HD DVD

Halloween: what can you expect?

In just a few days' time, it will be Halloween, and, naturally, I'm planning a splurge of horror-themed reviews for DVD Times. Last year, I concentrated mainly on covering HD DVD releases, but this year, things are going to be a little more balanced across the three formats I cover. So, provided I can actually churn them out within the next 8-9 days, here's what you can expect to see:

• The Descent (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Halloween (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• House of 1000 Corpses (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Inferno (R2 Italy, DVD)
• Suspiria: Definitive Edition (R2 Italy, DVD)
• Underworld: Extended Cut (R0 Germany, HD DVD)

Now, I'm aware that that's a bit of a tall order, particularly given that I also have work commitments and my PhD to think about, not to mention a review of the Blu-ray release of Oldboy, plus one of Blue Underground's new release of The Stendhal Syndrome when it arrives, so I don't want to promise anything. I'll do my best to finish as many of them as possible, though.

The optimum Mother of Tears experience

Source: Dark Discussion

Dark Discussion is reporting that Optimum Releasing has picked up the UK distribution rights to Dario Argento's Mother of Tears, with a view to releasing it on DVD in February or March 2008. A general theatrical release is, unsurprisingly, not planned, but Alan Jones is apparently trying to persuade Optimum to put together a screening of the entire trilogy in London with Argento himself in attendance.

Bear in mind that Optimum are also a supporter of high definition media, currently releasing HD DVDs and also supporting Blu-ray as of November. They haven't released a whole lot of HD content as of yet, but in their most recent press release they stated an interest in responding to "the demand for a greater variety of product", so it's possibly worth contacting them and asking them to consider releasing Mother of Tears on either or both formats. I've sent them an email (info@optimumreleasing.com), and I would strongly encourage you to do likewise.

In related news, the soundtrack to Mother of Tears is being released in Italy by the label Edel to coincide with the film's theatrical release at the end of the month. MovieGrooves hope to have copies in stock by early November, and I've already got mine pre-ordered. I'm very curious to hear the score in all its glory - I've heard mixed reports about it, but the Jerry Goldsmith/Omen-esque snippets that I've heard in various trailers and the like sound quite enticing, and, if nothing else, it suggests something of a change of pace for Argento and Claudio Simonetti.

It's a mad, mad world

I'm probably going to regret this when my credit card bill arrives, but what can I say? It's one of my all-time favourite films, if not my absolute favourite, and I'm determined to get the best possible presentation possible, so I've ordered both the newly-released Italian 2-disc "Definitive Edition" tin box set of Suspiria from IBS, and the upcoming French 3-disc Collector's Edition from Amazon.fr.

The situation, as far as I can determine, from various web sites and forums, is this:

The Italian release includes an English 1.0 mono track - not ideal, but, if it is derived from the mono recording that did the rounds back in 1977 at cinemas not equipped to play the film's quadrophonic mix, then it will still be preferable to the monstrosity present on the Anchor Bay DVD. Also included are Italian 1.0, 5.1 and 5.1 EX mixes, although this surprises me somewhat as the 5.1 EX track presumably renders the 5.1 track irrelevant. English and Italian subtitles are included, as well as the following extras: two Dario Argento interviews, theatrical trailer, TV and radio spots, gallery.

The French release includes no English audio options, and French subtitles are forced when any of the Italian audio options are enabled. These booby traps will not, however, thwart the HMS Whimsy's skilled navigators. The offered audio options, as per Wild Side's page on the release, are French mono and Italian mono, stereo and 5.1. The extensive array of extras is described in my previous post.

So there you have it. The Italian tin should be arriving within the next week or so, and, if nothing else, it will look very nice on my shelf next to my French Danny the Dog tin, which features a similar design. I must say I'm really stoked to see this new HD-sourced transfer in action. In an ideal world, I'd be sitting down to watch it in full 1080p on HD DVD, but that doesn't appear to be on the cards just yet, so, in the meantime, I'm going to have to settle for plain old standard definition.

