I feel like a kid in some sort of a store…
Well the week has seen some surprises, concrete or not for both camps. First and foremost, the 2.0 Firmware for the Toshiba HD player is out now. There has been some glowing praise, not only for the firmware (which now allows TruHD), but for the continuing consumer support. Bill Hunt at The Digital Bits was the first to really publicly comment on the job Toshiba (and the HD camp is doing), and while as an HD owner I can agree with it, one also has to remembe… that HD did have a couple month head start on things, we’ll see how they prepare for the release of some of the newer (read: probably better) Blu-Ray players in the coming months. While I haven’t had the chance to download it yet, I will be doing so soon and promptly throwing in Constantine to check it out. So the question for the dear reader is would you like to see revamped scores on the available discs with the TruHD soundtrack?
The Blu-Ray camp’s news is a little closer to full fruition as well. There is some news (and rumors) of not only some of the Warner discs adopting the Microsoft codec for playback (which would allow for some more disc space to be freed up), but also the anticipated 50GB Blu-Ray discs may appear on some titles as soon as the end of the year. Whether this happens or not (and how it will look on a screen) remain to be seen, but it seems like the Blu-boys are taking some positive steps.
Release news has been fairly light this week, with The Break-Up being announced as a day and date release for October 17 and Click for the same situation, except for one week earlier and on Blu-Ray. Monster House will come to Blu-Ray on 10/24, which should be interesting, considering it’s an all-CG release. Paramount will be releasing their first wave of Blu discs on 9/26, including Tomb Raider, Four Brothers, Sleepy Hollow and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Rattle and Hum, Aeon Flux (a particular fave among some HD viewers) and The Italian Job will be out on 10/10, extras presumably will be identical to the HD and SD releases. There isn’t much to brag about for new release discs this week, as the Lion’s Gate releases from last week (The Devil’s Rejects, Stargate, Stir of Echoes and Total Recall) come out this week after being postponed from last week.
Until next week, high definers, keep your brightness set low and your resolution set high!
