Blu-ray

Lord of the double-dips

Source: HD-Insider

The first details regarding the upcoming high definition releases of The Lord of the Rings trilogy have begun to trickle out. Annoyingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, the initial releases will be the theatrical versions rather than the longer (and, in most cases, superior) extended editions. New Line, who, like their parent company, Warner, seem to be committed to supporting both formats equally, will be releasing both HD DVD and Blu-ray versions, although it remains unconfirmed whether these will be separate releases or a dual-sided Total HD disc. Both will be encoded with VC1 and will be the first titles to feature Dolby TrueHD 7.1 audio.

Nothing has been confirmed about the extras, apart from the news that, due to “bandwidth constraints”, there will be no In-Movie Experience features. This strikes me as somewhat suspect. If they had said “disc space constraints” then I would have found it more plausible, but what exactly is it about The Lord of the Rings that sucks up so much bandwidth as to prevent an IME stream from being included? Smells suspiciously like double-dip territory to me. Actually, for people who bought both the theatrical and extended editions on DVD and plan to do the same for the high definition versions, this is going to be a quadruple dip. For myself, I’ll wait until the extended editions come out in high definition (unless of course I can get the theatrical cuts for review): Peter Jackson’s interpretation of the book is flawed enough without the massive chunks of essential material missing from the theatrical versions.

The butterfly effect: another porn studio defects to HD DVD

Source: AV Science Forum

Sony would do well to remember the VHS vs. Betamax war, in which the system on which porn was available was the winner. Of course, things are different now, with all manner of filthy images a mere mouse click away, but I still think they’re underestimating just what an impact smut can have on sales. With any luck, this is just the beginning, and the boys in Blu will be leaking partners like a sieve by the end of the year.

Update, January 12, 2007 01:54 PM: And another. To paraphrase on poster, the ripple has just become a tidal wave.

Another reason to be mad at Sony

They’re on quite a roll recently, aren’t they? This is Lyris’ new TV… well, actually, it’s his second new TV - the first one to arrive was even worse. I know that not everyone’s as tech-savvy as us, but I would imagine that most people would be able to tell from looking at the above picture that something is seriously wrong with this display. And apparently it’s an epidemic. Add this to the exploding batteries, digital cameras failing, the European delay of the Playstation 3, and Blu-ray, one really has to wonder what the executives at Sony Towers are thinking. Time to fire some drones, methinks.

A taste of things to come if Blu-ray wins

Source: High-Def Digest

Want to know why I’m so against Blu-ray winning the format war? Stories like this. Okay, I know, dodgy low-rate porn movies - who cares - but this is merely a foretaste to the sort of control Sony could have over the industry if they emerge triumphant from this shambles. Basically, none of their copying facilities agreed to cooperate with porn producers Digital Playground, and Sony even went so far as to threaten to revoke the company’s Blu-ray licenses if porn appeared on the format. As a result, Digital Playground have defected to HD DVD - hopefully they are just the first of many.

So, the question now is, what other titles will Sony decide are not “appropriate” for release on Blu-ray? We already know that Synapse Films were told that they couldn’t release Thriller: A Cruel Picture, among other titles. This is the sort of nightmare situation we could be faced with if the industry takes the Blue Pill, and I’m sure I speak for every movie fan with any sense when I say that the last thing we want is a future in which a company with its own films to sell can dictate what others can and cannot release.

The CES obituary

The show itself is not over yet, but there are unlikely to be any further major announcements between now and when it finishes tomorrow - and in any event Universal have already confirmed that, somewhat surprisingly, they won’t be announcing any titles at the show. Many HD DVD fans are currently a little down about the fact that the Blu-ray camp unveiled a roster of major titles for release this year while HD DVD had little to show on the software side of things, but I’d like to read this slightly differently.

Let’s put it this way: CES stands for “Consumer Electronics Show”, implying a decided emphasis on hardware and technological innovation. The HD DVD camp certainly had much to show in that regard, announcing several new player manufacturers, the development of triple-layer 51 GB discs, and the news of Microsoft’s plans to bring more cost-effective solutions to customers. On the hardware side, what did Blu-ray have to show for itself? Bugger all. Apparently announcing a combined total of less than 90 titles for release between now and summer (many of which were already announced months ago) is news-worthy and points to the impending demise of HD DVD… while the HD DVD camp’s technological breakthroughs and commitment to deliver more than 300 new titles this year is nothing? Yes, I’m surprised and disappointed that Universal didn’t at least hint at what titles we can expect to see from them, but I think that those crowing over the fact that Blu-ray has announced Casino Royale and Pirates of the Caribbean are getting a little ahead of themselves. The announcement of these titles is not news: anyone with any sense could have guessed that they were coming. So don’t give up on HD DVD yet: on the contrary, start wondering what’s going on with Team Blu-ray if the best they can come up with to announce at a major electronics show is a handful of new movies.

