BR Movies Priced

[Raitei]

Well, blu-ray movies may be closer than we think and at a good price too.
Engadget ran an artical commenting on amazons pre-order prices for a BR Movie

If you pre-ordered your Toshiba HD-DVD player then don’t forget to throw down for some flix, kid. Amazon.com now has HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc titles available for pre-order too. Of the 60 or so titles listed, at the moment only "Chronos" actually shows any details calling for a drop date of 14 March at $22.49 in both BD and HD-DVD formats (hey, wasn't Blu-ray supposed to cost more?). And in case you’re wondering, the same title is available on straight-up DVD for $9.98 giving you an idea of what that hi-def fix is gonna cost ya.

[Thanks, Eric]


While this isnt a definate thing, it probably is close
Engadget : http://www.engadget.com/2006/01/30/amazon-offers-blu-ray-and-hd-dvd-titles-for-pre-order/
Amazon : http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00004ZESM/ref=imdbdpov_dvd_2/002-6088046-7969656?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=130

[venomv]

If they release new ones at $22.29 that's not to bad, considering most DVD's start at $20ish last I looked.

[indiekid4]

Not bad at all. DVD's range from 15 bucks to 25 now days. We should start seeing DVD sales go down dramatically in the next couple months or so.

[cliffbo]

what were people saying $50! just like the players themselves aint gonna be as expensive as you would believe

[Leedogg]

do the movies (blu-ray) that amazon have listed. Have that DVD layer? If so I'm going to start buying blu-ray. That way, I don't have to buy two different discs for the same movie when the PS3 comes out.

[Viper]

Rather odd for a first listed HD DVD/Blu Ray title. I mean this film came out almost 2 decades ago. Not exactly filmed in HD so you get no real big benefit of being on superior formats and you're paying almost 10 bucks more.

Just very odd showing for being the first listed title for both formats which being of the same price is also odd and we all known that pre-orders sale prices are not always the final price.


Just asking you guys to take this waith a grain of salt.

[Handycrap101]

PS3 just got that much more appealing to me. Nice find, +rep.

[indiekid4]

Rather odd for a first listed HD DVD/Blu Ray title. I mean this film came out almost 2 decades ago. Not exactly filmed in HD so you get no real big benefit of being on superior formats and you're paying almost 10 bucks more.

Just very odd showing for being the first listed title for both formats which being of the same price is also odd and we all known that pre-orders sale prices are not always the final price.


Just asking you guys to take this waith a grain of salt.

That did come to mind when I saw it, but still...it's an interesting find nonetheless. I'd bet that more 'up-to-date' movies will be a little more expensive, but not much.

[Fillibuster]

Rather odd for a first listed HD DVD/Blu Ray title. I mean this film came out almost 2 decades ago. Not exactly filmed in HD so you get no real big benefit of being on superior formats and you're paying almost 10 bucks more.

I wish I had more time on my hands, as I would look through the threads to find this quote, but I seem to remember seeing someone mention the fact that movies have always been filmed in much higher quality than TVs allowed to be displayed. So maybe there's still untapped potential in those 20 year old movies. Just mentioning it, nothing major. And I also agree that this price should be taken with a grain of salt.

[Viper]

I doubt the film was saved in a higher resolution. Many times the original film itself is lost, stolen, destroyed, etc and updates to newer formats are done off regular theater film or vhs.

Yes, they've almost always been recorded in a format higher than what can be displayed simply to maintain the quality but HD filming is relatively new to the cinema world and lower budget filming is still limited even today much les 20 years ago.

[Fillibuster]

I doubt the film was saved in a higher resolution. Many times the original film itself is lost, stolen, destroyed, etc and updates to newer formats are done off regular theater film or vhs.

Yes, they've almost always been recorded in a format higher than what can be displayed simply to maintain the quality but HD filming is relatively new to the cinema world and lower budget filming is still limited even today much les 20 years ago.

Thanks for clearing it up

[frosty]

Actually Viper, if it is clear enough to fill a movie theater screen and still maintain a decent resolution, it is more than enough quality for 1080p. Consider HD was developed for home theater sized screens, so squishing it down to 100' or less will produce plenty of detail to show off blu-ray's capabilities. Sure there may be scratches and such on the film, but the quality will most likley be higher than SD or HD can handle.

[Viper]

Seriously? Well, technically anything can be displayed in any resolution but will the quality be as pristine as if it were recorded with HD in mind? I'm just noting that thatrical releases now look much better than 20 years ago in terms of image sharpness and clarity. I figured displayign that in HD would simply make all the nasty artifacts just that much mroe glaring and very non-HD quality like.

[frosty]

Well, of course if it was filmed digitally, it will look better than a film transfer, but film would take much more than 2 million pixels to accuratly capture digitally. A lot of the new cinema HD cameras and projectors are using 2k x 4k technology, which is twice that of 1080p.

