HD DVD

HD for High Disappointment

Two new HD DVDs winged their way to me from DVD Pacific this morning: An American Werewolf in London, from Universal, and Wolf Creek, from the Weinstein Company. Unfortunately, these are the most disappointing high definition discs I’ve received so far.

Let’s start with An American Werewolf in London. Prior to receiving it, I was under no delusions as to how it would look. This is a low budget film from 1981, and one that, despite its cult following, is neither prestigious enough to be eligible for a Casablanca-style restoration, nor for the same standard of storage. So far, all of the HD DVD’s I’ve bought have been of recent (i.e. less than 10 years old) films, many of them sourced from digital intermediates with the film negative itself being scanned almost as soon as it was shot. As such, there is a certain “look” that you can expect from them that you aren’t going to get with something like American Werewolf. Still, I expect the technicians to do the best they can with the materials they are handed, and not to attempt any sort of invasive digital manipulation. Unfortunately, those responsible for the master used for this HD DVD clearly missed that particular memo from the HMS Whimsy, for they have attempted to compensate for the inherently somewhat soft look of the source materials by adding a tonne of edge enhancement. The aliasing on this particular title is the worst I’ve seen on any HD DVD, and would probably be considered pretty noticeable even on a standard definition release. All things considered, this gets a very low 6/10 from me.

Even the sound is a disaster - a 0/10 affair. American Werewolf was, unsurprisingly, mixed in mono, but, for the most recent theatrical re-release, Universal undertook a whiz-bang new DTS 5.1 remix, and in doing so not only fed the existing audio through multiple channels, but also threw in all manner of new sound effects not present originally. Unfortunately, on the DVD, and now the HD DVD, only this mangled 5.1 mix is provided. As far as I am concerned, this is not the film as it was originally released, and as such is a faulty product. Sorry to be harsh, but intrusive revisionism of this sort has absolutely no place on a disc whose cover art proclaims “The Look and Sound of Perfect™”, unless of course the original version is also provided as an option.

Wolf Creek next, and I’m afraid things go from bad to worse. This film is actually not a “film” at all, since it was shot in 1080p high definition. As such, an HD DVD encoded at 1080p should theoretically provide a more or less perfect pixel to pixel replication of the original image that was recorded. Unfortunately, Wolf Creek has what Lyris refers to as “the Blu-ray look”. The image is incredibly inconsistent. Some shots look absolutely brilliant, with razor-sharp details, while the fake grain added to many scenes to make the movie look a little more intense (and less like a home video) is accurately represented. Other scenes, though, show noticeable compression artefacts and give everything an odd “waxy” look, as fine details are smeared out, a little like the HD DVD of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Unlike most North American HD DVD studios, the Weinstein Company are using AVC/MPEG4 as their codec instead of VC1, and, while I personally was very pleased by the results that this produced for the Japanese HD DVD of The Machinist, I’m beginning to see why so many people are down on it if Wolf Creek is representative of how it generally looks. Another 6/10.

Oh, and the disc took absolutely ages - about three minutes - to boot. Apparently this problem affects all of the Weinstein Company’s HD DVDs, for some reason.

A most eventful excursion

This morning, I was at an interview for a job with the Scottish Qualifications Authority, the body in charge of designing and conferring all non-degree awards in Scotland. The post in question is an administrative one, and it’s a part-time (three days per week), temporary (three months) venture, but we’ve all got to start somewhere, as they say, and I’d like to be able to get some money coming in again (I’ve been putting all my unemployment benefit rakings into a PhD fund). Of course, being an interview, I had to wear a suit and tie, which, as you probably know, I absolutely loathe. (Can someone please explain to me the point of a tie? I can’t think of a more useless item of clothing.)