I am now a gamma-level Thetan

Over the last few days, thanks to me free month of movie rentals from Amazon, I've been watching the Mission Impossible films on HD DVD. Surprising as it may seem, this is the first time I've seen any of them, and I'd be lying if I said I thought they were brilliant. Actually, I quite enjoyed Brian De Palma's Mission Impossible, although the only moment that truly stood out for me was a particularly nail-biting sequence involving everyone's favourite crackpot, Tom Cruise, suspended from the ceiling of a CIA installation and attempting to download a series of files. John Woo's Mission Impossible II, however, was a tedious wreck, in my opinion.

The best of the bunch, surprisingly, was, for me, J.J. Abrams' Mission Impossible III. Okay, so it's essentially just a feature-length episode of Alias, Abrams' show, with a higher budget and Tom Cruise in the Jennifer Garner role, but that in itself is no bad thing, particularly given that I am quite partial to Alias. It also features by far the best high definition transfer of the series - another home run for Paramount, marred only by some compression problems in a couple of scenes. Okay, so in an ideal world Abrams would just have made an Alias feature film, because I'd much rather watch Garner strut her stuff than the intensely annoying Cruise (Garner is able to frown without smirking at the same time, for one thing), but I suppose this is an adequate compromise. I've ordered a copy of the US release, in fact.

Transatlantic Pan

Source: DVD Times

Not long after the specs were discovered for the upcoming UK HD DVD and Blu-ray releases of Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth from Optimum, New Line Cinema have announced their own North American high definition release of the film. Arriving on both HD DVD and Blu-ray on December 26th 2007 (just over a month after its UK counterpart), this edition seems to be the more impressive of the two, boasting a DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 audio track and including an "enhanced visual commentary" that, as far as I can gather, is not being offered on Optimum's release.

I'm glad New Line are releasing this title simultaneously on both formats, after they got pissy about HD DVD's lack of region coding and decided to delay the HD DVD versions of Hairspray and Rush Hour 3 (not that I'm particularly mourning these titles) to give their international distribution partners a chance to release the films worldwide.

Cat People claws its way back on to the schedule

Source: DVD Times

Previously delayed from its original intended release date of September 25th, the HD DVD version of Paul Schrader's Cat People has resurfaced, with a new street date of December 26th.

No explanation has been given for this delay, but the optimist in me hopes that the additional time has been spent on making the transfer as good as possible. My pessimist half, however, mindful of the quality of many of Universal's catalogue HD DVD releases, is somewhat less hopeful.

They even have HD in the Deep South now

Paramount have an extremely impressive track record in the high definition domain, and Black Snake Moan is no exception. I contrast to Warner, who seem to routinely filter pretty much everything, Paramount's attitude to their modern, digital intermediate-sourced masters is to leave the damn thing alone - a most admirable approach. Black Snake Moan is one of those titles that really "pops" in HD, with richly saturated colours and most scenes taking place in broad daylight. It's smooth rather than pin sharp, but this seems to be entirely representative of the film's look.

Black Snake Moan
(Paramount, USA, AVC, 20.8 GB)

DVDs I bought or received in the month of September

• 300 (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• Black Book (R0 UK, Blu-ray)
• Dawn of the Dead (remake) (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• House of 1000 Corpses (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• The Lives of Others (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Silent Hill (R0 Germany, HD DVD)
• Underworld (R0 Germany, HD DVD)
• Waking the Dead: Series 5 (R2 UK, DVD)
• Zodiac (R2 UK, DVD)

Another month with high definition content in a dominating position. I've essentially stopped buying standard definition material unless it (a) stands no chance of being released in HD or (b) wouldn't benefit from being in HD (e.g. TV series shot and/or edited in standard definition). Zodiac, the anomaly, was a free review copy.

