Highly Defined

So who knows how Harry Potter ended?

The big disc news this week is New Line’s announcement that they’ll be coming out with next-gen titles, even if the first title is the current musical of Hairspray. Lord of the Rings, here we come? Aside from that, the biggest disc release news appears to be related to discs that don’t have street dates attached to them yet. Warner says that there will be a box set of the first five Harry Potter films on HD DVD and Blu-ray, and there’s even pricing f…
Read More

Hey, guess who showed up on time?

Yes, you guessed it, DirecTV showed up on time Saturday, installed my MPEG-4 dish and receiver (well, to be more exact, they just did the former), so now when the ESPNs, Discoverys and History Channels of the world all get into HD (which should be occurred starting in September), I’ll be ready to enjoy millions and millions of high definition broadcasts like I should.

Anyway, moving onto news that doesn’t pertain to me, Samsung appears to be on the verge of releas…
Read More

Happy belated fireworks day for everyone in the US, happy belated Canada day to everyone up north, and all that jazz. And my thanks to all for indulging me last week about my gripes with DirecTV. As I lube up the ole’ bunghole and prepare to get screwed out of another service call, I celebrate the news, notes and announcements of the past week’s high definition forum.

The big news this week is that Samsung started to leak out some more news about their dual format player, including a release date sometime i…
Read More

Read on about a minor gripe with a major satellite provider.

I’m going to skip the usual news about what comes out this week because it’s The Untouchables, The Patriot and very little else, and tell you a story about how I, as a loyal DirecTV customer, have been trying to upgrade my equipment.

On/about 5/29, I set up an equipment upgrade appointment from the 3 LNB H10 setup to the 5 LNB H20, so I can get the new HD channels running through MPEG-4. I set up the appointment for 6/16 be…
Read More

Shouldn’t you be out at the beach right now?

I don’t know about you, but I burn easily, so I can’t spend as much time at the pool as others, so I get to watch movies, and I watched Ocean’s Thirteen at a theater that just opened down the road from me. The theater itself is pretty nice, the film delivered what it’s supposed to do, which is be fun, so you can’t ask for too much more I guess. Overall, there really isn’t that much to pore over, other than surveys which reiterate what everyone already know…
Read More

I’ve got enough tiki torches, guava juice and poi to last awhile.

Well, I’m still trying to catch up on things on East Coast time, even as things in Hawaiian Time are still dark out as of this writing, not to mention just so damn nice out. Anyway, moving on to the news, which is, well, pretty bland, since all of the next gen released equipment is just about to come out or has come out. Blu-ray buyers do have reason to celebrate though, as Blockbuster has announced Blu titles in their stores for carrying. On…
Read More

And now for a little change of pace this week, here’s a list of my Top Ten War Movies in honor of Memorial Day. Everyone should never forget…with the inclusion of these into your collection.

I figured what the hell, let me attempt to dive into my own list, and attempt to do some justice to a hotly debated movie genre…war movies. The ability of fighting forces across the world to hurt people and break things has evolved over the years, and so have the war movies, as many have done with the dramatic death in …
Read More

Hopefully the next generation format’s week to put in Thunderdome can bear some real fruit.

Well for the sake of relevance, Tuesday is THE week to be a supporter of the next generation formats. On the HD-DVD side, the Matrix films see their debut from Warner, with the extras from the Ultimate Matrix Collection for those who want them, and IMEs on each of the films. Meanwhile, Blu-ray buyers get to see both Pirates of the Caribbean films on two-disc editions, with Blu-ray exclusive content, and…
Read More

This space here for rent for a small fee.

Not to harp on one particular subject, but it appears that any real substantiated news of the week focuses more on the hardware that the software. Onkyo is starting to roll out their new receivers, the ones that support HDMI 1.3. And late last week, Pioneer said that their Elite Models for this year will carry it as well, so to finally get a taste of things to come will be a welcome one. The other news turned out to be nothing more than an unsubstantiated rumor, as …
Read More

And the number of Canadian teams left in the playoffs for Canada’s title is down to one.

Well what can I say, things are in their summer quietness, with very little to discuss. As this particular writer will be joining everyone else on vacation in several weeks, I can tell you it’ll be nice to go to Hawaii and tear myself away from the TV and high def players. General news doesn’t offer too much, other than Universal finally responding to their issues with Children of Men and The Good Shepherd…
Read More

And how did you spend YOUR NFL Draft weekend?