Anyway, while I was out, I took the opportunity to do two things. First, I went to Burger King and ate one of their burgers - something I haven’t done in many a year. Not much has changed: they’re still better than McDonalds’ burgers, but they sit like a lump of lead in your stomach and very quickly leave you feeling empty. Second, I went to Borders to spend a £25 book token I had lying around. I was rather foolishly hoping they’d be stocking HD DVDs and that I’d find something to my fancy, but evidently Borders still think it’s the 20th century, so I had to settle for good old-fashioned literature instead. I picked up The Peoples of Middle-earth, Christopher Tolkien’s account of his father’s writing of the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings, and a copy of the original graphic novel of V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. Unfortunately, the only version I could find had been subjected to an incredibly naff colouring job (the original publication was black and white, but evidently nowadays readers want their comics in colour, no matter how crummy that colour might be), but it’s better than nothing, and the paint job is so faint that, if I squint hard enough, I can just about manage to make it look monochromatic. It also happens to be printed on something closely approximating toilet paper, which, for £16.99, seems a bit mean, but that’s evidently how many people like their comics. Personally, I prefer the glossy surface of the most recent Asterix re-releases.

Speaking of Asterix, I note that the first two albums, Asterix the Gaul and Asterix and the Golden Sickle, have recently been re-released in a larger print format with new covers and, according to the official Asterix blog, completely re-inked and re-coloured panels.

Personally, I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, many of the books do have very poor painting, especially the first four titles, and, in addition, many of them, even comparatively recent ones, suffer from what I imagine is erosion on the master plates themselves, resulting in lines that are faint and at times lost entirely, DVNR-style (Asterix and the Soothsayer is particularly affected). At the same time, though, these books are products of their time, and any attempt to bring them “into line” by giving them all the same colour palette and lettering style seems like meddling with a piece of history. (It’s also incredibly pointless because, even if you standardise the colouring, you still have to contend with the fact that the look of the characters and indeed the overall art style have continued to evolve with every album.) I can’t deny that many were produced in less than ideal circumstances, but it all seems a bit intrusive to me. The first eight books were, a few years back, released re-coloured and re-inked (although I believe that these most recent releases re-colour them yet again), and, while the likes of Asterix and the Goths, which was incredibly poorly coloured in its original state, certainly benefited, others, such as Asterix and the Banquet, which already looked very nice, lost a lot of their vibrance and subtlety in their new homogenised versions.

Still, part of me is actually quite tempted to pick up at least one of the new books and see whether these re-issues are worthwhile. The €14 price tag at Amazon.fr is pretty damn steep, though, and, morbid as it is, I’m also a little concerned that Uderzo will either retire or pop his clogs before he can finish re-doing the cover art for each book.

PS. You can view a Flash demonstration of the “restoration” process if you’re interested.

Captain Whiggles’ Christmas list

It’s nearly that time of the year again and, in order to avoid any potential disappointments, I’ve decided to put together my Christmas list and get my orders in now, rather than waiting till the last moment. Therefore, on the birthday of everyone’s favourite fictional deity (Mithras), I shall (hopefully) be receiving the following:

• Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 4 (R1 USA). For the last few years now, it has been something of a custom for me to receive the latest instalment in this collection of remastered (and sometimes mangled) cartoon classics, and to spend a copious portion of the morning watching them with Lyris. The notion of a whole disc full of Speedy Gonzales cartoons on this set doesn’t exactly seem like the most welcome prospect… although I don’t imagine it being considerably worse than the Road Runner disc in the previous set.
   
• The Double Life of Véronique: The Criterion Collection (R1 USA). Although Krzysztof Kieslowski’s brand of spiritualism doesn’t really do much for a heathen such as myself, I must confess to being absolutely enthralled by his use of colour and imagery. His Three Colours: Blue is one of my favourite films ever for its cinematography and lyricism. I already own the French release of Véronique from MK2, but, for some reason, I never got round to watching it, and the news that the new Criterion release duplicates all of its extras, plus adds several of its own, in addition to a better transfer, makes this a must-have in my book. Expect to see the French release on eBay before too long. Oh, and check out John White’s review of the Criterion set at DVD Times.
   
• The Quiller Memorandum and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: Ultimate Edition (both R1 USA). Two catalogue titles picked up in the same order from DVD Pacific for a very reasonable combined price. I haven’t seen The Quiller Memorandum, but I do love me my Cold War-era spy thrillers, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is one of the greatest American horror films ever made, so it makes sense to add what is apparently the definitive edition to my collection (having previously sold the non-anamorphic UK release).
   