Oh, and it seems that New Line has elected to toss its hat into the ring with HD DVD but not Blu-ray. Food for thought, no?

HD DVD at CES: the buzz

Well, CES proper hasn’t actually started yet, but last night the HD DVD camp held a pre-show press event to unveil some important pieces of news regarding the format’s future over the next 12 months. Here’s a quick rundown of the major announcements:

• No defections or declarations of neutrality on either side, although Lions Gate will be distributing their films in HD online via Microsoft’s Xbox Live Video Marketplace service. As the only Blu-ray-exclusive studio to do this, this bodes well for their future neutrality.
• Toshiba announces triple-layer 51 GB HD DVD disc, taking the format’s capacity beyond that of Blu-ray. Currently it’s unknown whether this will work in current players (it hasn’t been ruled out, though), or whether any studios will actually consider it worthwhile enough to use, but it does make the format more appealing on paper to those who judge its merits based on pure specs.
• Several hardware manufacturers will be releasing HD DVD players, including Alco, Jiangkui/ED Digital, Lite-On, Shinco, Meridian and Onkyo.
• From the more than 41 studios and distributors now supporting HD DVD worldwide, we can expect to see upwards of 300 new titles being released in 2007, including the entire Harry Potter and The Matrix series, Blade Runner and the original episodes of Star Trek. New Line will also begin releasing titles early this year, including both catalogue (Se7en, Austin Powers, Final Destination, etc.) and new day-and-date titles.

All in all it sounds fairly promising. I would have expected more concrete announcements from Universal and Paramount - once again it seems that Warner is carrying most of the weight - but perhaps they’ll say something during the actual show over the next few days.

Stay tuned…

Update, January 8, 2007 12:01 PM: Updated with Lions Gate info.

CES: what will it mean for HD?

As previously mentioned, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) starts tomorrow in Las Vegas. All the major players will be out in full force, and both sides of the high definition home video war - HD DVD and Blu-ray - will be in attendance, touting their wares. I haven’t yet said much about the early buzz regarding what we can expect to see tomorrow, but I feel that now is as good a time as any to point out that the HD landscape looks set to change dramatically, with the introduction of HD DVD/Blu-ray hybrid discs from Warner and a HD DVD/Blu-ray hybrid player from Lucky Goldstar. This, to me, says that neither side made any real headway over the Christmas period, and at least some companies are buckling down to make the most of a market in which both will be around for a long time.

Would I buy a dual-format player? I can’t deny that it would be nice to be able to play any HD disc that came out, but I can’t say I’d be willing to plunk down the $1,200 (US) that this player will initially cost, even if I did have that kind of money to burn - especially when you consider that, for the time being, there are at most five Blu-ray exclusive titles that I would even consider buying (a number that will most likely drop to two if Lions Gate go dual-format as predicted). For the time being, I expect this house to stay HD DVD-only, but it’s nice to know that the option is there to get in bed with both in the future without having to own two different players.

Speaking of Blu-ray, here’s their latest boner: apparently the blue camp can’t get picture-in-picture working because the only player that supports it is the Playstation 3. How, then, did Lions Gate manage to enable picture-in-picture on their recent release of The Descent? Answer: by including two copies of the film on the same disc, one with a video window superimposed. Nice to know those 50 gigabytes are being put to good use.

Make your mind up, Warner!

Source: High-Def Digest

Seemingly intent on dragging this misbegotten format war out for as long as possible, Warner is set to announce HD DVD/Blu-ray hybrid discs at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), due to begin on January 8th. What exactly does this mean for the industry? In reality, I suspect not a whole lot. It means that studios supporting both formats will be able to release a single disc for both, but it’s unlikely to suddenly bring Blu-ray only or HD DVD only studios into the dual-format fold. It will also probably mean more expensive discs for consumers, which is never a good thing if you want a new format to succeed.

