"Club Penton" - Ask questions to Hollywood insider "Penton-Man"

[sharkshark]

Blood Simple on BD, sweeeeeet.... It better include the (insane) commentary that was on the DVD.

I'll be very pleased to link back to this post when (years from now?) the likes of Barton Fink and The Man Who Wasn't There are finally released on HD shiny disc...

[Jeff Kleist]

Jeff,

Unlike Warner, Paramount was doing two different encodes at two different facilities. Some of its HD DVDs were VC-1 while the Blu-rays were AVC. Warner would just convert the HD DVD encode for Blu-ray. Regardless, it was expensive to do it for both studios and the most technologically advanced format won

Absolutely right, I was trying to keep it simple Would you agree that if Warner had dumped them in the fall that Paramount would have followed?

[sharkshark]

Damn you Jeff and your hypotheticals...

[Jeff Kleist]

My guesses are educated ones You'll never see me posit a hypothetical that isn't totally crazy (what if martians landed tomorrow) that isn't

[DenonCI]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Absolutely right, I was trying to keep it simple Would you agree that if Warner had dumped them in the fall that Paramount would have followed?

Definitely....and Universal wouldn't have been far behind (after they worked out an exit strategy with their lawyers).

[MerrickG]

Originally Posted by DenonCI

Definitely....and Universal wouldn't have been far behind (after they worked out an exit strategy with their lawyers).

But at the end of day, we are all one happy blu family!!!

Nevertheless, I'm probably not going to get a lot of love on this from Penton, but I personally feel that HD-DVD really truly made bluray a better product in the end. I feel it brought out the best of Sony and the BDA.

I'm not sure I believe we would have gotten all the good features that bluray brought as quickly as we did.


While I don't feel that the format war was overall a good thing, but to me it would be completely false to say that nothing good came out of it for consumers.

[DenonCI]

Originally Posted by merrick97

Nevertheless, I'm probably not going to get a lot of love on this from Penton, but I personally feel that HD-DVD really truly made bluray a better product in the end. I feel it brought out the best of Sony and the BDA.

I'm not sure I believe we would have gotten all the good features that bluray brought as quickly as we did.


While I don't feel that the format war was overall a good thing, but to me it would be completely false to say that nothing good came out of it for consumers.

Competition is always a good thing. I wish the two formats could have gotten together behind closed doors before they launched an worked things out. I realize there were ulterior motives from a lot of the participants though and when that much money is on the line, corporations get very greedy (not that I can blame them).

[MerrickG]

Originally Posted by DenonCI

Competition is always a good thing. I wish the two formats could have gotten together behind closed doors before they launched an worked things out. I realize there were ulterior motives from a lot of the participants though and when that much money is on the line, corporations get very greedy (not that I can blame them).

Who knows what would have happened and at this point I can't say its worth wasting brain cells to care. I'm very happy with where we are now.

[Penton-Man]

Will all you pervs out there stop PM’ing me this same link….
http://gizmodo.com/5544449/heres-the...-movie-at-last

I got it already, just haven’t had time to post it.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

'till this latest link I hadn't realized that Shakira's on Sony Music. The confluence of interests makes more sense now...

Well, it’s not exclusively that. She personally gives me fever too.
If you don’t favor her music then there must be somebody here on the list that you are fond of…

http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/organis...sts/index.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJNyuF0wfHE

[kefrank]

Hi Penton. I'd like to direct your attention to this thread in which virtually all the responders share a disappointment with what we've seen from BD Live so far. The responses range from not being at all interested in even checking it out to recognizing the potential, but being frustrated with the studios virtually ignoring that potential.

My question is...are the studios aware of how poorly BD Live has been received so far?

BD Live is one of the things about Blu-ray that I've been excited about from the beginning. It seems like there is so much potential for it to offer unique and interesting content, but I fear that the studios have seen it merely as another avenue to force feed marketing. Don't they realize it could be a much more effective marketing tool if the experience was more user-friendly and the content offered was more worthwhile?

I don't want to sound totally cynical...we have seen glimpses of promise on some releases, but on the whole BD Live has been disappointing and this many years into the format, I was hoping for it to have realized more of it's potential. Any thoughts you could share from your perspective would be appreciated.

[sharkshark]

Originally Posted by kefrank

Hi Penton. I'd like to direct your attention to this thread in which virtually all the responders share a disappointment with what we've seen from BD Live so far.

Frankly, the one title that absolutely demands a BD-Live connection for me is the (exquisite) Neil Young Archives. I only wish that other releases would follow the lead of the likes of NY.