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: The Complete Recordings (on CD). Last Christmas, I bought the Complete Recordings package of The Fellowship of the Ring, a 4-disc set (3 CDs and one audio DVD) turned out to be a massive improvement on the heavily-truncated single-disc release, so it stands to reason that this instalment should also be a worthwhile acquisition. The Two Towers always struck me as having the weakest score of the three Lord of the Rings films, but I suspect that this is because, perhaps more than the other two films, it was severely short-changed by having some of its most impressive cues left out of the single-disc release.

I’m also currently pursuing replacing my current video card, Sapphire’s ATI Radeon X850XT, with the similarly-performing nVidia GeForce 7600GT from ASUS, the EN7600GT/HTDI/256M model of which includes an HDMI output and HDCP compliancy, in addition to various high-end video processing features, such as inverse telecine, temporal de-interlacing, bad edit correction and hardware VC1 decoding. I’d originally planned on waiting to pick up a DirectX 10-enabled card from nVidia, but the price and power consumption of even the lower-end 8800GTS model were enough to persuade me to forego sheer brute strength and just settle for improved DVD (and eventually, I hope, HD DVD) playback. Besides, such a high power graphics card would probably be all but useless on my now-outdated Pentium 4 configuration.

Anyway, I bought a EN7600GT/HTDI/256M on eBay for a not unreasonable price, but, due to a mix-up, I was sent the non-HDMI, non-HDCP model instead. The correct model has been located, however, and I sent the other card back yesterday, so should hopefully be receiving the right one before too long. As an added bonus, the fact that I am buying what is technically a card from the previous generation of graphics technology means that I should hopefully be able to sell my current ATI card for not too much less than what I’m paying for this new one.

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.

First Optimum HD DVDs announced

Source: DVD Times

The HD DVD cause has just been given another boost as Optimum Home Entertainment, holders of the rights to several key European and Asian titles, have leapt into the fray, announcing Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine and Roman Polanski’s The Pianist for release on December 11th. Both films will of course be in 24 fps 1080p format, while audio will be comprised of a variety of DTS-HD options: French 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and German 5.1 DTS-HD Hi-Resolution Audio on La Haine, English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and French 5.1 DTS-HD Hi-Resolution Audio on The Pianist.

I can already think of several Optimum titles I would love to pick up in high definition. The entire Studio Ghibli catalogue, anyone?

And my first HD DVD double-dip is…

Bet you didn’t think I’d be double-dipping this early in HD DVD’s life, did you? Well, neither did I, but the news that the UK release apparently featured a better transfer than its American counterpart made it difficult to resist. (Well, actually, this is not technically a double-dip for me, since my brother owns the previous version, but it does mean that we now have two copies in the house.) The US release of Serenity was one of the very first HD DVDs to be released, and it was also one of the first to be encoded, using an early and less efficient version of the VC1 codec. For the European release, therefore, the compressionists decided to revisit it and encode it more efficiently, partly to allow for additional language tracks to be included, thus facilitating a Europe-wide release of the same disc.

I know what you’re thinking: “But Captain Whiggles, isn’t Serenity your number one HD DVD demo disc?” It is, or rather was, because the US disc has just been knocked down a peg by its younger European sibling. No, the differences aren’t massive, and I don’t expect the majority of people to even notice them, but the new encode takes an already spectacular-looking disc and makes it look just a hair better. The most significant difference, if we can actually call it significant, is that the grain is very slightly more pronounced, further amplifying the film-like nature of the HD presentation. It also seems to be microscopically more detailed. This tends to be most noticeable in the form of improved definition of the skin texture during facial close-ups, although some of the wider shots also look a little crisper. Ultimately, I’m not sure I’d recommend that everyone immediately rushes out and picks up the UK release if they already own the US version, but the difference is there. I rated the US version a 10/10 for image quality, and I don’t think I’d drop it to a 9 even having seen the UK version - perhaps more of a 9.8 (although I prefer not to get that specific when it comes to overall ratings). It’s too bad I don’t have more than one HD DVD player, and it takes upwards of a minute to switch discs, because that makes it pretty much impossible to perform any sort of a scientific comparison. I really hope that affordable PC drives and software capable of displaying titles in their full 1920x1080 resolution become available before too long, because I’m itching to subject some HD DVDs to the same in-depth comparisons as I currently do for standard definition material.