Pan's delights

Source: AV Science Forum

Optimum Home Entertainment have unveiled the bonus materials for their upcoming HD DVD and Blu-ray releases of Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, due out in the UK on November 19th. Impressively, especially considering that all of their HD releases so far have been bare bones, it appears that they intend to port over almost everything that was on their 2-disc standard definition DVD release.

- Director's commentary
- Director's prologue (35 secs)
- The Power of the Myth featurette on DVD comics (20 mins)
- El Fauno Y Las Hadas featurette (32 mins)
- The Colour & The Shape featurette (4 mins)
- Director’s notebook (20 mins)
- Storyboard video prologue (26 secs)
- Notebook video prologue (33 secs)
- Storyboard/thumbnail comparisons
- UK theatrical trailer (1 min 06)
- Picture galleries
- Guardian/NFT interview with Guillermo Del Toro (30 mins)
- Where applicable, all have English and Spanish subtitles and English Closed Captions available

As far as I can tell, the "Mercedes Lullaby", "Guillermo Del Toro and the Green Fairy" and "The Melody Echoes the Fairy Tale" featurettes are absent, as is the poster gallery, but everything else seems to be present and correct.

Obviously, these details may be incomplete or unfinalised, and we still don't have any confirmation on the release's technical specs, but this is shaping up to be a very good release. It's likely to appeal to all those in need of an English-friendly HD release, regardless of whether or not they live in the UK, especially with the US distributor, New Line, currently playing sillybuggers over their HD DVD releases.

DVD image comparison: Silent Hill (SD vs. HD)

I'm just about to go out to attend this enrolment meeting at the university, but before I leave, I thought I'd upload my latest standard definition to high definition image comparison. Today, I take a look at the UK Region 2 DVD release of Christophe Gans' Silent Hill, surely the best video game adaptation created to date, and see how it compares against the stunning HD DVD recently released in Germany by Concorde Home Entertainment. It can only end in tears.

Walk this way!

DVD image comparison: Underworld (SD vs. HD)

For my second standard definition to high definition image comparison, I've pitted the R1 USA 2-disc Unrated Extended Cut release of Underworld from Columbia Tristar against the recent German HD DVD release (also of the extended cut) from Concorde Home Entertainment. In terms of image quality, both are towards the upper echelons of their respective formats, so it's interesting to see how they compare. Underworld may not have the razor sharpness of King Kong or Silent Hill, but the HD DVD constitutes a very faithful and natural-looking reproduction of the source materials.

Note that a US Blu-ray release by Sony Pictures, featuring an AVC encode, a PCM 5.1 audio track and most (but not all) of the extras from the 2-disc DVD release, is also available. I haven't seen it so I have no idea how it compares to Concorde's version.

Have a look!

DVD image comparison: Unleashed (SD vs. HD)

I lied! Despite earlier claiming that it would probably be "a couple of days" before any actual standard definition to high definition comparisons were made available on this site, I decided to go all-out and have one ready for this very night. The first ever Whiggles.com SD vs. HD Image Comparison is for Unleashed, looking at the DVD and HD DVD sides of this combo release.

If you head over to the comparison now, you'll probably notice that a couple of things have changed from the days when I only pitted one DVD release against another. For a start, the video, audio and extras ratings (out of 10) have been removed, simply because SD and HD are on completely different playing fields, so an actual side by side numerical comparison would be pointless.

Secondly, for my image roll-overs, I have opted to present a portion of each frame rather than the whole thing. This is for two reasons. One, to save bandwidth (although, as I am allocated a terabyte of the stuff every month, I'm not sure that there's any actual point in this). Two, a full-size HD capture has a resolution of 1920x1080 - I don't know about you, but that's more than my desktop resolution. Therefore, to keep things manageable, and to avoid breaking the site's design, I opted for 720x720 crops. The HD image retains its original resolution, while the SD image is first scaled up to 1920x1080 and then cropped to match its HD counterpart.