[Jeff Kleist]

That Neil Young disc is incredible. The good thing is that like Beatles Rock Band, a lot of people have gotten envious of it and I'm hoping that a band I'm willing to drop that kind of money on comes out with something in the near future

BD Live is being rethought right now by a lot of people, and I've talked ideas with several developers to improve it. While I don't think anything other than streaming services is going to be a selling point for it, I think that the stuff you'll see as early as Christmas will definately have an improved experience

[sharkshark]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

That Neil Young disc is incredible. The good thing is that like Beatles Rock Band, a lot of people have gotten envious of it and I'm hoping that a band I'm willing to drop that kind of money on comes out with something in the near future

BD Live is being rethought right now by a lot of people, and I've talked ideas with several developers to improve it. While I don't think anything other than streaming services is going to be a selling point for it, I think that the stuff you'll see as early as Christmas will definately have an improved experience

...waiting for the Guitar Wolf Archives, Volume IV?

I do think that not enough people are shouting from the mountain tops about how good NYA is (10 BDs, no less). Frankly, I wouldn't hesitate putting that title among the top 5 best things that have ever come out on this format. Hell, I'm not even that huge a NY fan myself, but the set is so spectacular, so wonderfully done (and, frankly, pushing the very limits of physical media beyond which I really do think that only a centralized stream would make sense for an even large scope), that not enough people have recognized what a paradigmatic release it is.

And, yeah, the dream of having this done with Dylan, the Beatles, or, I dunno, Tomita would make for a happy day indeed.

[MerrickG]

Originally Posted by DenonCI

Competition is always a good thing. I wish the two formats could have gotten together behind closed doors before they launched an worked things out. I realize there were ulterior motives from a lot of the participants though and when that much money is on the line, corporations get very greedy (not that I can blame them).

Was it true that MS actually had a 360 w/HD-DVD built-in prototype in the works that they had intended to unveil at CES 2008, but Warner changed all that?

[Jeff Kleist]

...waiting for the Guitar Wolf Archives, Volume IV?

Um no.

A B'z collection would be pretty amazing though, they just passed their 20th anniversary and they've outsold in units a lot of western top tier acts (78 million records). Their leader/guitarist Tak Matsumoto is the only non-native english speaker to have his own signature Les Paul.

Keeping with the World Cup theme, here they are rocking Train Kept a Rollin with Aerosmith in 2002. Includes awesome guitar duel between Joe Perry and Tak

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYzUZJ3jG4Y


Most of the artists who would benefit most from a Blu-ray in Japan are virtually unknown here. I was thinking more about Beatles and Queen I'd even re-buy Thriller on Blu-ray (I'm still on the original vinyl I got in first grade)

[kefrank]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

BD Live is being rethought right now by a lot of people, and I've talked ideas with several developers to improve it. While I don't think anything other than streaming services is going to be a selling point for it, I think that the stuff you'll see as early as Christmas will definately have an improved experience

This is really good to hear Jeff. I'm glad there's people putting some thought into it so it doesn't just stagnate in the state it's in now. Thanks for the insight!

[DenonCI]

Originally Posted by merrick97

Was it true that MS actually had a 360 w/HD-DVD built-in prototype in the works that they had intended to unveil at CES 2008, but Warner changed all that?

I have no idea.

[sharkshark]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Most of the artists who would benefit most from a Blu-ray in Japan are virtually unknown here. I was thinking more about Beatles and Queen I'd even re-buy Thriller on Blu-ray (I'm still on the original vinyl I got in first grade)

I just got the Thriller SACD a few weeks ago - the big rumour is that a 5.1 mix was completed, but got screwed around with either by management or MJ himself. A pitty.

Have you actually seen the NYA discs? The Beatles would indeed be a fun band, but it really benefits from somebody incredibly prolific, with a large number of quality demoes and alternate recordings, and an obsessive compulsive need to collect things.

Dylan, again, would be an obvious choice (certainly some Dylanologist would supply the esoterica, but there's just so much variety even within a single recording that it'd match the scope). The Beatles in 24/192 with excellent paraphernalia would be fabulous, especially if they deconstructed certain tracks back to previous takes. Doing the Who would be pretty excellent, given the extraordinary quality of Pete's Demo recordings. For sheer scope of silliness, the works of Frank Zappa would certainly be an incredible thing to the 12 of us that would buy the set. Queen? I loves me Queen very much, just not sure the scope of unreleased or alternate material would warrant such treatment. Even the likes of the Rolling Stones probably don't have enough stuff lying about to make a go of it quite like Neil.

Maybe U2, or some mega set of Ray Charles, a British Invasion retrospective, or a variety of Motown acts. Again, they don't really fit the engine quite as well as a single act. Springsteen's probably the only other candidate that comes to mind, with a diverse collection of unreleased demos that are in themselves musically interesting and a wide variety of released material.

But, yeah, I'm just as likely to get my Thriller 5.1 SACD released as I am any of the above... Hell, I'll be happy when I see that Volume II of the NY set actually gets made.

[kpkelley]

Now that Bright Star has been released in France and there is an upcoming release in Australia, has there been any discussion about releasing this in the US?