HD DVD

Step away from the bike!

Many thanks must go to Graham for drawing attention to this one: a montage of the most unintentionally funny moments from the cringe-inducingly poor-looking remake of The Wicker Man. Coming soon to HD DVD and Blu-ray: Nicolas Cage steals a bicycle, punches and delivers karate kicks to various women, steals small childrens' masks, disguises himself as a grizzly bear, and has a swarm of bees poured over his head, all the while screaming "Not the bees! Not the bees! Oh no, my eyes! My eeeeeeeeyeeeeeees!"

Yes, I think I've seen all I need to see of this film. It's fairly clear they dumped the wrong one under the M3.

Update, January 25, 2007 04:28 PM: There's another, even longer and even funnier, montage here.

A pawn to the industry

If you've been keeping track of the whole HD format war business, you probably haven't failed to notice that the Blu-ray studios - Sony, Fox (including MGM), Disney and Lions Gate - announced a crap-load of titles for their format of choice at this year's CES. The HD DVD camp - Universal, Bandai, The Weinstein Company and the neutral Warner and Paramount - pledged to release another 300 titles before the end of the year, but so far haven't given much of an inkling as to what we can expect (beyond the obvious: Harry Potter, The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings and a bunch of day-and-date titles). Making matters doubly worse has been Universal's almost complete silence on all things software. Many people suggested that Universal were getting cold feet and might possibly be gearing up to go format-neutral. I can confirm that Universal has no plans to support Blu-ray - otherwise, the war might as well be over. However, I can't exactly say I'm impressed by the fact that Universal don't seem to be releasing any more HD DVDs until April.

In the meantime, the boys in Blu are cranking out discs like there's no tomorrow (which, for them, there probably isn't if their format tanks). In addition to juggernauts like Casino Royale and Cars now having official release dates, numerous catalogue titles from the various studios (barring Sony, who own very little worth purchasing) are looking increasingly appealing. Their agenda, it seems, is to bully people into buying into the format through sheer weight of numbers... and it seems to be working. Originally, when I bought an HD DVD player, I was determined to hunker down and remain on one side until it either won or was decimated by the competition. Unfortunately, this doesn't appear to be happening any time soon. A glance at eProductWars will show you that the two formats are essentially on equal footing. They trade blows, and every few days the balance tips in favour of one or the other, and, as such, it's looking increasingly unlikely that either format will be going anywhere in the near future. We're simply going to have to accept that both will co-exist for some time to come. And, as much as I don't want to give Sony a penny, I am, when all said and done, a film fan, and I'm no longer content to, as Lyris puts it, cut off my nose to spite my face.

In a couple of months' time (when I will hopefully have some form of income to support my plans), I intend to pick up a 20 GB Playstation 3 from the US. It pains me to say it, but this is a far more cost-effective solution than waiting for a stand-alone combo player that properly supports both formats to become available, and in any event I can console myself (pun unintended, I assure you) with the knowledge that Sony loses nearly $250 every time they sell a PS3 - money that they hope to regain via game sales, which they certainly won't be getting from me. For betraying my principles, I will have access to a much wider array of titles: around 15 available and announced Blu-ray exclusives appeal to me, including one of my favourite films, Hannibal, and two of the best films in recent years, Casino Royale and The Descent. Naturally, for titles available on both formats, I will continue to buy the HD DVD versions. However, I'm well on the road to becoming format neutral. Expect me to be putting the image quality of some Blu-ray titles under the microscope in the not too distant future.

La Rue Mulholland?

I've cancelled my pre-order for the upcoming French HD DVD release of Mulholland Dr. Why? Well, DVDFr and DVDRama are both stating that the release will come with French subtitles only, which strongly suggests that they will be forced when English audio is selected. With the one Studio Canal title I own, users are asked to select a 'base' language the first time they insert the disc, which determines which options are available to them. Selecting English restricts you to a choice of English audio with or without subtitles, locking out all the other language options, so it stands to reason that Studio Canal could, if they want, force French subtitles to "on" when playing Mulholland Dr. in English.

I don't want to go without one of my favourite films in high definition, though, and it looks like I won't have to: a post at the AV Science Forum suggests that Mulholland Dr., along with Brotherhood of the Wolf, The Deer Hunter and Ran, will be coming to HD DVD in the UK in March, courtesy of Optimum. Presumably this will coincide with the standard definition Special Edition being released on March 12th - although, given Optimum and Studio Canal's HD track record so far, I don't expect that we can count on any of the extras being ported over.

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.