In an exclusive pre-CES interview with the Times, Barry M. Meyer, the chairman and chief executive of Warner Brothers, claims the studio created the idea of Total HD as it became apparent that while neither the Blu-ray or HD DVD formats would be going away anytime soon, continued consumer reluctance to invest in rival technologies could stall the widespread adoption of high-definition.

“The next best thing is to recognize that there will be two formats, and to make that not a negative for the consumer,” said Meyer. “We [Warner] felt that the most significant constituency for us to satisfy was the consumer first, and the retailer second. The retailer wants to sell hardware and doesn’t want to be forced into stocking two formats for everything. This is ideal for them.”

As for CES in general, who knows how things are going to pan out? One visitor asked me for my predictions regarding the show, so I might as well reiterate them here:

• A least one major manufacturer will announce an HD DVD player
• Warner will announce the Matrix trilogy and perhaps some Hitchcock and Kubrick titles, in addition to some more recent blockbusters like A Scanner Darkly
• Universal will do likewise, perhaps with some Hitchcocks and more recent offerings
• Paramount will continue their lacklustre support of both formats
• Perhaps a couple of TV box sets
• If any Blu-ray supporter makes a commitment to HD DVD, it will be Lions Gate
• New Line may or may not say something with regard to their HD plans

Bear in mind that these are mere guesses, not informed predictions, so don’t take them as in any way reliable. Still, it’ll be interesting to see how many, if any, turn out to be accurate.

The Year in Review

2006 - the year of HD

Note: I’m not going to cover worldwide hot topics like the execution of Saddam Hussein or the continued botch-job that is the situation in Iraq. This is simply a set of personal musings about my own experiences this year.

On a technological front, by far the biggest development on the HMS Whimsy this year was the arrival of an HD DVD player - a late change from our original intention to pick up a Blu-ray player. Originally, I had expected to perhaps have half a dozen titles in high definition by the end of the year, but have in fact ended up with 21 (plus another two that Lyris bought). Certainly a number of these are films that I probably wouldn’t have bought had their been a better selection available, but still, if you’d told me that, a mere six months after its launch, the format would included crystal-clear copies of Casablanca and The Adventures of Robin Hood, not to mention more obscure cult titles like An American Werewolf in London and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I wouldn’t have believed you. All in all, HD DVD got off to a great start in 2006, with I only hope will continue to be bettered in 2007.

Including both standard definition and high definition, I bought or received for review a total of 107 DVDs. I wrote 66 reviews for DVD Times (two down from last year’s record of 68), and went to the cinema a whopping two times. I watched 216 films (including those watched more than once), 99 of which I had never seen before. These tended to be of the more obscure variety, although I did see a number of “major” (both in the sense of being “important” and of being blockbusters that just about everyone ended up seeing) titles that had, for one reason or another, passed me by until last year, including Trains, Planes & Automobiles, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Blade Runner, Tout Va Bien, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Collateral, Corpse Bride, The Piano Teacher, Theatre of Blood, A History of Violence, V for Vendetta, 5x2, Bitter Moon, Walkabout, Fritz the Cat, Vertigo, Exorcist II: The Heretic, The Descent, The Constant Gardener, Serenity, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, Duck Soup, Strictly Ballroom, The Fifth Element, Ghost World, Cars, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, Being John Malkovich, Black Sunday, The Omen (remake), Witchfinder General, Topaz, Torn Curtain, Casino Royale, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Miami Vice, Basic Instinct and The Adventures of Robin Hood. Quite clearly, this list features some real gems and some absolute garbage, including gems that I thought would be garbage and garbage that I thought would be gems.

In terms of television, meanwhile, I watched the first two seasons of Veronica Mars and the final season of Alias. I also went through the entire seven-season run of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with its steadily diminishing returns post-Season 5 gradually driving me towards the brink of suicide (I exaggerate). The long-running medical drama Casualty also celebrated its 20th anniversary, with the launch of the first three series on DVD - it’s anyone’s guess how long they will continue this, given that each series becomes progressively longer, until they eventually run for more or less the entire year. Speaking of Casualty, that particular show shocked me in delivering perhaps the best two hours of television I’d seen all year, with the much-heralded return of former writer (and Waking the Dead creator) Barbara Machin for a one-off guest writing gig. Much to my delight, the magnificent Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace was finally released on DVD, although the same team’s follow-up, the satirical chat-show Man to Man with Dean Learner, turned out to be a huge disappointment. The fifth season of Spooks also aired, and, while it was suitably engaging, it sacrificed some of the subtlety of previous years in favour of increasingly unbelievable conspiracies and hostile takeovers. Oh, and on the TV/film front, Channel 4’s dedicated film channel, FilmFour, became free in July, providing the UK with its first free-to-air channel dedicated to movies.

