More Warner BD Titles
Warner Brothers is releasing four BD movies on September 5th: Blazing Saddles, Firewall, Full Metal Jacket, and Lethal Weapon. I just saw Firewall the other day, and it’s not bad. Especially when compared to some of Harrison Ford’s other recent efforts. All these movies have already been released on HD DVD, and are now making their way to Blu-ray.
All titles will be 1080p transfers and have standard DD 5.1 soundtracks. No DD+ or TrueHD hear folks. Firewall will retail for $34.99, while the others have an MSRP of $28.99.
Below is a link to HD Digest’s version of this info. But if I remember correctly, I read somewhere that these movies would be MPEG2 encoded. Why are studios insisting on using MPEG2? Warner Brothers already has the VC-1 encoded version of these movies, because they were used for the HD DVD! Why don’t they use them here?
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August 21st, 2006 at 8:35 am
Regarding the use of MPEG2 versus the “new generation” formats…
MPEG2 is superior at higher bit rates than either of the other formats _using present tools_. Its also much quicker to author, again due to the speed of conversion. MPEG2 is a mature technology compared to h.264 or VC1.
I personally think at the bit rates that blu-ray will allow, particularly in reference to eventual dual layer titles, that MPEG2 will always be an option for the best quality. I’ve yet to see any proof that h.264 or VC1 is better than MPEG2 above 10mbps, and certainly not at the high bit rates you could afford to use on a dual layer BD disk.