The UK disc also includes an additional bonus feature not found on the US release: the 20-minute A Filmmaker’s Journey, which is not particularly substantial - but hey, the more the merrier!

A minor point, true, but the UK release has a much nicer cover. The US version, for some reason, has been designed to look like it houses some sort of intergalactic space porno, while the UK edition, while still a bit cluttered, looks considerably less embarrassing.

Oddly enough, the UK release comes in a different type of case from what I’ve been used to seeing for HD DVD so far. The spine, this time, is much wider - the same width as a normal amaray DVD case, in fact. The reason for this seems to be to allow UK stores to fit those special plastic security tags that can only be removed by a dedicated machine. Oddly enough, the other UK HD DVD release I own, Warner’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, uses the same size of case as its US counterparts, so it may be that only Universal has opted to use this alternate design. Either way, if I end up buying more of them, my HD shelf, already almost full, is going to be filled up a lot more quickly!

Oh, and I also received, in the same order from Amazon UK, the ominous score to V for Vendetta by Dario Marianelli.

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!

V for Vendetta

For all its flaws, I admire V for Vendetta for being ballsy enough to tell a mainstream audience that blowing up buildings can be a legitimate means to an end. Warner’s HD DVD release is far from the top echelon of high definition releases, but it constitutes a solid package overall, and the improvements to image, audio and extras should be enough to convince those who already own the DVD to upgrade.

Remember, remember… Okay, so it’s the 5th of December rather than the 5th of November, but I’ve reviewed the recent HD DVD release of V for Vendetta anyway.

DVDs I bought or received in the month of November

• Alias: The Complete Fifth Series (R2 UK, SD DVD)
• Astérix et les Vikings (R2 France, SD DVD)
• Cars (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (R0 UK, HD DVD)
• Home Alone: Family Fun Edition (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• Lovers, Liars and Lunatics (R0 USA, SD DVD)
• Peep Show: Series Three (R2 UK, SD DVD)
• V for Vendetta (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• Veronica Mars: The Complete Second Season (R1 USA, SD DVD)

Some interesting titles this month, including my first ever British HD DVD. Although, given that it’s actually just a US release relabelled, that probably doesn’t count for much.

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?

Sorry America, we got your Potters!

Forgive me this moment of plagiarism, but I still think it’s one of the funniest thread titles I’ve seen relating to this subject. As I laid out in an earlier post, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, still lacking an official date for its US released, came out on HD DVD in the UK on November 20th, and word quickly spread that, barring the inclusion on the cover of BBFC logos and the usual UK additionata (to borrow a phrase from Garth Marenghi), such as a quote from the Daily Mirror, this was actually just the as yet unannounced US release rebadged. Well, curiosity got the better of me and, despite only having a lukewarm reaction to the first two Potter films, I ended up ordering a copy from Play.com.

It arrived today, and the rumours are true: when you pop the disc in, you’re greeted with an FBI warning screen, followed by the Warner logo and the same annoying and bombastic Warner HD DVD trailer that they’ve included on every single one of their releases so far, then an MPAA PG-13 logo, followed by the film itself. If the studios continue to follow this model of simply repackaging (and re-labelling) the US discs, this strikes me as being a good thing, for two reasons. First: it cuts down on costs, meaning that a single master can be prepared for both North America and the UK (and any other English-speaking territories, as well as other locations like France and Spain, provided the extras are comprehensively subtitles, given that these discs tend to include French and Spanish dubs). Second: it should help bury the horrible legacy of PAL speed-up in films and dodgy NTSC to PAL standards converted extras. At the moment, Potter is a rare beast indeed: a 24 fps film with 30 fps NTSC extras that you can pick up off a UK store shelf. Hopefully this trend will continue.

Anyway, enough of that - how’s the disc? Superb, is the answer. In fact, it comes very close to toppling Serenity from its “best HD DVD transfer” throne. It’s amazing that Warner can put out an edge enhanced, slightly filtered and noise reduced release like V for Vendetta one week, and then release something that, to my eyes, looks almost completely untampered the next. This is an amazing looking transfer, with excellent detail and a rich, smooth, film-like look, and the fact that there are no real problems with compression is a phenomenal achievement given the number of difficult moments in this film - crowd scenes, underwater chases, firework displays, not to mention dodgy CGI fire-breathing dragons. This is very much a 10 out of 10 affair, with my only concern being some prominent edge enhancement in a couple of background shots in an early scene, which is so much heavier than anything else in the film (or indeed the shots in question) that I’m pretty sure it was a result of some effects work rather than the encoding.