After over a year’s worth of procrastination, I finally recorded a new fan commentary, this time for Dario Argento’s Profondo Rosso. Once again, feedback for this seems to have been largely positive, although it’s anyone’s guess what I’ll think of it myself when I finally brave listening to it again.

The Third Mother, the long-awaited conclusion to Argento’s Three Mothers trilogy (started with Suspiria and Inferno in 1977 and 1980 respectively), finally went into production, wrapping at some point in late November/early December, with a projected May 2007 release date. Argento also helmed another episode in the American Masters of Horror television series: Pelts turned out to be less shameful than 2005’s Jenifer, but a far cry from his home-grown exploits nonetheless. Meanwhile, the much-feared Hollywood remake of Suspiria was finally axed.

After much talk of the two companies going their separate ways, Disney bought Pixar and instated John Lasseter as the joint president of feature animation for both studios. Shortly before the end of the year, it was announced that, following the release of Meet the Robinsons, Disney would be abandoning CG animation entirely and returning to the hand-drawn realm in which it made its name.

Once more in the animated world, John Kricfalusi, the creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show and the industry’s last great hope, started up an excellent blog in February. July also saw the release on DVD of Ren & Stimpy: The Lost Episodes, containing six new installments featuring everyone’s favourite dog and cat duo, three of which had never even aired on TV. Sadly, there seems to be no indication that sales of the DVD have persuaded Paramount to order more episodes.

I got into computer games this year to a far greater extent than I had for some time, picking up Guild Wars: Factions, Guild Wars: Nightfall, The Movies: Stunts and Effects, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: Legend, as well as replaying Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn, Icewind Dale II, Starcraft: Brood War and Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. Lyris also picked up the new Nintendo Wii console in November, resulting in much enjoyment as all on sundry made asses of themselves waving its newfangled controller about. Oh, and Blizzard Entertainment “postponed indefinitely” (read “cancelled”) its troubled console action game Starcraft: Ghost, much to the disappointment of the three or four people that still cared about it.

I also bought rather more technological gadgets than is normal for me: I picked up a digital camera in February, and a swish new widescreen LCD monitor in June. I also replaced my Creative Zen Micro MP3 player with a Sony NW-HD5 in November, and made the mistake of buying an nVidia-based video card for my computer in December (the replacement ATI model will hopefully arrive soon after business returns to normal after the New Year holiday).

In September, I finally finished my MLitt, handed in my dissertation, and, much to my shock, was awared a Distinction. Unable to find a job, I went on unemployment benefit - what fun.

Oh, and on the web site front, September saw a new site design and a return to Movable Type as a publishing platform after slightly over a year with Blogger. In November, meanwhile, I finally got sick of my useless host, Fuitadnet, constantly screwing up and making life difficult, and moved to Donym, where the rent is cheaper and everything runs much more smoothly to boot.

Kisses, bangs, tombs and Blu-ray - oh my!

We took a little family outing today, and went to Braehead Shopping and Leisure Centre, where all the cool people buy their groceries. In the after-Christmas sales (or not), I picked up Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: Legend (what a mouthful) for PC. I’d downloaded the demo on a whim and played it the night before, and found it to be surprisingly good, especially in comparison with its tedious predecessors. It seems that the move from Core Design to Crystal Dynamics salvaged the crumbling franchise and resulted in what it possibly the first truly good Tomb Raider game: even the much-lauded original struck me as rather anaemic, thanks mainly to the awful controls - Legend solves this by switching to a much appreciated mouse-and-keyboard combo. I’ll probably do a full review once I’ve worked my way through the whole thing.

I also picked up Kiss Kiss Bang Bang on HD DVD. I’d been toying with getting the US release, which is an HD DVD/DVD combo, for some time, but, when I saw that the UK version was just a straight HD DVD, I decided to get it instead. I’m glad I did: this is probably the funniest film I’ve seen all day, and quite possibly my favourite HD DVD release so far. It’s a little too smugly self-referential at times, especially in terms of the narration, but the rest of it had me guffawing uncontrollably. I don’t think I actually understood the plot at all, but who cares when you’ve got Robert Downey Jr. losing his finger and having it swallowed by a dog, Val Kilmer playing a gay private detective called (what else?) Gay Perry, and Michelle Monaghan running down a Los Angeles highway in the middle of the night wearing a skimpy Santa outfit? I understand that the film didn’t do particularly well at the box office, partly due to an ineffective advertising campaign that seriously misrepresented it, but don’t let that put you off: this borderline satire of film noir is highly entertaining stuff and one of the most purely enjoyable films I’ve seen in ages.