With any luck, these changes will be to everyone's satisfaction, and hopefully you'll get something out of this first comparison. Unleashed may not be a title that shows off the HD DVD format to its fullest potential, but it constitutes a massive improvement over its SD counterpart, and hopefully the comparison will make this crystal clear.

Enjoy!

HD cartoon capers

A selection of 1080p animated delights for your viewing pleasure.

Corpse Bride
(Warner, USA, VC-1, 11.6 GB)

Rabbit Hood (on The Adventures of Robin Hood HD DVD)
(Warner, USA, VC-1, 1.08 GB)

Robin Hood Daffy (on The Adventures of Robin Hood HD DVD)
(Warner, USA, VC-1, 926 MB)

Click the images above to view them full size.

Anyone want some full resolution HD DVD screenshots?

At long last, I can now take full resolution 1920x1080 captures of HD DVD titles with no loss in image quality, thanks to Lyris, who figured out a way of accessing the disc contents using a bunch of programs and splitters. This is a fairly time-consuming process, so I'm not going to be able to provide captures of every single title in my collection, but I decided to dig out some of the best-looking ones to give you some idea of what the format is capable of.

King Kong
(Universal, UK, VC-1, 26.7 GB)

Serenity
(Universal, UK, VC-1, 18.3 GB)

Silent Hill
(Concorde, Germany, VC-1, 21.0 GB)

Click the images above to view them full size.

Hopefully, when my laptop arrives at some point later this week, I'll be able to do the same with Blu-ray titles, provided the process doesn't turn out to be too different.

Also, stay tuned for my first ever DVD-to-HD DVD image comparisons! I'm still trying to decide on an appropriate format for presenting them (given that a single high definition capture exceeds the resolution of most people's displays, some changes will obviously have to be made as compared to the current format), so I probably won't be posting anything along these lines for a couple of days, but it's very exciting to finally get to the stage of being able to offer readers of the site a clear demonstration of the massive leap in quality offered by the high definition formats.

Zodiac's great but the DVD ain't

Yesterday, I received a review copy of the R2 UK release of Zodiac, David Fincher's latest film. The short story is that it's a great film, a worthy spiritual successor (of sorts) to Se7en, and you should definitely see it if you haven't already. For the long story, you'll have to wait for my full review for DVD Times, which will hopefully be going up on Sunday, ahead of the DVD's Monday release.

On a side note, it's been a while since I watched a standard definition DVD of a recent film, and I was horrified by just how shoddy this release of Zodiac looks. Maybe I've just been spoiled by high definition, but I was genuinely shocked by the amount of artefacting (mostly in the form of mosquito noise and horrible noise reduction smears) on display, not to mention the total lack of fine detail. I think Lyris (who saw it at the cinema) put it best when he said to me that, with high definition and theatrical screenings, you can tell what's supposed to be in focus because you can see a clear difference in clarity between, say, the actor who is the centre of attention and the background which is of less importance, but, in standard definition, or at least poor quality standard definiton, everything just sort of merges together as a flat, indistinct sea of mush.

Paramount is bringing the director's cut out on HD DVD in the US on January 8th, and you can bet your bottom dollar that I'll be snatching it up and junking the DVD as soon as possible.

Mother of Tears sails into the Bay

Source: Bloody Disgusting

It is being reported that the North American distribution rights for Dario Argento's Mother of Tears are to be jointly picked up by Anchor Bay and the Weinstein Company. What this means in terms of the film's chances of getting a theatrical release are anyone's guess, but let's just say that they're somewhat higher than they were previously. It's also unclear how any potential high definition home video release would work out, given that Anchor Bay is Blu-ray exclusive while the Weinsteins are HD DVD exclusive. Oh, and, naturally, the usual fears have arisen that, given the Weinstein brothers' track record of butchering foreign titles, the film will eventually show up in America in a form decidedly unrepresentative of Argento's artistic intentions.

Whatever happens, though, let's look on the bright side: a semi-major has got involved, which gives the film a better chance of some form of theatrical exhibition than any of Argento's other projects since Opera.