Nocturnal wanderings

I can't remember precisely when I first enthused about the impending release of Nocturna, a delightfully twisted-looking nightmarish animated feature from Spain, but I have a feeling it was pretty close to when I first launched this site in 2001. Anyway, it's been put back and put back, but it seems that it might finally be coming out. A new trailer has surfaced on YouTube, boasting a release date of Summer 2007. Judging by the colour scheme and line style, it's taken on something of a Les Triplettes de Belleville influence since the last publicly available footage was released, but it still seems to have enough of its own flavour. In any event, it's great to see more traditionally animated features in the pipeline, and I for one hope this gets a theatrical release here instead of going straight to DVD (or, more likely for me, HD DVD, given that Filmax is an HD DVD partner).

You can find more information (and pictures) at the official web site.

Update, January 15, 2007 02:12 PM: There's another trailer here. You can also see artwork from directors Victor Maldonato and Adrian García's next project, Monsieur Collieu, here, and a trailer, here.

This year's HD DVD releases

Source: HD DVD Promotion Group

Here is a partial list of some of the 300 new titles we can expect to see on HD DVD this year in the US. Note that I've omitted concert, nature show and "screensaver"-type releases to concentrate on films and the odd TV show. I also haven't included titles that already have a street date.

• 2001: A Space Odyssey (Warner)
• The 40 Year Old Virgin (Universal)
• Above the Law (Warner)
• American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile (Universal)
• American Pie: Unrated (Universal)
• The American President (Warner)
• Angels in America (HBO)
• Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (New Line)
• The Aviator (Universal)
• Awake (The Weinstein Company)
• Band of Brothers (HBO)
• Battlestar Galactica (Universal)
• The Black Dahlia (Universal)
• Blade (New Line)
• Blade Runner (Warner)
• Blood Diamond (Warner)
• The Blues Brothers (Universal)
• The Bourne Identity (Universal)
• Braveheart (Paramount)
• Breaking and Entering (The Weinstein Company)
• Bruce Almighty (Universal)
• Bubble (Magnolia)
• Bullitt (Warner)
• Catwoman (Warner)
• A Clockwork Orange (Warner)
• Coach Carter (Paramount)
• Conan the Barbarian (Universal)
• Contact (Warner)
• Cowboy Bebop (Bandai)
• Dante's Peak (Universal)
• Dark City (New Line)
• Dawn of the Dead [remake] (Universal)
• Deadwood: Season 1 (HBO)
• Decameron (The Weinstein Company)
• The Dirty Harry Collection (Warner)
• DOA: Dead or Alive (The Weinstein Company)
• Elizabethtown (Paramount)
• Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (Magnolia)
• Eraser (Warner)
• Executive Decision (Warner)
• The Exorcist (Warner)
• Eyes Wide Shut (Warner)
• Face/Off (Paramount)
• Flags of Our Fathers (Paramount)
• Forest Gump (Paramount)
• Friday (New Line)
• Friends: Season 1 (Warner)
• From the Earth to the Moon (HBO)
• Galaxina (BCI)
• The Getaway (Warner)
• Ghost (Paramount)
• Ghost in the Shell (Bandai)
• Golgo 13 (BCI)
• The Good Shepherd (Universal)
• The Goonies (Warner)
• Gothika (Warner)
• Grease (Paramount)
• The Green Mile (Warner)
• Grindhouse (The Weinstein Company)
• Hannibal Rising (The Weinstein Company)
• Hard to Kill (Warner)
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Warner)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Warner)
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Warner)
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Warner)
• Idlewind (Universal)
• Inside Man (Universal)
• Killshot (The Weinstein Company)
• Last Legion (The Weinstein Company)
• The Lemon Drop Kid (BCI)
• Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (Paramount)
• The Libertine (The Weinstein Company)
• The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (New Line)
• The Maltese Falcon (Warner)
• The Mask (New Line)
• The Matrix (Warner)
• The Matrix Reloaded (Warner)
• The Matrix Revolutions (Warner)
• Maverick (Warner)
• Mission: Impossible (Paramount)
• Mission: Impossible 2 (Paramount)
• Mrs. Henderson Presents (The Weinstein Company)
• The Music Man (Warner)
• Mystic River (Warner)
• Natural Born Killers (Warner)
• Next of Kin (Warner)
• Night of the Werewolf (BCI)
• North by Northwest (Warner)
• Ocean's Eleven (Warner)
• Ocean's Thirteen (Warner)
• Ocean's Twelve (Warner)
• One Last Thing (Magnolia)
• Passenger 57 (Warner)
• The Player (New Line)
• Pride & Prejudice (Universal)
• Red Planet (Warner)
• The Return (Universal)
• Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (Warner)
• Rush Hour (New Line)
• Save the Last Dance (Paramount)
• Scarface (Universal)
• School for Scoundrels (The Weinstein Company)
• School of Rock (Paramount)
• Scoop (Universal)
• Se7en (New Line)
• The Shawshank Redemption (Warner)
• The Shining (Warner)
• Sin City 2 (The Weinstein Company)
• Singing' in the Rain (Warner)
• Sister Street Fighter (BCI)
• Soldier (Warner)
• Son of Paleface (BCI)
• The Sopranos [various seasons, it would seem] (HBO)
• Spawn (New Line)
• The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (Paramount)
• Star Trek: First Contact (Paramount)
• Star Trek: The Original Series (Paramount)
• Superman: Ultimate Collector's Edition (Warner)
• That's the Way of the World (BCI)
• Transamerica (The Weinstein Company)
• Twister (Warner)
• The Ultimate Star Trek Movie Collection (Paramount)
• US Marshals (Warner)
• Vanilla Sky (Paramount)
• Vengeance of the Zombies (BCI)
• The War at Home (Magnolia)
• The War Within (Magnolia)
• The West Wing: Season 7 (Warner)
• Wild Wild West (Warner)
• The Wizard of Oz (Warner)