After that, we headed over to Costco, where Lyris wanted to look into a 1080p television that he will, we hope, soon be picking up. It was there that I had my first up close and personal experience with Blu-ray. And do you know? It wasn’t as bad as I was expecting…

It was worse!

I came across Lyris watching something on a moderately-sized HDTV. I glanced at the screen and saw what looked to me like a heavily edge enhanced but rather crisp DVD. “What’s this?” I began to ask, but, even as the words left my mouth, I began to wonder if something foul was afoot. “That’s not… is that… Blu-ray?” I spluttered. It was. The title in question was S.W.A.T., described by High-Def Digest as “a very nice-looking disc from Sony, and definitely one of the better they’ve put out on the format thus far”. If this ranks among the studio’s best, I’d hate to see their worst. The image was definitely sharper than standard definition DVD, and yet I wouldn’t actually describe it as better. Sharper, yes: the edge enhancement was pretty invasive, and the image overall looked incredibly harsh rather than particularly detailed. But that paled in comparison to the appalling compression. “MPEG2 is perfectly viable for high definition” my left buttock. The film grain was rendered as grubby noise rather than actual grain, and, whenever the camera moved, macro-blocking was in abundance. Worse still, any part of the screen that might be described as remotely saturated was alive with smearing artefacts. Admittedly, an improperly set-up television in a warehouse is far from an ideal setting for evaluating a disc, but I highly doubt that all the calibration in the world would save the mess that assaulted my eyes today. I’ve never felt more glad we went with HD DVD instead.

PowerDVD HD - finally

As you probably know, I use my computer quite extensively for DVDs - not just for playback, but also for taking screen captures for reviews, analysing bit rates, carrying out in-depth comparisons between different releases of the same film, and so on. As you can therefore probably imagine, I’m dying to start doing the same thing with HD DVD content. Originally, I thought this would mean either buying an expensive HD DVD drive or waiting for them to come down in price, but the recent discovery that the $200 Xbox 360 add-on drive could actually be hooked up to any PC and used for HD DVD playback right out of the box was a considerable relief, and means that, when they finally become available again (the initial shipments were snatched up faster than you can say “steal of the century”), I will certainly be picking one up.

More good news, then, that Cyberlink has finally released its long-delayed high definition version of the venerable PowerDVD suite. PowerDVD Ultra can play both HD DVD and Blu-ray movies (although the word on the street is that it can only do one at a time, meaning that you have to choose which format you want to play during the install process). At $99, it’s a bit steep, but I expect it will eventually come down in price, and, in any event, I won’t be buying it until I’ve ascertained that it is capable of playing titles in full 1920x1080 resolution. The early HD-enabled versions of PowerDVD bundled with HD DVD PC systems downscaled the image to 960x540, regardless of the fact that, so far, no commercially released titles have had the resolution-limiting ICT flag enabled, and despite the fact that those with HDCP-enabled video cards and displays (like me) are being affected by what should, for them, be a non-issue. Apparently, this is because PowerDVD were terrified of being sued, and therefore chose to mangle the viewing experience for their customers rather than face the wrath of the Hollywood thugs. Obviously, if I can’t watch, analyse and capture discs in their native resolution, there’s not much point in the whole affair, so I certainly won’t be frittering away any pennies until I know exactly what I’m dealing with. I hope for a trial version before too long.

Update #2, December 24, 2006 11:55 AM: I seem to have been misinformed about the downscaling issue, which it turns out does not affect PowerDVD. I give visitor Demented’s response below in full:

“You have slightly got your facts wrong here. PowerDVD 6.5, which came bundled with Toshiba HD-DVD laptops and other HD-DVD drives, does play titles at full resolution. The problem with this early version is that it is full of bugs.

You appear to be confused with the Intervideo Japanese Win DVD HD-DVD software which would automatically downscale titles to 960x540. I can confirm that the Intervideo BD player does play titles in full 1080p.

PowerDVD Ultra does also play titles in full 1080p but the upcoming Intervideo release looks to be slightly better and much cheaper. Another problem for PowerDVD Ultra owners is that you have to specify which version you install – either BD or HD-DVD. This is yet another needless annoyance for those of us who have both formats.”