As for the film, I enjoyed it more than the first two Potters, although it is to my mind still heavily flawed, not to mention far too long. As has been something of a trend recently, it’s also fairly clear that, rather than being a stand-alone film, it’s merely a single part in a much larger story. This wouldn’t have been a massive problem were it not for the fact that the film ends on a “to be continued” note in all but name: in the final half-hour, a hideous villain and arch-enemy of Harry’s escapes from his prison and comes after him, but nothing is done about this and, as is usually the case, the film ends with the school year ending and the characters heading their separate ways. Harry might have said, “Gee willickers! There’s a terrible villain who wants to kill me on the loose, but we’ll deal with him next term.” I did, however, appreciate the somewhat darker tone when compared to the first two films (I still need to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the third film), and the child actors seem to be improving as they grow older.

Oh yeah, and I also finally received my long-awaited copy of Amber Benson’s new film, Lovers, Liars and Lunatics, which she wrote, produced, edited, directed and starred in. The disc was posted to me by Ms Benson herself, judging by the fact that the signature on the customs declaration matches the signature on the front cover (she signed the first 500 copies). Full thoughts and impressions will follow as soon as I’ve had a chance to watch it, but, having taken a glance at a couple of minutes, I should probably warn you that the transfer is interlaced and non-anamorphic (although, unlike Amber’s previous film, Chance, it’s shot on 35mm film rather than video).

Update, December 19, 2006 05:54 PM: Fixed dead link.

This is my house - I have to defend it!

My copy of the recently released R1 US special edition (sorry, “Family Fun Edition”) of Home Alone arrived this morning. If you’ve been reading this site for an extended period of time, then you’ve probably read at least one of my rants about the appalling picture quality of the previous bare-bones release of the film. Home Alone is probably my all-time favourite Christmas movie, and I’m not ashamed to say that. Growing up, it was always a huge part of the festive season for me, and, despite knowing every single line by heart, it never gets old. As you can probably imagine, I was absolutely elated to hear that Fox were finally bringing this classic out of the vault and giving it the full-on special edition treatment.

You know how these posts of mine usually go, don’t you? Bla bla bla, I was so looking forward to this, bla bla bla. What usually comes next is the “What a phenomenal disappointment” rant… so here it comes.

Just kidding. I’m actually very pleased with this DVD. It’s not perfect, by any means: a considerable amount of temporal noise reduction has been applied to the image, and, like most of the Fox DVDs I own, it looks rather soft (some of which may be a result of the original photography, but at least some of which is the result of digital tomfoolery). Still, when all said and done, it could have looked considerably worse, and I don’t need to tell you that it’s a vast improvement on the yellowy, smeary, artefact-ridden disaster that was its predecessor.

The extras are all of a high standard, and, unusually, myself and Lyris, who generally doesn’t rate extras particularly highly, actually made our way through the entire contents of the disc without getting bored. Writer John Hughes, who supposedly banged out the script over the course of a weekend, is nowhere to be found, but director Chris Columbus, actors Macaulay Culkin and Daniel Stern, and a variety of crew members, are all over the bonus features, which include a neat little retrospective documentary as well as some archive materials from the time of the film’s original production and release. Also included are a variety of deleted scenes, many of which are a hoot, and the contents of which actually made it into the novelisation I read when I was about eight years old. Finally, there’s a great commentary with Columbus and Culkin, who gently take the piss out of the film and themselves, and provide a great deal of informative and fun anecdotes about the production.

I’m very surprised to find myself saying this, but this is actually one of the best DVD releases I’ve come across this year. Okay, so it’s not exactly a multi-disc epic with seamless branching and a DTS-ES audio track, but it does exactly what it says on the tin and provides you with just about everything you could want for this film. With this, the special edition of The Omen and the extended cut of Kingdom of Heaven, Fox have certainly been releasing some decent packages recently. Let’s hope we can eventually convince them to jump aboard the HD DVD wagon!

