HD Movies arrive!

[Ace Pace]

JAN. 4 | The Mission: Impossible and Lord of the Rings trilogies as well as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Peter Jackson’s King Kong all will be released on high-definition digital discs this year.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, almost every studio is expected to announce the first slate of high-def digital disc titles coming to market in 2006. More than 75 new and old movies and TV shows are expected with the introduction of the first DVD player, with dozens and maybe hundreds more by the end of the year.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, the studio with the most at stake in its Blu-ray Disc format, is being the most aggressive with plans to introduce the upcoming theatrical release Underworld Evolution day-and-date with the DVD in late spring/early summer. The studio will have 20 Sony and MGM titles including XXX and Robocop ready to go even earlier, when players are expected to be released as early as March.


Sony also will release four catalog titles each month beginning this summer, every new theatrical release day-and-date on DVD and Blu-ray Disc and the first high-def version of a TV series to be announced so far from a major studio, Stargate: Atlantis.

Additionally, Sony is going out on a limb and committing to the debut of two titles--Bridge on the River Kwai and Black Hawk Down--using the 50GB dual-layer Blu-ray Disc, which has been running behind development time from the standard 25GB single-layer disc.

The studio also is announcing plans Wednesday for summer titles featuring advanced interactive gaming using the BD Java software, which has sparked some dissension from Hewlett-Packard within the Blu-ray Disc camp. SPHE president Ben Feingold said the process is too far along now to turn back and not use BD Java.

As for the 50GB dual-layer disc, Feingold said both movies have long running times as well as hours of bonus features that the studio has produced but been unable to release on DVD because they take up too much space.

Sony also will take advantage of the enormous additional capacity to use uncompressed audio on some of its Blu-ray Disc titles, including two Sony/MGM titles in the first wave--The Fifth Element and The Last Waltz. Sony execs say that even movie theaters do not offer uncompressed digital audio.

Feingold said he expects to ship 50,000 to 100,000 units of each of the first titles, as compared to the 60,000 or so units for each of the first five movies shipped for PSP.

Other Blu-ray Disc backers, 20th Century Fox, Lionsgate and Paramount, announced their lineup of titles as well. Disney will announce its titles and other plans at a Blu-ray Disc media event at CES on Thursday evening.

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment president Mike Dunn said the studio will have five titles, including Fantastic Four and Ice Age, in stores two weeks prior to the release of the first Blu-ray Disc player by any manufacturer. Fox will release 20 titles by summer, also debuting most new theatrical titles day-and-date on DVD and Blu-ray.

Each title will have at least one feature unique to the new format and will include 10% to 20% of the bonus features from previously released or new DVDs and 80% new bonus elements, such as advanced branching and menus and including added value programming accessed through connections to other devices such as the Internet.

Fox also is preparing two sci-fi titles to be announced later that will take advantage of the extra capacity of the 50GB dual-layer disc.

“We have material that we set aside a long time ago for these,” Dunn said. “We’ve been working up to this and cataloging content for two years.”

Lionsgate will release its traditional new-format driver Terminator 2 among its first wave of high-def movies. Company president Steve Beeks said Lionsgate will be ready to release as many as 10 titles as early as March or April or whenever the first players hit the market.

Beeks said the studio already has plans to encode some features using the new technology, which he said will represent the “killer app” for the format, but he declined to discuss those components.

Paramount is one of several studios opting to release titles in both the Blu-ray Disc and its incompatible rival, HD DVD. The studio is announcing Wednesday at CES that it will have more than a dozen titles ready to go for both formats at launch and later this year, including the Mission: Impossible trilogy, the most recent of which is being released in theaters this summer.

But Paramount president Tom Lesinski said the studio will determine its own definition of what constitutes a “launch” of high-def digital disc players in the market.

A few hundred or a few thousand players at select retailers will not be enough to motivate Paramount to release product, he said.

“When we know there’s enough product out there, we will determine that to be a launch and will then put out product,” Lesinski said.

He predicted that timeframe will be summer or possibly late spring.

Title announcements are expected late Wednesday at CES from other studios planning to release on both formats. Those include Warner, New Line and HBO, as well as the lone studio supporting only the HD DVD format, Universal, though Universal is said to be close to announcing it also will release in Blu-ray.

Amazon.com lists many of the titles from those studios already, including Universal’s King Kong and The Bourne Supremacy; Warner’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Batman Begins and Friends; New Line’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Seven; and HBO’s Band of Brothers.

Studios would not confirm the accuracy of those titles Tuesday.

None of the studio execs believe the new high-def format will drive any meaningful revenue for their studios this year, but they say it will entice the early adopters and set up more significant growth in 2007 and 2008. But Lionsgate’s Beeks said high-def, which he describes as a “replacement” format, will not grow as fast as DVD, which was more of a dramatic shift from videocassettes.

Beeks noted that high-def discs require two purchases by consumers: a high-def TV/monitor and a high-def player.

Studio execs also are not announcing pricing for the new titles yet, though Feingold said Sony might announce pricing as early as next week or as soon as release dates are set.

Can I join everyone here and say FUCK YES! Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, argue all you want but that is just awesome.

[Robert Walper]

So what's the difference between HD-DVDs and regular DVDs?

[Ace Pace]

Resolution.

HD whatever(HD-DVD AND Blu-ray) talk about up to 1080P resolution and anywhere from 25 to 50GB of storage.

[The Cleric]

So what's the difference between HD-DVDs and regular DVDs?

The fact that it allows you to watch The Matrix in the same definition as you can watch live football broadcasts in. High Def. And if you say "you can't tell a difference" you're full of shit .

[B4UTRUST]

...there's a difference? O.O

[Ace Pace]

...there's a difference? O.O

Normal broadcasts are sub 640x480 resolution, DVD is 720x480, now imagine something more like an LCD monitors resolution spread over a TV.

If you can't see the differance then you're partially blind.

[B4UTRUST]

I *AM* partially blind >< Or close to it. My eyesight is horrid! And I'm partially deaf too. *twitch*