Bill Hunt speaks to an avs member about Sony/BD

[BTBuck1]

Originally posted by RLSMITH on avsforums..

Bill Hunt comments on Sony titles

I asked Bill Hunt if he had any insight into Sony's plans for upcoming Blu-Ray disks. I have been concerned about the small number of Sony titles (5) currently announced with dates.

Here is his response, which he said I could post.

In addition to commenting on Sony, he makes some general remarks about the problems of transferring content to the hd formats. We are going to hear a lot more about this issue, and some patience is going to be required.

BTW: I reallly trust Bill to be fair and well-informed.


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Well... to be fair, Sony is working on a LOT of Blu-ray titles right now.
They're getting ready to make some big announcements in the next few weeks.
It's interesting, because a title like The Fifth Element - I've actually
seen a side-by-side comparison of the Blu-ray Disc and the original D4
master tape. They're very close in terms of quality. VERY close. So the
issues that people have with that Blu-ray Disc are actually with the quality
of the original high-def master (which was apparently the best that the
studio could get from director Luc Besson) - something the studio (and a lot
of the high-def supporting studios working in BOTH formats actually) is
grappling with. High-def film transfers don't always shine just because
they're high-def - it actually brings out all of the flaws in the original
film elements. I've been told by more than one surprised studio exec (at
several different studios) that the films you'd expect to look amazing on
Blu-ray or HD-DVD are sometimes not the ones that actually do, so they
really are struggling with that at the moment. But I think... actually I
know... that Sony was pretty stung by the initial reviewer comments about
the quality of their early titles, so they've been re-evaluating and
re-focusing their efforts a bit to make sure that they don't get slammed
like that again. Sony has also been holding back some of their best titles
for the availability of 50GB discs, plus more advanced interactivity BD Java
implementation. But trust me when I say that the best announcements from
Sony as far as Blu-ray (and actually the best announcements from all the
studios on both formats) are yet to come.

Feel free to share that on the boards if you like.

Bill Hunt, Editor
The Digital Bits
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