As such, I suspect I’ll now wait to see what Intervideo come up with, although personally I’ve always found the interface design of Cyberlink’s players to be more intuitive.

Buena Vista quietly switches to VC1

Source: High-Def Digest

Due in stores today, Disney’s latest wave of Blu-ray titles features the studio’s first VC-1-encoded title, the Jodie Foster thriller ‘Flightplan.’

Interesting, interesting. Could we be in line for an HD DVD announcement at some point in the new year?

High definition, every hour on the hour

To get an idea of the general sales performance of the two rival HD formats, I generally refer to The DVD Wars, which provides a comprehensive run-down of Amazon.com’s DVD (which also encompasses HD DVD and Blu-ray, for some reason) sales rankings. The site is a valuable resource, but it has its shortcomings, among them an inability to display the sales rank of every available title. That’s where HD Game Database’s new HD DVD/Blu-ray Sales Rank page comes in.

According to them,

This page is a different representation of the same data. The primary reason for this page is due to curiousity raised by the top 10 listing on The DVD Wars…namely, what lies beyond each format’s top 10?

The data below is sortable by several different fields. Both HD DVD and Blu-ray are listed in one ranking list. All movies in the database have been scrubbed of any invalid DVDs (WMV-HD, etc.). The data retrieved from Amazon.com contains ALL available next-generation titles (including pre-orders). The data displayed below contains only those movies with a sales rank.

A studio summary is listed at the bottom and is updated according to the list size (Top 10, Top 25, etc.) selected in the drop down list.

There are certainly some interesting numbers on display, especially with regard to the number of titles released by each studio: for example Warner, the studio that, along with Universal, continues to be the most enthusiastic supporter of either format, has 55 titles on HD DVD, but only 33 on Blu-ray. The statistics are not infallible, however: while Paramount seems to have 16 titles on Blu-ray but only 15 on HD DVD, in actual fact this is due to U2 - Rattle & Hum inexplicably not being listed as available on HD DVD, when in fact it is.

Xbox 360 beating PS3… in sales and performance

Don’t believe the lies. Sony’s overpriced and hard to find Playstation 3 is currently being trounced by the Xbox 360… and I’m not just talking about sales figures. No, I’m talking about graphics quality and performance. Gamespot has posted an article comparing eight different games that are available on both systems, and their findings were, for the most part, the same across the board:

The Xbox 360 had better graphics in almost all the games we examined. The 360’s biggest victories were in Madden 07 and Fight Night Round 3, where the differences in texture detail and lighting stood out in our comparison shots. We couldn’t capture this in the screenshots, but the Xbox 360 games generally offered better framerates too.

Hmm… where have we seen this before? Oh, that’s right: the Playstation 2, that oh-so-amazing system that was supposed to be able to render Toy Story-like graphics in real-time; that system that was so powerful that Saddam Hussein would be able to power his nuclear warheads with it (Saddam with nuclear weapons - there’s another myth busted)… when in fact it struggled to outdo the older Dreamcast. Seriously, Sony, we’re sick of your lies, and it looks like people may finally be starting to cotton on to the fact that all your grand claims are nothing but empty promises. You see, folks? If you want to play boring excrement-coloured action games and painfully photo-realistic sports sims (not to mention watch HD movies), you can get all that on the 360, with the benefit of them running faster and looking (comparatively) better.

Of course, it goes without saying that, as a new device, it will take some time for programmers to be able to extract the full potential of the PS3. Even so, however, it’s pretty damning that, even at this stage in its life, a machine that was touted as the be-all and end-all of console gaming technology is struggling to keep up with a system a year older than it.

Oh, and in other news, yet another formerly pro-Blu-ray analyst is now predicting HD DVD to win the high definition format war.

More Blu-ray “exclusives” on HD DVD

Source: AV Science Forum

Courtesy of our friends at DeAPlaneta Home Entertainment and Filmax in Spain, several more titles that are Blu-ray exclusives in the US are due to be released on HD DVD between now and the first quarter of 2007. These include Underworld: Evolution, Saw and Saw II. The title that especially excites me, however, is Asterix and the Vikings - presumably the first ever high definition release of an Asterix film, not to mentioned the first 2D animated title. I’m practically soiling myself with excitement.

Oh, and for all you spaghetti western fans, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is also listed.

