High-Def Movies

[nfpgasmask]

Bart, bought my Oppo direct.
That particular o e is not region hacked, but there are now hacks available from 3rd parties for it. Oppo is famous for it's region free DVD players, but were not allowed to for the Blu player in the licenseing agreement from the Blu Ray Autority Consortium.....
Best,

So that would explain the price tags like this I keep seeing?

http://cgi.ebay.com/BRAND-NEW-OPPO-B...item414bfb5bb4

Are you saying that these players will be region free but yet they WILL NOT work with a non-US Blu-ray disc? Or are you just saying Oppo is "not allowed" to make it work and people have to do it on their own?

Bart

[snowtrooper1966]

So that would explain the price tags like this I keep seeing?

http://cgi.ebay.com/BRAND-NEW-OPPO-B...item414bfb5bb4

Are you saying that these players will be region free but yet they WILL NOT work with a non-US Blu-ray disc? Or are you just saying Oppo is "not allowed" to make it work and people have to do it on their own?

Bart

Oppo BDP-83 direct from Oppo: $499

Oppo was not allowed to implimemt the region hack. Can be done by 3rd parry.
Best,

[Cobrajet]

So, the question still remains. Which is better??? Beta or VHS?!?

[snowtrooper1966]

So, the question still remains. Which is better??? Beta or VHS?!?

Beta;-)

[Triathlete]

So, the question still remains. Which is better??? Beta or VHS?!?

Laser Disc! The original HD.

[nfpgasmask]

I sat through G.I.Joe: The Rise of Cobra the other day. OMFG what a travesty.

Here's what I don't understand:

1) Who the hell cares about the 1980s G.I. Joe line of toys, comics and cartoons?

2) The answer: The fans of course (I.E. the kids that played with the toys, read the comics, and watched the cartoons) and likely no one else!

3) Why does Hollywood make movies?

4) The answer: To make money.

5) Who in their right mind thought that it would be a good idea to make a G.I.Joe movie that is the cinematic equivalent of kicking all the fans in the nuts?

And here's a movie where all the nonsense going on I could deal with because it is a movie based on a really cheesey comic/cartoon/toy for kids. So I can handle the "nanomites" and some of the other crazy stuff.

What I can't handle however, is the damn near complete abandonment of the original characters. Save for Snake Eyes which looked pretty damn good and almost identical to the original toy design, everyone else in the film was completely RUINED. Storm Shadow looked like a J-rocker. The Baroness DOES NOT become a "good guy". And Cobra Commander? My nuts STILL hurt from that one.

Bart

[blacksambo]

So that would explain the price tags like this I keep seeing?

http://cgi.ebay.com/BRAND-NEW-OPPO-B...item414bfb5bb4

Are you saying that these players will be region free but yet they WILL NOT work with a non-US Blu-ray disc? Or are you just saying Oppo is "not allowed" to make it work and people have to do it on their own?

Bart

Just FYI Blu-ray is a dead format like HD-DVD, which has not been produced for three years. Blu-ray will not be produced any further by such companies as Warner Brothers. Content strait from the internet will superscede all the previous formats. Stay tuned.......

[technocoy]

Just FYI Blu-ray is a dead format like HD-DVD, which has not been produced for three years. Blu-ray will not be produced any further by such companies as Warner Brothers. Content strait from the internet will superscede all the previous formats. Stay tuned.......

I'm going to disagree with that on three premises:

A: in technology you could make that argument about any new format. so, of course it's dead at some point, and will probably have a shorter life over all than dvd because of downloads EVENTUALLY catching up. that doesn't mean it's not worth investing in. that day could be in two years or ten years from now.

B: as a nerdy videophile and someone who uses both downloads and physical media there is no way in hell that downloads will best bluray in the near future. those that say that it will are in one of two camps. the folks who don't care about image quality as much, and those who have great broadband connections.

the far superior image and HD soundtrack on bluray is massive in size. when I rip one of my blurays to disk it's in the range of 19-25GB. Thats huge. even once i've run a very nice compression on it, to keep the blacks from crushing it's in the 10-12 range. Most people don't have the kind of connection speeds where they will regularly endure those download times. It will still be quite a few years before fast broadband is ubiquitous enough to kill physical media altogether. it may NEVER be good enough simply because there are a lot of people who truly want to have the physical media and the books, cases etc that go along with that experience. That also means having storage space enough for all those movies and backing that up. with the mess DRM is in at the moment and the price of a TB of data, you can bet that it will be several more years before storage is cheap enough to store entire libraries of hi def media. sure there is streaming, but that's not only inferior in compression, but again, there are always those folks who prefer an offline/owned copy of their stuff.

To say (not that you have) that the latest 1080p streaming image is anywhere NEAR bluray in quality would evidence that you would be in the camp that doesn't care as much about the image quality. Those same people have also been completely content with the crappy *** signal coming over digital cable. granted, that's probably a majority, but a manufacturer isn't going to kill physical distribution simply because 70 percent of people are fine with downloads.

C: It will be quite some time still before society has gotten to the point where everyone is not only comfortable using the systems needed for downloading and watching, but also to a point where extremely hi speed internet is completely ubiquitous. Until the some hundreds of thousands of people who still live in areas of the country with limited or no broadband internet catch up there will always be physical distribution. That's not even taking into account the rest of the world.

Also, one more point. Directors and editors are ALL film snobs. They will always insist on their films being available in the best formats possible at the time. So, until digital distribution offers image/sounds equivalent to bluray, they will push for copies on physical media.

That doesn't even take into account the fact that even this year at CES there were grumblings of some studios beginning to shoot with 4k cameras and output to that format. There were several TV sets that display in that range. So, as soon as "hi def" becomes "extreme def" there goes another huge leap in file size.

Sorry for the long post, I just hate to see anyone miss out on a great and quality experience for sake of always fearing the next thing. People were saying DVDs were dead 8 years ago, and here they are still selling like hotcakes. You can save money by waiting a few months after a release and catching it on amazon for half price. Also, some films really don't get a tremendous boost from being shown at 1080p since they are grainier, etc. I just get a 720p downloaded version of those films. I only spend money on bluray when it's that film that you want in you collection. The ones you watch year after year.

[Bulldoggie]

Also, some films really don't get a tremendous boost from being shown at 1080p since they are grainier, etc. I just get a 720p downloaded version of those films. I only spend money on bluray when it's that film that you want in your collection. The ones you watch year after year.

x2 I have hundreds of compressed movies using the iTunes 720 standard.
I use external Terra-byte Drives, DVI to HDMI, great index system for finding your movies, unscratched by your kids.
My Brother has the Bluray carousel 400 disc player, I can recommend that as a good way to go.
I have movies on Bluray, like "Avitar", "Fifth Element" ect..
I agree the Pixar movies like Wall-E are worth the Bluray experience.
Most movies are shot so poorly and ignore color altogether! DVD quality is fine for most titles. I say that, not that I don't care about quality, but because it's true.
Movies like; "Ben Hur" and "The Ten Commandments" are the kind of titles I look for. Technicolor! but try and find them.