Ask questions to Sony Pictures Entertainment insider "paidgeek"

[Big Daddy]

Originally Posted by Bullseye

Pele was very very very good. But he had very very very good players around him. Maradona won the World Cup on his own. Greatest player ever IMO.

Maradona did not win the World Cup on his own. He won the World Cup with the magic hand or hand of god.

[Kris Deering]

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

Late to the party... are we talking about having the PS3 automatically decode TrueHD over HDMI and only send the core out over SPDIF when the player is in "bitstream" mode?

I couldn't agree more. It's the thorn in my PS3's side... it's STUPID to have to go into setup to toggle back/forth from bitstream to PCM every time I want to properly hear a TrueHD disc. HDMI should always make use of the TrueHD decoded stream... the core 640 kbps DD track is only meant for those without HDMI...why would any HDMI user want to hear that... regardless of his bitstream/PCM settings???

On the REALLY off chance that his receiver is only HDMI 1.0 capable, which doesn't support high resolution PCM. You laugh, but even Krell and Theta have this issue!!

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by kknight

I'm probably the few who likes this sci-fi movie called Screamers but it's actually one of my favorites. I would love to see Sony pumping out more sci-fi movies...

I don't know of 2008, but next year supposedly has District 9 (Neill Blomkamp and Peter Jackson) coming from SPE and Wingnut.

Gary

[rondanto]

Sony Advertised Some Time Ago That "Lawrence Of Arabia " Was Forthcoming On Blu Ray. So When Is It ?

[OokieSpookie]

Originally Posted by rondanto

Sony Advertised Some Time Ago That "Lawrence Of Arabia " Was Forthcoming On Blu Ray. So When Is It ?

Been discussed in detail in Penton's thread.
It will come when it comes ( oddly enough like every other title )

[DaViD Boulet]

On the REALLY off chance that his receiver is only HDMI 1.0 capable, which doesn't support high resolution PCM. You laugh, but even Krell and Theta have this issue!!

some sort of menu-selection for "force trueHD decoding on bitstream output" could handle both possibilties.

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by rondanto

Sony Advertised Some Time Ago That "Lawrence Of Arabia " Was Forthcoming On Blu Ray. So When Is It ?

Honestly, when people start showing some love of classic titles. Currently, with classics, people ***** about the price (Close Encounters), and start long winded slander threads about how the fully supervised encoding doesn't match an abysmal transfer of the past (Dracula).

Some of the worst selling HD DVD were Casablanca, Forbidden Planet, and The Adventures of Robin Hood.

The market has to show it's ready for the crown jewels by purchasing a lot more of the mere gems.

Gary

[JasonR]

Originally Posted by JasonR

Paid,

We are trying to setup TrueHD on someone's S300. Do you know the correct settings for this to work? Any insight would be appreciated.

Starting around post 45.

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=38909

Thanks,

Jason

Originally Posted by paidgeek

I won't be able to read off the menu settings until late in the week. Off hand I can tell you to decode internally, use HDMI, do not downmix.

Paid,

Anymore on this? If you could tell me the exact menu settings it would be appreciated. Also, is there a way to display on screen or on the player if you are getting TrueHD?

Thanks,

Jason

[Bullseye]

Originally Posted by Big Daddy

Maradona did not win the World Cup on his own. He won the World Cup with the magic hand or hand of god.

Nonsense. So you are disregarding all the matches up to the final and also the wonder goal that is always forgotten in the same match as the hand of god

[Teazle]

Originally Posted by dialog_gvf

Honestly, when people start showing some love of classic titles. Currently, with classics, people ***** about the price (Close Encounters) ...

To reply to this in the form of respectful constructive criticism to SPHE.

The price of Close Encounters at retail is not competitive with comparable Blu-ray titles from other studios. Gary, you've emphasized before that CETK is good value for money. No doubt this is true. But good value is often not enough to get the sale when your competitors are offering better value. Here in Toronto I see CETK for $45 and $50. Blade Runner is $35-$37. I can't of course quote sales numbers for those titles. However the price difference is a whopping one third more for CETK, and it's hardly mysterious why this should be off-putting for many consumers. A $10 or $15 difference, though not much in absolute terms, might be enough to price a title right out of the market when movie studios are aiming for a home viewership rather larger than that formerly achieved by Laserdisc.

(Addendum -- I assume the difference in price at retail reflects a higher wholesale price; I have no reason to suspect the retailers have cherry-picked CETK for higher profit margin as against comparable BDs.)

[rondanto]

Originally Posted by dialog_gvf

Honestly, when people start showing some love of classic titles. Currently, with classics, people ***** about the price (Close Encounters), and start long winded slander threads about how the fully supervised encoding doesn't match an abysmal transfer of the past (Dracula).

Some of the worst selling HD DVD were Casablanca, Forbidden Planet, and The Adventures of Robin Hood.

The market has to show it's ready for the crown jewels by purchasing a lot more of the mere gems.

Gary

I PREFER THE CLASSIC FILMS TO MUCH OF WHAT IS PASSED OFF AS ENTERTAINMENT TODAY.

[garyfritz]

And speaking of "House of Flying Daggers," paidgeek -- Sony appears to be the distributor. Are they going to re-issue it like they did with "The Fifth Element" ? "Flying Daggers" is a visually stunning film, the kind of film that would absolutely knock your socks off with a good HD transfer. But like "Fifth Element," the transfer was very sub-par. This movie deserves a good transfer.