V for Vendetta

My HD DVD of V for Vendetta finally arrived today from Amazon.com. Incidentally, I’m glad I decided to order my copy from them - my regular supplier, DVD Pacific, seem to have only just got copies in stock, and, in any event, Amazon’s shipping times and, for HD DVDs, prices, seem to be pretty much the same as DVD Pacific’s anyway.

Anyway, the disc. This is a very good but not outstanding presentation. I’d put it in the same category as the likes of Constantine and Million Dollar Baby: essentially, a smooth, rich presentation with a pleasing amount of detail and no visible compression artefacts, but not an out of this world eye-popper like Serenity (to date, still the most incredible home video presentation I’ve ever seen of a film) or Unleashed. Some edge enhancement is visible, and the image doesn’t have the crispness of some of the more stellar titles, but it is all in all a very nice-looking transfer.

As for extras, we get an exclusive In-Movie Experience, which I’ve briefly sampled and found to be somewhat better than those found on the likes of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Also, all of the extras from the 2-disc special edition DVD have been ported over. And yes, that includes the Natalie Portman SNL short so tragically absent from the UK DVD releases.

Expect a full review at DVD Times by the end of the week.

Oh, and it seems that, despite HD DVD players not yet being available in the UK, Play.com are already shipping copies of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, a title which is not yet available in the US. The word on the street is that this is actually a US disc, right down to the FBI warning and MPAA ratings screen at the start of the disc. If nothing else, this bodes well for future UK HD DVD releases, at least from Warner.

HD DVD reviews coming soon

Apparently, DVD Times will soon be able to acquire review copies of UK HD DVD releases directly from Warner. This should mean that I will be able to provide coverage of more titles, including ones that I would not have otherwise picked up.

Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on usable as PC drive

Source: Xbox-Scene

Apparently, Microsoft’s upcoming HD DVD add-on for their Xbox 360 console will also be usable as an external PC drive, provided you can get a hold of the requisite driver. It’s probably all a bit dodgy, and I’m sure Microsoft, Toshiba et al won’t be thrilled by this development, but it’s certainly a very tempting proposition, given that the £130/$200 add-on is likely to be considerably cheaper than dedicated PC HD DVD drives for some time.

Update, November 12, 2006 12:11 PM: Unfortunately, it looks as if playback from the drive is extremely unlikely. Apparently, it was hard enough just to make the file structure readable.

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.

Peep peep!

Series 3 of Peep Show arrived this morning. With a new series apparently now not showing up until some point in 2007, rewatching older episodes of this extremely funny comedy is going to have to tide me over.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I thought Series 3 was a step down from its two predecessors, and that feeling was maintained when watching it again today. It just don’t think it consistently hits the high notes as well as the likes of Series 2, although admittedly, when it’s funny, it’s really funny - the third episode, Shrooming, being a particular highlight. Still, I’d say that, on reflection, it was better than I’d remembered it - 7/10 material rather than 6/10, if you will.

Oh yeah, and I cancelled my order for V for Vendetta on HD DVD from DVD Pacific and re-ordered it from Amazon, who actually have it in stock.

Update, December 19, 2006 06:12 PM: Fixed dead link.

Remember, remember…

…the fifth of November, the gunpowder treason and plot.

I would have liked to be watching V for Vendetta on HD DVD tomorrow night in order to do my bit towards celebrating what is arguably the most famous botched terrorist attack in British history, but, as so often seems to be the case with HD DVD releases, copies are thin on the ground and DVD Pacific are still awaiting stock. I should probably be glad, as it would seem to suggest that demand is so great that there aren’t enough copies available to satisfy it, but I’m a little peeved nonetheless, given that I ordered my copy almost as soon as it was announced.

DVDs I bought or received in the month of October

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• Corpse Bride (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• Enemy of the State: Special Extended Edition (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• The Fox and the Hound: 25th Anniversary Edition (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• The Machinist (R0 Japan, HD DVD)
• Waking the Dead: Series 3 (R2 UK, SD DVD)

Wow! For the first time, the number of HD DVDs coming into the house exceeded the number of standard definition DVDs.

Oh, and Happy Halloween!