This seems to be a week where things just aren’t happening news wise (granted, the $299 HD-DVD player remark was clarified to be a little vaguer this week, but that’s about it), but there’s some fun things on the disc release front, most of it for Blu-Ray fans. Sony pimps out The Patriot, Wild Things and Flatliners on 7/3. Lion’s Gate puts Season Two of Weeds out on 7/24, and Waiting comes out one week prior. Warner will be rel…
Read More

Apologies to all last week for the postponement of last week’s column. As one who has a personal interest in the activities surrounding Virginia Tech, I had a lot more on my plate to digest. Anyway, onward and upward in the next generation news and opinion.

Several big things have happened over the course of the last couple of weeks, the first being Samsung’s announcement of their own hybrid player. Like the current LG player, it will play both formats, unlike the LG player, it will support HDi, which is go…
Read More

Sorry guys, in between starting a new job today and the news ongoing at Virginia Tech, I’m busy trying to find out what’s going on at a school I’m very familiar with. Back with more news and updates next week.

Happy Easter, with eggs, and bunnies, and Jesus, and all that.

OK, so your friendly neighborhood format neutral buyer decided to pick up a title he already had on HD-DVD just to do some comparisons, but also to cover my bases in the event that one format suddenly tanks. So when I got Superman Returns, aside from not having a lossless track, the picture seems a little bit on the blandish side. In the interest of full disclosure, I haven’t seen the HD version in awhile, but seriously, I hope that there…
Read More

And another week remains quiet on the western next-gen front.

Well, HD-DVD seems to be firing back when it comes to their lack of releases in the first quarter of the year. The problem seems to be though that not many releases are new, and the equipment price cuts that have been previously reported elsewhere were rehashed here. So on the impressive scale, it’s a light rock in the ocean. But still, it’s nice to see them doing SOMETHING. European buyers will be seeing a version of the Sony BDP coming out this…
Read More

Breaking the Blu cherry and all still remains well. I hope you’ve enjoyed my first two Blu reviews for the site. Rest assured, everything is always a work in progress, and we’re coming along rather nicely, don’t you think?

The big news for the week has to be the announcement of The Matrix trilogy arriving to HD-DVD shelves on 5/22, with a BD release sometime down the road. The common assumption for the BD delay appears to be the lack of BD-J interactivity right now, which would also explain why Ba…
Read More

P>The first full week of being format neutral, and all appears to be well.

Well, that pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it? I picked up Casino Royale, Layer Cake and Black Hawk Down, and all seems to be pretty good. All of them having PCM soundtracks doesn’t hurt either. I’ve also grabbed Motorstorm and Resistance Fall of Man recently, so the gaming and movie split is about 50-50 right now, on top of everything else I’ve been doing. The reasoning for those three titles, aside f…
Read More

Happy March 13th (and a very special one at that)!

Well, your humble reviewer has gone through quiet a bit in the last several days. I’ll try to make it as brief as possible; work sucks ass. Let me count the ways; I came in at 1:30 in the morning once on a day I wasn’t working, I helped my boss repel some REALLY explicit propositions by one of his employees when we were in New York City on business, I get some medical attention to him when he has a stroke on ANOTHER trip to New York, and what do I get as re…
Read More

When last I left you, the viewer, I was in the midst of frantically typing “Yo” so that I could be a participant of the chat with Warner Brothers Home Video, to ask about any coming next-gen titles from the studio. What we found out was fairly illuminating. The Warner hits L.A. Confidential, Poltergeist, Deliverance and the Kenneth Branagh version of Hamlet will all appear on HD-DVD and Blu-ray this year, with Heat and The Music Man to come out in 2008. They also reconfirmed …
Read More

Well, the news late today about Sony deciding to come into the affordably priced standalone market by introducing a Blu-Ray player of their own that will come out in the spring/early summer. The BDP-S300 will retail for $600 and unlike the first gen that’s $300 more, will actually include CD playback. So now that they’re making their strides towards affordable hardware (stop with the PS3 argument) with more price drops to come, it’ll be interesting to see when, how much and how often the cheaper HD-DVD equipment does…
Read More

Welcome one and all to the circus that is the format war. Well, let’s skip past the part where Sony will be putting copies of Casino Royale into their PS3s for the European launch, along with Fox’s announcement of Eragon on Blu-Ray for 3/20, along with rumors of Jaws on HD-DVD not dying anytime soon and Disney’s rumored releases of the two Pirates of the Caribbean and Sin City movies, and tackle a shot fired across the bow in the online community.

I like Bill Hunt and read…
Read More