Obviously this is not a concrete list - we can probably expect to see considerably more titles from Universal than are included here - but there are many, many titles in that list that I will definitely be picking up.

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.

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?

Another financial blunder

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. That sound is me metaphorically banging my head against my desk. I don't have a job, and my funds are rapidly drying up, and yet I've just committed yet another expensive mistake.

Back when it was first discovered that Microsoft's $200 HD DVD add-on drive for the Xbox 360 could be connected to any PC, I was overjoyed: here was an affordable way of making my computer HD DVD-enabled, and, in conjunction with the latest software solution from Cyberlink or Intervideo, begin taking screen captures in earnest for reviews, comparisons, an HD Hall of Fame, and so on. Everything was in place, or so I thought: my system was HDCP-ready, and it seemed that everything would fall into place just fine.

Or so I thought. The drive arrived today from Hong Kong (they're rarer than gold dust on UK shelves, and in any event I only ended up paying about £5 more than I would have paid for a local model), and I wasted no time in hooking it up to my PC via USB and popping in a disc (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, if you must know). I fired up PowerDVD Ultra, the HD DVD-enabled version of Cyberlink's popular DVD software, and waited as it span up. The Warner Home Entertainment logo then appeared for just over a second, and then...

"Cannot initialize player, please make sure your system meets minimum system requirement criteria. You can find extra information from Cyberlink FAQ website - - (Error Code = 0103). Please run the BD-HD Advisor tool for more information."

And so I did. I scanned for HD DVD support, only for the advisor to tell me that apparently my display is not HDCP compatible. Bollocks. Complete and utter bollocks. I know for a fact that the display is compliant because my standalone HD-A1 player has interfaced with it without any problems. I also know for a fact that, when I ran the BD/HD Advisor a couple of weeks ago, when I still had my Nvidia card, everything was in working order. Now, initially I thought that I had been screwed over and that my video card was in fact not HDCP compliant - but that wasn't right either, because the advisor recognised both the card and the graphics driver as compliant. Why, then, does connecting the monitor to this ATI card make the program think it isn't HDCP, while connecting it to a different card makes it think that it is? The only possible answer I can come up with is that Cyberlink have screwed up somewhere, and have written crippled software that is shutting out users who should be allowed in. A quite perusal of Cyberlink's customer forums revealed that I'm not the only person with this problem: another user is also being locked out for no reason, with no explanation other than the dubious claim that his HDCP-compliant Dell monitor was "without HDCP".

Now here's the real kicker. Remember the whole point of HDCP? To lock out those unsecure analogue connections and only allow 100% safe, encrypted connections in order to prevent piracy? Well, guess what - if you hook up an analogue monitor, the HD DVD plays just fine, in full 1920x1080 resolution (which my crusty old CRT supports). No error message, no nothing. The reason for this, of course, is that, facing a barrage of complaints, the various studios who insisted on HDCP in the first place agreed not to enable the Image Constrant Token, which would either limit resolution severely or else prevent playback at all, until 2012. But this still doesn't explain why Cyberlink has chosen to bar users with digital displays unless they have HDCP support. Frankly it reeks of paranoia and fellating the Hollywood studios lest they lose their precious licenses.

In any event, it's all rendered somewhat moot by the fact that Cyberlink have disabled the screen capture process for HD content. What do they think I'm going to do? Pirate a movie by pressing PrintScreen on every frame? That was my main (okay, make that only) reason for getting this drive, so it's as good as useless for me. Disabling the overlay through my usual method (opening a video file in Windows Media Player, then, with the overlay now in use, running PowerDVD and forcing it to fall back into software mode) doesn't work either, because it just spits out yet another error code about not finding the appropriate drivers. None of the screen capture programs that supposedly allow you to capture the overlay work either.