[woundingchaney]

I have little doubt that we can expect to pay more for hd dvd and blu ray movies, although I think Sony will follow suit with MS and 60 dollars for titles will probably be the norm (as in games will not raise in prices due to the use of blu ray disks).

[Illmatic]

I think that price is pretty decent, i'd be happy to pay that for HD movies, for now anyways ;)

But i'd expect new/recent movies to be priced a fair bit higher than that considering that's a pretty old movie...

[Sephiroth_VII]

um. i'd justlike to inform you guys that the first commercial HD-projectors for cinema's were only realesed a few years ago. I know this, as my uncle is a top-guy in Demarks leading cinema, and they only got digital HD-projektors in 2003.

[Helgunn]

Not bad at all. DVD's range from 15 bucks to 25 now days. We should start seeing DVD sales go down dramatically in the next couple months or so.
hahaha, you're kidding... right? They've still yet to stop making VHS tapes... you think DVD will just disappear... over night? Give me a break.

[Helgunn]

I have little doubt that we can expect to pay more for hd dvd and blu ray movies, although I think Sony will follow suit with MS and 60 dollars for titles will probably be the norm (as in games will not raise in prices due to the use of blu ray disks).
Arrrgh! It isn't Microsoft whose charging $60 for the games!

MICROSOFT IS STILL CHARING FIFTY!

[Fats]

Well, I've noticed a few X360 games selling for £50, which is $88. This is generally the norm for new hardware on the market, it was the same story with the PS1.

On the subject of Blu-Ray, I expect newer titles to be somewhat more expensive for a while. But, as usual this will start to decrease over a period of time.

[Helios]

I wish I had more time on my hands, as I would look through the threads to find this quote, but I seem to remember seeing someone mention the fact that movies have always been filmed in much higher quality than TVs allowed to be displayed. So maybe there's still untapped potential in those 20 year old movies. Just mentioning it, nothing major. And I also agree that this price should be taken with a grain of salt.

Yeah, I said that.

I doubt the film was saved in a higher resolution. Many times the original film itself is lost, stolen, destroyed, etc and updates to newer formats are done off regular theater film or vhs.

Movies have been filmed in 35mm film since the early 1900's(invented in 1889). A typical 35mm shot is equal to a 3900x2600 pixel image file. Just for comparison a 1080p HD set(the highest commercial format availible) gives 1920 x 1080 resolution.

Basically what im saying is that if the raw film is availible, pretty much every film from the 20th century could be an HD film. Like I said in another thread, the only reason HD has just started becoming a thing is because prior to now we didnt have the technology to display the film on our tv's in its "natural" way.

[frosty]

Exactly. That is why Sony's new 2000x4000 pixel projectors are so popular, they can emulate film pixel for pixel (er, grain for pixel, whatever). Of course, you now enter a whole new debate, which is better. Either way, the exiting thing is that Blu-Ray will be able to offer the storage capacity (with it's 100 GB discs) to store hours of video (depending on codec used) in theater quality on a single disc once there are more display devices that are capable of hitting those resolutions. By the time these end up in the home, Blu-Ray will be ready. The only question is if a new standard of connector would have to be made, HDMI won't cut it at those resolutions, but, you can do like dell does with their new 4MP LCD monitor, hookup dual HDMI with each carrying half the image (maybe why PS3 has it???).

[frosty]

That brings me to another idea, if RSX can render at 1080p (x2) for gameplay, does that mean that when the highER definition sets come out (2k x 4k res) RSX will be able to render the games at 2000x4000 (x1)? Does being able to render 2 1080p screens mean it can also handle twice the res on one screen? If so, maybe Sony wasn't full of it when they said they plan on PS3 lasting 10 years.

[woundingchaney]

Well, I've noticed a few X360 games selling for £50, which is $88. This is generally the norm for new hardware on the market, it was the same story with the PS1.

On the subject of Blu-Ray, I expect newer titles to be somewhat more expensive for a while. But, as usual this will start to decrease over a period of time.


Are you sure 50 = 88, because if so then they are definetely raising the price of games in your area. I have yet to see a 360 game above 59.99.

[Infernal]

That brings me to another idea, if RSX can render at 1080p (x2) for gameplay, does that mean that when the highER definition sets come out (2k x 4k res) RSX will be able to render the games at 2000x4000 (x1)? Does being able to render 2 1080p screens mean it can also handle twice the res on one screen? If so, maybe Sony wasn't full of it when they said they plan on PS3 lasting 10 years.
Well technically you would need 4 1080p outputs to equal 1 2k x 4k output. But I guess they could do something like that, then again I dont expect most games to output at 1080p, nevermind a higher resolution than that.

[frosty]

no you would not. 1920x1080 - roughly 2k x 1k. double that, 4k x 2k

[Infernal]

no you would not. 1920x1080 - roughly 2k x 1k. double that, 4k x 2k
2000 times 1000 = 2 million pixels
2000 times 4000 = 8 million pixels
Or 4 times the pixels...