Mulholland Dr. HD DVD confirmed for March 2007

Source: Resetmag

Studio Canal have announced their second wave of HD DVD releases. A slew of titles, including one of my favourite films ever, David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr., have been confirmed for release in France with a street date of March 5th 2007. Other titles include Lynch’s The Elephant Man, Akira Kurosawa’s Ran, and Terminator 2: Judgement Day, a title that, in the US, is a Blu-ray exclusive. The RRP for each title should be around €25.

A word of warning, though: this will be a very limited release, with the first run being comprised of only 4,000 copies for the four countries included in the release plans (i.e. only 1,000 copies for France). If you want any of these titles, therefore, get your pre-orders in as soon as they’re listed!

Blu-ray penetrated

Source: Gizmondo

Betcha all those studios that signed up with Blu-ray rather than HD DVD because of its “superior security measures” are a little worried now. And this just a few days after it was discovered that Playstation 3 games were being artificially bloated (i.e. filled with automatically generated garbage data to increase file sizes) to justify the adoption of Blu-ray as the system’s storage format, and to push the “real” data further towards the outer edges of discs in order to improve read times on this “consistent read speeds across the entire disc” (or not) format. I wonder who will be taking home a pink slip from Sony Towers this Christmas?

Casino Royale: confessions of a layman

I’ll say it upfront: I’m not what you’d call a Bond fan. Oh, I’ve seen a fair share of the films, and have enjoyed a number of them to some degree, but I’m by no means a completist, and can’t recall ever seeing one that I’ve absolutely loved. Even the strongest, most strait-laced ones, which, for me, have been the two Timothy Dalton ventures, had their moments of high camp that were at best annoying and at worst verged on bringing the whole thing crashing down. As such, my review of Casino Royale should be taken very much as an outsider’s point of view. What I liked and disliked about it won’t necessarily be the same things that a hardcore Bond fan will like and dislike.

The short version: this is a very good film. Actually, it’s close to being an excellent film, with only a handful of problems preventing it from being a top-tier effort. I’ll get on to these in due course, but first, I must say that I really liked this “reboot”. In the past, Bond films seem to have gone lurched back and forth between serious to camp, with a Licence to Kill being followed by a Moonraker (well, that’s chronologically incorrect, but it serves the purpose of illustrating the series’ two extremes). As you can probably gather, I prefer the former, and found Timothy Dalton’s hard-edged, merciless portrayal of 007 to be far superior to Roger Moore’s nudge-nudge wink-wink camp antics. Even Dalton had his flaws, though, for me, stemming mainly from the fact that, when the scripts called for him to be more light-hearted, he seemed hopelessly out of his depth.

Casino Royale is no Roger Moore romp. It’s the first Bond film I’ve seen that is completely straight-faced. That’s not to say that there isn’t humour in it, but the humour is subtler, derived not from Bond foiling the terrorists and parachuting down to Felix Leiter’s wedding all in one swish movement (a particularly cringe-inducing moment in the otherwise commendable Licence to Kill), but rather from various dry retorts that, while self-conscious, ultimately serve the characters rather than playing to the gallery. (Bond’s response when asked whether he wants his Martini shaken or stirred put a smile on my face.)

The change in tone is partially due to the script, but also in no small part to the casting of Daniel Craig as Bond. Back when various actors were being touted as successors to the bland Pierce Brosnan (not a fan, sorry), I immediately latched on to him as my preferred choice (although the alternatives, ranging from Hugh Jackman to Orlando Bloom, meant that there really wasn’t much of a contest as far as I was concerned), and was most pleased when he got the part. People, however, were criticising the choice before they even saw a frame of footage: “Craig’s too ugly, he’s not sophisticated, he’s… he’s… he’s blond!” To that I say “Phooey!” Craig is certainly nothing like any of his predecessors, but, in my opinion, he comes the closest of all to making Bond seem human. Timothy Dalton was tough, sure, but I always saw him as more an attitude than a real person. Craig, in contrast, doesn’t really have the sophistication of some of his predecessors, but this “blunt instrument”, as M (Judi Dench - whose retention, despite this reboot, didn’t bother me anything like as much as I thought it would) puts it, lives and breathes in a way that the others, for me, didn’t. (That said, bear in mind that I’ve yet to see George Lazenby’s turn in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, regarded by a number to be Bond’s most human turn.)

