true, that's why most theaters have their sound turned down these days

My theater dropped the THX certification after the tech came back to re-cert the next year and told them they had to turn it back up and leave it there. It wasn't worth the headache to them.

This is sad, but certainly comes as no shock. "Well, you see, people have been complaining that they can't hear their cell phones during the feature so..."

[Jeff Kleist]

People just complain it's too loud

[neo_reloaded]

Originally Posted by spartanstew

Nobody complains it's too loud in my HT. No different than if they went to the movies. They wouldn't complain to the usher. Volume is expected to be close to reference.
At night? No problem either, as you can't really hear sounds from the HT anywhere else in the house.

Well that must certainly be a nice setup you got, but for those of us living in apartments, volume is quite the concern! Upset neighbors and landlords don't buy the "well I'm just setting the volume close to reference" excuse.

[FourToedStatue]

Jeff has the Batman anthology been delayed? Its not available as a preorder anywhere. I think Ronin has been delayed again too.

[Jeff Kleist]

Ronin and Batman both on target according to the studio databases

[MCT]

Jeff....Aliens? Anything? Sorry to be a pain in the ass lol

[MCT]

Originally Posted by neo_reloaded

Well that must certainly be a nice setup you got, but for those of us living in apartments, volume is quite the concern! Upset neighbors and landlords don't buy the "well I'm just setting the volume close to reference" excuse.

+1

I like my music and my movies very loud. I should have considered that before moving into my (poorly constructed) condo a couple years ago. I've lost count how many times my upstairs neighbor has stomped and banged on the floor as her way of telling me to turn my shit down lol

[NoQuestion]

Originally Posted by MCT

Jeff....Aliens? Anything? Sorry to be a pain in the ass lol

I believe over on the digitalbits it said that we might see some form of the Alien movies on Blu this year(1, some, or all of them). It was very rumor mill worthy but he said there was a chance.

Am I correct on that Jeff or did I miss read the article a while back?

[Jeff Kleist]

Aliens maybe

[Nathan P]

Jeff, thanks for all the info on akira - it sounds like an awful lot of work has gone into this re-release. Please pass on our gratitude to the people who have gone to all that trouble. Is it going to be the same specs for us in the UK or not??

Maybe warner and a couple of others should go visit - they might learn a thing or too aboput what can be achieved.

[MerrickG]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Aliens maybe

I would think they would cross promote the Quadrilogy with Avatar, since that film has both Jim Cameron and Sigourney Weaver involved.

Either way, the bluray versions had better include EVERYTHING the Quadrilogy box set had and more.

I cant think of really anything to add to Alien. They got it perfect the first time.

Additional stuff I would like to see for Aliens are:
The famous cocooned Burke scene.
Some other deleted scenes that never made it onto the disc.
Sigourney Weaver audio commentary

Alien 3:
More David Fincher participation

Alien Resurrection:
Fine the way it is

Charles de Lauzirika has, unfortunately, gone on record saying that the what I want for Aliens and Alien 3 will likely never happen, per request of Cameron and Fincher.