Ask questions to Palisades Tartan insider Hugh K. David

[HotRats]

Dobermann please. If the recent French remaster could be licensed all it would need would be English subs

and congrats to you ,Hugh

[BLUCanadian]

A Bittersweet Life
Sympathy for Mr. Vengance
Lady Vegance
Hard Boiled
A Tale of Two Sisters

[Antony-Kwok]

Originally Posted by Bruce Morrison

Congratulations on your appointment, Hugh!

My suggestions for BD release would be:

Sympathy For Mr Vengeance
Lady Vengeance
Joint Security Area
Tell Me Something

Dang I totally forgot JSA!

+1 for that too

[Hugh K. David]

Everybody here - thank you for the good vibes. My career is one without planning but with much luck, and this seems to be continuing. I'm on a 3 month probation to begin, but if I get past that I hope to be able to conduct an active study internally to influence HD policy.

All suggestions are duly noted. My own preferences for the UK are based in those titles I know that already have HD masters in other territories that we could license - but we'll see how things progress.

Watch for some polls as well over the coming weeks.

Cheers all!

[rezpekt]

Park Chan-wook's "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance / Oldboy / Sympathy for Lady Vengeance" trilogy boxset would be very nice.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Hugh K. David

Hey guys,

Until today I'd been working for the sales & distribution firm handling Palisades Tartan in the UK (Palisades bought out Tartan on both sides of the Atlantic following the bankruptcies). If you look around the forums, you'll see I've made comments before about what was and was not put back into circulation on Blu in the UK.

However, as of Monday 20th July I am officially the UK Media Consultant (full-time) for Palisades Tartan.....

Congratulations on the appointment.

[iceman]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Congratulations on the appointment.

+1

[Clark Kent]

Releasing region-free titles whenever possible should be a strong priority. And for titles that Palisades Tartan may only control in the U.K., please include standard-definition extras in NTSC if available and leave out PAL warning screens. While virtually all European players and displays can handle both PAL and NTSC content, the same is not true of many BD players in the U.S. A few region-free Blu-rays from Europe can not be played now on American PS3's updated to firmware 2.80 because of PAL trailer screens. An enterprising company might want to test their check discs on both an American player and European player.

[Hugh K. David]

Penton, Ice-man, many thanks!

Clark Kent: I had followed the thread on the 2.80 PS3 firmware upgrade. So far we don't seem to have an equivalent upgrade from the UK/Europe Sony servers limiting US releases, so I'm intrigued as to where these moves from Sony are going. In the meantime, as a big advocate of region-free viewing from the VHS days to now, I will certainly do my best to influence matters in that direction. At the very least, it makes commercial sense to me, as long as we are not bound by license limitations mandating locks as part of the IP contract.

[Beefbowl]

I would like to see Shiri and Save the Green Planet.

[4K2K]

Originally Posted by Clark Kent

And for titles that Palisades Tartan may only control in the U.K., please include standard-definition extras in NTSC if available and leave out PAL warning screens. While virtually all European players and displays can handle both PAL and NTSC content, the same is not true of many BD players in the U.S. A few region-free Blu-rays from Europe can not be played now on American PS3's updated to firmware 2.80 because of PAL trailer screens.

Originally Posted by Hugh K. David

In the meantime, as a big advocate of region-free viewing from the VHS days to now, I will certainly do my best to influence matters in that direction.

So PAL standard definition extras for UK Blu-ray discs are going to be reduced in resolution to less than PAL SD DVD resolution, from 720x576 to 720x480 (or 640x480 if 4:3?) and frame rate converted so that Europeans will get it in less than PAL DVD quality, because some US manufacturers have decided to disable 50hz HD & PAL compatibility - the original resolution & frame rates of the source content?

Until US manufacturers who aren't supporting 50hz decide to support the Blu-ray specifications, couldn't the people who want to import European titles buy a Samsung, Oppo or Momitsu player or another player that supports 50hz & PAL which is part of the Blu-ray standard https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=95245 ?

[Hugh K. David]

Beefbowl: Duly noted - I'm a big fan of Shiri in particular.

4K2K: Well, I'm not saying that's that necessarily what would happen. I am working for the UK wing, so decisions will be made for that market. However, I would like to keep an open mind for the repercussions of those decisions in the wider market. Clark Kent did not mention the fact that Palisades Tartan is a US operation with its own catalogue of licenses, but clearly I should have in my reply - I am certain that whatever Blu policy develops internally, there will be due consideration given to each market's needs in the authoring process, while I will still advocate no or all-region coding wherever permitted by licensing.

[Jeff Kleist]

Jeff,

I'm so sorry! I don't even remember at which convention this was. Maybe you do, though?

Trish

Heh, it was so good to see you this weekend Trish It was Katsucon 3 for public record I got totally busted on this 7 month old post

[keenan_investigates]

Aren't Bergman and Ozu on Tartan?
Anything by either of them would be incredible!

and I'll add my vote for Hard Boiled too, although my DVD is from 'Hong Kong Legends' rather than Tartan, have they bought the rights? Or if Hong Kong legends are a sub division of Tartan... so much Woo and Bruce Lee goodness!

[Hugh K. David]

Hi Keenan,

Palisades do indeed have a comprehensive (though not yet complete) Bergman catalogue, particularly for the UK. We have some Ozu titles as well I believe.

Hard Boiled is still a UK license of ours; however, Hong Kong Legends was owned by Contender, who have long since subsumed those titles under their own brand. The US edition of Hard Boiled from Dragon Dynasty is a beaut - but the recent deal between Dragon Dynasty and Contender for the UK does not include that, confirming our ownership of the license.

Cheers!

[UFAlien]

Hello Hugh. I would suggest and be curious about the eventual release of the "Asia Extreme" line of films on Blu-ray. In particular, I'd suggest Ahn-Byeong Ki's film Phone. This could be a good marketing opportunity, since there is a US remake (directed again by Ki) slated for release next summer.

Thank you in advance for your time.

[Bruce Morrison]

Hugh, another title I forgot to mention that I'd love to see on Blu-ray one day is 'Samaritan Girl'.

[Hugh K. David]

UFAlien and Bruce Morrison: thanks for those points, noted.

[JonBidinger]

Apparently HMV will have exclusive Mr. Vengeance and Lady Vengeance BDs according to this thread. Are they actually coming? And does this mean that Tartan plans on releasing more BDs this year?

[Hugh K. David]

Hi Guys,

HMV have put up the pre-orders a little ahead of things - the official press releases will go out next week, now that we have a PR firm on board.

I'm afraid I'm spending something like 70% of my waking time on the production of these Blus, so I'm not here very often. I'll answer what questions I can next week once the official press releases are out, as they'll probably cover most of what you want to know.

Yours in exhaustion,