[fitprod]

Originally Posted by garyfritz

And speaking of "House of Flying Daggers," paidgeek -- Sony appears to be the distributor. Are they going to re-issue it like they did with "The Fifth Element" ? "Flying Daggers" is a visually stunning film, the kind of film that would absolutely knock your socks off with a good HD transfer. But like "Fifth Element," the transfer was very sub-par. This movie deserves a good transfer.

This was addressed by Paidgeek some time ago... I believe he said the master they have access to is the problem, and that the studio that provided it does not have a better master.

I'm sure the foreign company that made the film will eventually re-master it, but it can be dicey with Asian cinema releases.

I think that might be what is holding up Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

fitprod

[pellucidity]

Originally Posted by fitprod

This was addressed by Paidgeek some time ago... I believe he said the master they have access to is the problem, and that the studio that provided it does not have a better master.

I'm sure the foreign company that made the film will eventually re-master it, but it can be dicey with Asian cinema releases.

I think that might be what is holding up Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

fitprod

Would that also be affecting the release of 'Hero'? I've been waiting for that one, but the German release is supposed to be awful.

[Paul H]

Since "30 Days of Night" was released by Sony Pictures Entertainment, I hope this is the correct thread to voice my concern.

Just finished watching "30 Days of Night" on Blu-ray and I was very dissapointed with the forced subtitles on the disc. The disc should have included the specified subtitles where they were located on the OAR theatrical film frame of the movie.

Note: If subtitles could be relocated via blu-ray specifications from the menu, this would not be a problem.

The 1080P Blu-ray disc was authored in the films original theatrical ratio of 2.40:1, but with one very important exclusion. The mandatory forced subtitles (the subtitles for the translation of the vampire language) are not within the original ratio film-frame of the movie.

Instead, the subtitles on this disc are partly within the movies 2.40:1 frame structure and partly within the ATSC video formats 1.76:1 (16x9 screen area) where the bottom black bar is located on a full 16x9 screen.
This defeats the directors intent of what is seen on the film and is incompatible with the black matting in both theaters and home-theaters alike, also "constant-image-height setups that can optimize 2.40:1 aspect ratio will suffer, as the subtitles can't be read off the viewable area of the screen.

Thanks,

Paul

PS. I also posted this on the HTF forum: 30 Days of Night - On the screen in theaters - should be on Blu-ray disc

[fitprod]

Originally Posted by pellucidity

Would that also be affecting the release of 'Hero'? I've been waiting for that one, but the German release is supposed to be awful.

Could be, but I'm not sure. I believe that title is a Miramax/Disney release, and Miramax's picking have been pretty slim so far. Heck, we haven't even gotten Sin City...

fitprod

[MRay]

So who at SPE should we send e-mail to if we want Crouching Tiger... on Blu?

I want to start a petition. But the condition is that it has to be an excellent transfer for both picture & sound. Why can't they call up Ang Lee and say, "Hey, where did you leave the Studio Master. I mean the REAL Master?"

Is it archived somewhere? Get the thing out, make a cream of the crop, reference quality transfer to BD, and then store it away again.

[MRay]

Back to Crouching Tiger... for a minute, I know that movie was broadcast in HD in 1080i in Japan a couple years ago. I found on the web last Summer some frame captures by someone who had recorded it and then compared it to screen caps from the 480P Superbit DVD. The 1080 res CTHD pics were clearly sharper & more detailed than the SD caps when magnified, albeit with Japanese subtitles instead of English. So that film is out there somewhere in superior quality HD. Sony just has to do a little work with audio for the HD sound formats, and whatever they need to do to get the 1080P PQ instead of "i".

There's still no good reason it should have taken this long. The only other theory besides possible techical problems was that maybe Sony wanted to hold off on BD work on this flick until they knew for certain that BD was going to win the HD war. Now with the format war officially over, SPE no longer has any good excuse.

[bugmenot]

Originally Posted by MRay

Back to Crouching Tiger... for a minute, I know that movie was broadcast in HD in 1080i in Japan a couple years ago. I found on the web last Summer some frame captures by someone who had recorded it and then compared it to screen caps from the 480P Superbit DVD. The 1080 res CTHD pics were clearly sharper & more detailed than the SD caps when magnified, albeit with Japanese subtitles instead of English. So that film is out there somewhere in superior quality HD. Sony just has to do a little work with audio for the HD sound formats, and whatever they need to do to get the 1080P PQ instead of "i".

There's still no good reason it should have taken this long. The only other theory besides possible techical problems was that maybe Sony wanted to hold off on BD work on this flick until they knew for certain that BD was going to win the HD war. Now with the format war officially over, SPE no longer has any good excuse.

Yeah, I have that cap. It's pretty solid. Wouldn't mind it being used as a basis for a nice AVC encode.

[191]

Hi Paid,

Firstly thanks for continuing to answer questions as an insider. It is appreciated by all.

Now to the question: With regards to each blu-ray released by a studio, I imagine that there is a serial number or code which would indicate the uniqueness of that release? If so, what are the numbers (if any) that indicate a particular release will be region locked or region free? (besides the ABC designation).

If it was as simple as reading certain numbers off the barcode on the back, that would enable the layman to know the region coding. It would also allow retailers to know without having to "test the disc". This will probably become a necessity as the number of different titles released grows exponentially, plus the fact that some studios have none, partial, or always region locking principles. And there may be different SKU's of the same title that are region free and region locked.

I think I was clear enough, sorry for the waffle,

191

EDIT: PS, Would it be possible for upcoming releases to have their region code known, just as Audio and Video specs are given out prior to release date? Is there something so special about region codes that prevents this from being given out? Cheers