[frosty]

yeh, my bad, my math is off today. And there would be no way to get 4 outputs out of ps3, so unless an adapter of some sort is released, it wouldn't be possible.

[venomv]

Arrrgh! It isn't Microsoft whose charging $60 for the games!

MICROSOFT IS STILL CHARING FIFTY!

Last I looked they were $60 not 50.

[Helgunn]

Last I looked they were $60 not 50.
Well, you looked at third party titles.

[Viper]

All currently released titles published by MS have an MSRP of $49.99.

[cpiasminc]

Movies have been filmed in 35mm film since the early 1900's(invented in 1889). A typical 35mm shot is equal to a 3900x2600 pixel image file. Just for comparison a 1080p HD set(the highest commercial format availible) gives 1920 x 1080 resolution.

Basically what im saying is that if the raw film is availible, pretty much every film from the 20th century could be an HD film. Like I said in another thread, the only reason HD has just started becoming a thing is because prior to now we didnt have the technology to display the film on our tv's in its "natural" way.
That's not quite true. First of all, as far as the resolution of film, yes, it's generally very high, but it is higher now than it was in the early 20th century, mostly due to improvements in the chemical refinement process and use of different salts to avoid reaction bleeding (old 35mm film probably simply used poorly purified/refined silver bromide). Even though the physical "pixels" within the film were always pretty small, the reaction rates were much more random back then, and pixels would bleed into other pixels lowering the effective resolution.

More than just the film, you cannot forget the optics. There were never optics back in the old days that could provide such clear focus down to details as fine as what HD provides. Without it, you can basically say that even if the film was high resolution, the images exposed onto them are blurrier than single-pixel details, or even dozens-of-pixel details.

And that's not even taking into account the decay that inherently happens over the years. A lot of old films, even if you painstakingly remaster them, aren't even going stand up to the resolution of regular DVD. The backlog of films that really trully have HD-level content doesn't go back very far at all.

[Viper]

Thank you for making sense of what I was trying to express.

[frosty]

I agree with you there, you won't get higher res from the wizard of oz's film than hdtv can handle, but more recent films (t2, maybe) would most likley benefit from a higher res than 1080

[Viper]

What I was trying to get was that listed title is a 80's low budget film. T2 was a very high budget film and it's filming quality and preservation most likey far superior than that of an 80's low budget.


I just picture it looking worse as all the details of the low quality of film, etc are now more apparent where as back then the lower resolution helped blur them out some. Anti-aliasing in video games may not be a perfect example of that but it's similar to what I'm picturing.

[Fillibuster]

Yeah, I said that.



Movies have been filmed in 35mm film since the early 1900's(invented in 1889). A typical 35mm shot is equal to a 3900x2600 pixel image file. Just for comparison a 1080p HD set(the highest commercial format availible) gives 1920 x 1080 resolution.

I was hoping I wasn't crazy

[sif]

Are you sure 50 = 88, because if so then they are definetely raising the price of games in your area. I have yet to see a 360 game above 59.99.

No he is right. all X2 games are £50 (including tax) in the UK, according to XE that is $89. Even if you take off tax it is £43, which converts to ~$76. Games in the UK and Europe in general are ridiculously overpriced, the excuse being that games need to be made to handle english, french, italian, german and spanish.

[Raitei]

Are you sure 50 = 88, because if so then they are definetely raising the price of games in your area. I have yet to see a 360 game above 59.99.

Yeah UK gamers haven't got the cheapest gaming. new releases for new consoles can be expected around £50 ($88) whereas a new game on an old console (PS2) is £35-40($65-72)

[woundingchaney]

Yeah UK gamers haven't got the cheapest gaming. new releases for new consoles can be expected around £50 ($88) whereas a new game on an old console (PS2) is £35-40($65-72)


That is madness (cant believe I hadnt heard this before), I cant help but feel as if gamers in the UK are being raped.

[venomv]

That is because they are, but it's not so much they want to charge more, it's that they know how much pople are willing to spend, and they will price as such.

[Raitei]

well if you think thats bad, our consoles are worse (i think). I imported my psp so saved a bit
but over here we get charged £179 for the psp (rrp, value pack). I took that value to bloomberg and....

179 BRITISH POUND (GBP) = 318.5484 US DOLLAR (USD)

[venomv]

Well accually that's a bit cheaper then the games using the $72 price your games cost 144% as much as the US cost, and that PSP was 127%. Still getting ripped off, but not as bad.

[cpiasminc]

At the very least they're charging you £179 instead of 1:1 like Microsoft was doing with the Xbox. In that instance, you had the whole $199 in the US and £199 in the UK.

[Raitei]

this is why im hoping for non region coded ps3 games... sot hat way i can have my ps3 earlier.. and not get charged the large

[sif]

Those psp prices include tax, unlike the American values - take off 17.5% VAT and then the difference is only around $15.