HD DVD debacle

We now have a new HD DVD to add to the HD Image Quality rankings list. Conversely, it's probably the worst film I've ever watched in high definition. It's Aeon Flux, which Lyris bought from DVD Pacific. While we marvelled at the sumptuous transfer, I was first baffled, then downright infuriated, by this shoddy excuse for a movie. Ironically, the end result of watching this live action travesty was that we both decided that Peter Chung's original animated series looked vastly more interesting and that we had to see it at once. Result: Lyris ordered the DVD release of Aeon Flux: The Complete Animated Collection from eBay. There - who ever said that paying money for a dreadful film was always a bad thing?

Then again, I'm one to talk, as I recently indulged in a bit of "buying for the sake of image quality" myself, picking up a copy of the HD DVD/DVD combo release of 300 from Amazon.com. It arrived yesterday, and a cursory glance suggests another magnificent transfer. However, I'd be lying if I said this was normally my sort of thing - I generally don't go in for comic book adaptations, and certainly not ones featuring bare-chested men doing a lot of yelling and fighting each other. There's only so much testosterone I can take. Still, I'll be sitting down to watch it before too long, and we'll see whether or not my initial impressions were correct.

HD DVD review: Silent Hill

Constituting a distinct improvement over the earlier Sony Pictures release in terms of image quality, Concorde Home Entertainment's release of Silent Hill features an amazing transfer and impressive audio. Despite being bare-bones, I highly recommend that fans of the film, or those who are just dying to add another magnificent-looking disc to their HD collections, get their order in immediately.

Just over a year after launching on Blu-ray and receiving much criticism for its image quality, Silent Hill shows up on HD DVD courtesy of German distributor Concorde Home Entertainment. I investigate how this new VC-1 encode compares to Sony's older MPEG-2 release.

It's "we love Germany" day in the Land of Whimsy...

...well, not exactly, but everything I have to say in this post relates to Germany in some way.

First up, yesterday, I received a copy of The Lives of Others on Blu-ray from DVD Pacific. This German film, which won the Best Foreign Language film at the 2006 Academy Awards, is one of the few films I've picked up in high definition as a blind buy (so far, most of the HD DVD and Blu-ray releases I've received without having seen the films themselves beforehand have been free review copies), so I'm hoping the positive word of mouth doesn't turn out to have been hot air.

I've had a brief look at the transfer, and it seems to be good without being exception. It's AVC-encoded and comes on a BD-50, but, while detail is generally pretty good, there is some rather harsh edge enhancement on display, and also the tell-tale signs of noise reduction in the form of sluggish grain patterns. Don't get me wrong, it's by no means a bad transfer, but it certainly disproves the myth doing the rounds in certain circles that everything Sony is putting out these days is solid gold.

Luckily, I am considerably more impressed by the transfers of the German HD DVD releases of Silent Hill and the extended cut of Underworld, both of which arrived from Amazon.de today (huzzah for the Germans and their reputation for efficiency!). Actually, "more impressed" is putting it lightly because, pending a more thorough investigating during the process of watching both titles from beginning to end, both of these should be ending up in the "10/10" category on my HD Image Quality Rankings list (the most recent iteration of which can be viewed here).

Both films are VC1-encoded, and in both cases it turns out that the final releases were extremely accurately represented by the Concorde Home Entertainment promo disc that Lyris brought back from the IFA convention in Berlin. Silent Hill especially is just draw-dropping, having been minted from the same magnificent master that was used for Sony Pictures' 2006 Blu-ray release, but, thanks to the increased efficiency of VC1 over MPEG2, exhibits none of the severe compression artefacts that plagued that release. Lyris has put up a couple of snapshots illustrating just how improved the compression is in the most problematic scenes, and, suffice to say, I urge anyone contemplating picking up this film in HD to abandon any thought of buying Sony's version. Concorde are releasing their titles on both formats, so this improved version is also available to those restricted to Blu-ray.