In part, that’s due to the way the writers build up his relationship with Vesper Lynd (Eva Green, a fantastic actress and a Bond girl who, unusually, seems to have been cast for her acting abilities as much as her looks). Theirs is a relationship that begins as a series of thinly-veiled sniping matches, but which eventually becomes one of mutual dependence, as both find that the job they have to do is no walk in the park. The scene in which Bond comforts a tearful Vesper, who has just seen two men killed in front of her, packs more emotional punch than any other scene that I’ve seen in the series. You get the feeling that Bond genuinely cares about this woman and that, had things been different, their relationship would have gone further. (I’m trying to avoid spoilers here.) Oh, and it also helps that Green is convincing as an intelligent secret service agent - Denise Richards she ain’t.

But what of the setting? A casino hall didn’t sound to me like the most exciting location in which to set a 140-minute film, not least because I know nothing about cards. Well, the truth is that it doesn’t matter. I still know nothing about the game that was being played, despite Bond’s handy explanation of it to Vesper, but in reality it’s not necessary to understand the details in order to become engrossed. The casino, while the backdrop of a significant portion of the film, is really just that - a backdrop - with more interesting events being played out against it. Lest anyone be under any misconceptions, it’s also worth pointing out that the entire film is not set there: Bond doesn’t reach the casino until over an hour into the film.

Oh yes, and it’s bloody. This film is vicious - far more so than Licence to Kill. The Bond of this film gets beaten and bloodied, and he gives as good as he gets: I can see where the notion that Craig is a thuggish Bond comes from, for he really is absolutely ruthless in the various action scenes, thrashing his opponents within an inch of their lives and, on several occasions, killing in cold blood. Nothing quite lives up to the sheer brutality of the opening bathroom beating (although the torture sequence comes close), but the approach to violence throughout the entire film is more visceral and realistic than anything we’ve seen before. This time, we actually believe that Bond stands a chance of failing - he’s pitted against people who are more than a match for him. As befits this grittier Bond, the film was shot in the inherently grainier Super35, compared to the smooth Anamorphic Panavision of its immediate predecessors.

Having tossed around so many superlatives, I now feel inclined to point out the areas in which the film is more problematic. I essentially have three main complaints:

1. The product placement. This film, which features gratuitous advertisements for everything from Sony Ericsson phones to Blu-ray discs, leaves you in doubt that Bond is now property of Columbia Pictures.

2. The title sequence. The song is forgettable, but the execution of the graphics themselves is cringe-inducing. The concept - a “cards” motif that also showcases the new Bond - is pretty decent, but someone decided to apply a cheap, quasi-animated “cel-shaded” effect to it, which looks like something out of a video game.

3. The pacing. I didn’t mind the length, surprisingly enough, but I do agree with criticisms that the final act is rather anticlimactic. My understanding is that Ian Fleming’s original novel was more or less the second act, and that the bulk of the first and third acts were fabricated for the film. It’s a difficult situation - I’m not sure how I would have done things differently had I been writing it - but, despite an explosive climax in Venice, it feels a bit like an over-long afterthought after

Highlight below to reveal spoiler text:
the main villain has been disposed of.

All in all, though, I had a blast. This one, for me, more than lived up to the hype, and I can’t remember ever becoming so engaged by a Bond film before. After 20 films playing to largely the same formula, I’m glad they shook things up with a leaner, meaner interpretation, and that, for once, the public seems to have accepted it. 9/10.

No back-door region coding for Toshiba

Source: Lyris Lite

It’s official: Toshiba does not intend to patch the region-free HD DVD playback capabilities of its players now or at any point in the future. Simply put: if you buy one that can play HD DVDs from any territory, it will continue to be able to do so until the day it dies, with no “fixes” being sneaked in via firmware updates. Many people in the AV community expected this to be the case already, although the news that Samsung had surreptitiously disabled the multi-region DVD capabilities of its Blu-ray player via a firmware update disguised as a bug fix had given some people cause for concern.

Sony announces 94% plunge in profits

Source: The Guardian

The contrasting fortunes of two of the biggest players in the global gaming market were underlined today when Sony announced a 94% plunge in profits for the most recent quarter, while Nintendo said its profits over the first half of the fiscal year had more than tripled.

Sony said the combined cost of its global recall of potentially faulty PC batteries and developing its next-generation game console, the PlayStation 3, had shrunk profits for the July-September quarter to 1.7bn yen (£7.6m) compared with 28.5bn yen for the same period a year earlier.

Hear that? That’s the sound of me laughing.