Result: I'm now saddled with a drive that is all but useless, and have spent no small amount of money on a video card that is, for at least one program, not interfacing with my monitor properly. This is every bit the nightmare scenario that I correctly predicted when I first heard about these newfangled monopolisation... sorry, content protection measures. At least the drive is in short enough supply that I can probably expect to resell it for a reasonable price, but right now I'm extremely concerned about my video card. If PowerDVD and its advisor program don't think my monitor is HDCP-compliant when it's hooked up to it, how can I be sure that other programs aren't going to think the same?

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.

HD DVD review: An American Werewolf in London

An American Werewolf in London is the most disappointing HD DVD title I have reviewed thus far, although it constitutes an undeniable improvement on its standard definition counterpart. Unfortunately, edge enhancement and a lack of the original mono audio mix make this release difficult to recommend to all but the most dedicated fans.

HD pickings have been slim for horror fans so far, but Universal has sought to rectify this with the release of John Landis' classic An American Werewolf in London. I've reviewed the R0 US DVD/HD DVD combo.

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.

HD DVD review: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire seems to be considered by many fans of the franchise to be the worst film in the series so far, but, whether it's because I wouldn't class myself as a Harry Potter fan or for other reasons, my reaction to it was quite the opposite. I still don't really understand what it is that makes so many people fanatical about this series (I expect that I would have to read the books to get my head around that), and it hasn't given me any particular desire to rush to the cinema and see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix when it is released in cinemas in July, but, as a stand-alone film, this fourth part in the septology is a nicely-executed if meandering piece that should engage both children and adults, whether or not they have read the books.

For the first HD review of 2007, I take a look at Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, released in the UK in December 2006 but yet to appear anywhere else in the world. Warner's disc features a stunning transfer and an exclusive In-Movie Experience feature.

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.

DVDs I bought or received in the month of December

• The Adventures of Robin Hood (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• An American Werewolf in London (R0 USA, HD DVD/SD DVD combo)
• Basic Instinct (R0 France, HD DVD)
• Casablanca (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• The Double Life of Véronique: The Criterion Collection (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (R0 UK, HD DVD)
• Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume Four (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• Miami Vice (R0 USA, HD DVD/SD DVD combo)
• Operation Crossbow (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• The Quiller Memorandum (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• Serenity (R0 UK, HD DVD)
• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: Ultimate Edition (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• Wolf Creek (R0 USA, HD DVD)

This month, the number of HD DVDs I picked up exceeded the number of standard definition DVDs for the first time: long may this trend continue.

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.

Jingle bells

In case you didn't notice, yesterday was Christmas. As luck would have it, the various presents I had ordered all showed up on Saturday, contrary to all expectation (Saturday being the last day for the postal service until the 27th), and I got one or two surprises in addition to those. Thanks must go especially to Lee for sending me a copy of Burton on Burton, which, as you can probably guess, is a book on director Tim Burton and his bizarre gothic fantasies. I'm sure I'll enjoy getting stuck into it when I next have a spare moment.

Otherwise, there were no huge surprises. I got The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - The Complete Recordings (what a mouthful!) on CD but haven't had a chance to listen to anything but the first couple of tracks. And, in terms of DVDs, my collection now includes Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 4, The Double Life of Véronique (Criterion), The Quiller Memorandum and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Ultimate Edition). I've not had the time to watch any of them, but I gave most of them a brief glance, and have collected my thoughts below.

• The Double Life of Véronique: This release looks slightly better than the French MK2 release (repackaged in the UK under the Artificial Eye label), but it's a close call. There is less noise reduction and the compression is better handled, giving the image a more eye-pleasing, filmlike appearance. However, I am once again annoyed that Criterion, who are (wrongly, in my opinion) frequently held up to be the pinnacle of DVD production companies, have chosen to assault the image with edge enhancement and brick-wall filtering. Especially following the advent of HD DVD, I am acutely aware that the vast majority of DVDs simply aren't of an acceptable level of quality.
  
  
• The Quiller Memorandum: Probably the worst transfer I've seen all year. This DVD was released only a month ago, and yet it looks almost like a LaserDisc master. The image is flat, detail is non-existent, and I once again find myself wondering how Fox, like Criterion, can garner so much praise for such feeble efforts.
  
  
• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: This restoration, undertaken by Synapse's Don Mar Jr., has been praised to the high heavens on the Internet, and with good reason: the film has undoubtedly never looked better on a home video format, and the material May had to work with can't have been in particularly good condition. All the more reason, then, for my to be annoyed by Dark Sky's DVD, which is ineptly encoded, resulting in some of the most blatant macro-blocking I've seen in a long time. At times, the screen is such an array of compression blocks that it resembles a UK Freeview TV broadcast (which anyone who has witnessed this ingenious but flawed "digital TV through an antenna" solution will agree is capable of looking very bad indeed).

That's all for now. Thoughts on the Looney Tunes discs will follow eventually.

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.