Finally, Sony comes to HD DVD!

Underworld, meanwhile, doesn't look quite as good, but that, I suspect, has more to do with the look of the film itself than the quality of the master or the encoding. Certainly, I can see no flaws at all that should prevent it from also attaining "10/10" status, and there are some moments in which the details are so pronounced, particularly in close-ups, that they practically leap off the screen. Oh, and I know it's silly, but I did get a kick out of seeing the words "A Sony Pictures Entertainment Company" appearing on an HD DVD title, underneath the Screen Gems logo at the beginning of the film.

Audio-wise, German and English tracks are offered, the German variant in DTS-HD Master Audio, and the English in the lower bit rate DTS-HD Hi-Resoltion format (on Silent Hill, the German track is 6.1 discrete while the English track is plain old 5.1, while on Underworld, both tracks are 5.1). While it's a little disappointing to see preferential treatment given to dubbed versions, it's somewhat moot at the moment given the lack of hardware that can decode the high definition content of the DTS-HD audio codec (instead, current hardware falls back on a legacy DTS 1.5 Mbps stream). In any event, the English tracks on both films sound magnificent, although I'll have to do a comparison between the Dolby Digital track on the Sony Pictures BD of Silent Hill and the DTS-HD variant on the Concorde HD DVD to see just how much of a difference there is. (It's a real shame I don't currently have the means to play the PCM 5.1 track on the BD, thanks to my PS3's lack of analogue outputs and my audio receiver's lack of HDMI support.)

Sprechen Sie Englisch?

As with Warner's HD DVDs and BDs, these titles go straight to the film itself after playing the company logo and the usual copyright warnings. They default to German audio with no subtitles, but a quick press of the Menu button brings up the main menu, allowing you to switch to English audio. Doing so automatically turns on German subtitles, but worry not, for they can easily be disabled via the menu or using the Subtitles button on your remote.

As has been reported elsewhere, there are no extras on either title. In the case of Silent Hill, the same was true of Sony's release, so this can't exactly be considered a downgrade, but for Underworld, Sony's standard definition DVD of the extended edition, plus their upcoming Blu-ray release, are quite feature-packed. Myself, I'm not too bothered as I'll be hanging on to my standard definition copy anyway for the included comic and concept art booklet, but for others not in this situation, the Sony Blu-ray version will probably be a more attractive choice for those who can play it

LA Times: "Warner's next"

Source: Film Talk

I don't make a habit of reporting on every rumour that crops up in the high definition format war, because, frankly, the vast majority of it is complete nonsense. However, this particular article, which comes from the Los Angeles Times, caught my eye, as it quotes "Hollywood insiders" as saying that

[t]he brinkmanship is intensifying. Another major studio, Warner Bros., is being courted by both camps and believed to be mulling over a lucrative offer that could bring such popular titles as "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" into the HD DVD camp, according to Hollywood insiders who requested anonymity because the talks were confidential.

(Full article here.)

Were this to come to pass, it would be huge. It should be no secret that both sides are likely to be actively courting the studios and making very lucrative offers in exchange for exclusivity deals - it's a business, after all - so it stands to reason that there is a hint of truth in the article, whatever its source. After Paramount's shock decision to support only HD DVD, both sides will have upped their game substantially. If Warner is actually actively considering renouncing their neutrality, then I honestly believe the writing could be on the wall for Blu-ray: as one forum poster put it, Warner, despite their neutrality, are basically Blu-ray's biggest supporter. True, many of their releases are HD DVD-only, but they have given a massive number of titles to the Blu camp, and their back catalogue is arguably the most impressive of all the majors.

The gloves are well and truly off. The next few months are going to be very interesting.

PS. Have a look at how the Blu-ray die-hards (or "Smurfs", as they are coming to be known with increasing regularity), are coping with these latest rumours, in this handy collation of posts over at High Def Forum.