BUT BLU-RAY IS EXPENSIVE, ISN'T IT?

ISN'T IT?!

No.

Amazon is running a special: Pixar's Up is priced at 20 bucks for the 4 disc Blu-ray. Ok, so one of the discs is a DVD copy and one of the discs is a digital copy disc, but still. That's 20 bucks for one of the best films of the year.

But wait. There's more. If you buy Pixar's Monsters Inc. along with it for 23 dollars, they knock off 10 bucks. You can pay 33 dollars for Up and Monsters Inc together. Pretty good, right? Averages out to about 16.50 per, which would be a great price even for a DVD of a successful Disney film.

But wait. There's more. There's also a general Disney promotion where buying a third Disney movie of your choice from a list will knock off another 10 dollars from the total. You could get Up, Monster's Inc, and Snow White for a total of 43 dollars (20+23+20-10-10). This is an average price of 14.33, practically unheard of for Disney films this well respected on home video overall, let alone in a high-end HD format.

That's 43 dollars. For three Blu-rays, each of which also happen to include a DVD copy of the movie. For reference, buying each DVD edition would cost $57.50!

Update: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_86017571_1?ie=UTF8&plgroup=2&docId=1000451521&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=right-1&pf_rd_r=1P3Y3D7S2D5XM9CV5C6N&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=499588751&pf_rd_i=193640011

Up + Monster's Inc. + Cars

For 35 dollars and change. That's less than 12 bucks a piece for three Pixar movies. On Blu-ray. Cars doesn't come with a DVD like Up and Monster's Inc., but seriously? Fuck DVD.

New PS3... who cares?

So a new PS3 is coming out. Should be good. Smaller, less electricity, lower price (300 bucks, nice), and even bitstreaming HD audio (not that that matters).

But I don't care. PS3 still lacks exclusive games I care about. Not the 360 actually has it, but I already have a 360 and it's still cheaper.

But the thing that bugs me: they missed their chance for PS2 software emulation. I mean, technically they should be able to do it with a firmware update to the fat model even, but they apparently don't want it. It's terrible. It's one thing for a Super Nintendo to not be compatible with NES cartridges, but once everything is optical discs, there is NO excuse for not having software emulation at the very least. I only own one Gamecube game, but I am so damned grateful the Wii is compatible regardless. It's just asinine to ACTIVELY not have this feature. Yeah, that's right, Sony USED TO have emulation for PS2 in PS3. Older models even had whole chipsets devoted to it. Then it became software emulation. Then that was dropped too.

Retarded.

Oh well, at least PS3s dropping down to 300 should make them more appealing to the general masses, and once a PS3 is in their home, Blu-ray should be able to jam its foot in the door more easily. And as market penetration for the format goes up, that means the studios will finally get off their asses and bring the titles they've been sitting on.

Niche my ass!

http://www.homemediamagazine.com/research/watchmen-blu-ray-strong-showing-charts-16567

Watchmen sold 36% in Blu-ray format during it's first week.

This means that of people who bought Watchmen during it's first week out, MORE THAN one in three persons with the movie got it on Blu-ray. This means that over 1/3 people who own this movie have a Blu-ray player.

Previous record before this for first week was like 18% or something too. Just goes to show what can happen when movies on Blu-ray are priced fairly; Watchmen was available for under 21 dollars at many places. I got my copy from Amazon for $20.50. I think I heard people getting it as low as $19.50... probably those bastards with Fry's near them. I checked, and the closest Fry's to southeast Michigan is located in fucking Illinois. What.

But I digress. People are STILL saying Blu-ray is failing to catch on. How? I can understand saying "I don't think it will replace DVD as mainstream media of choice", but to say it is failing is just totally wrong. I mean, what is the point that those people would consider Blu-ray to be successful? It's already a huge financial success, so that can't be it. Maybe 50% software market share? 50% hardware market share? I don't get it.

I watch the Watchmen

Watchmen is a comic series about superheroes. It is kind of a big deal. They recently made a movie about.

This movie is coming out next week. Because I was excited for it, I looked around to see if I could get one piece of merchandise.

A smiley button with a stylized blood splatter.

Long story short, in the comic, there is a man called the Comedian. He wears a smiley button and he is murdered. When he is killed, the button gets splattered with blood, and this iconic image of the blood splattered smiley face button has become a symbol of sorts for the entire series.

Ok?

So I was looking to find an official button. Not possible. They don't even make it. They make TONS of buttons for Watchmen (appealing to the Hot Topic crowd I suppose), but not a one of them is the iconic blood splattered smiley. What the hell?

Worse, like I said, this icon has become a symbol for the entire series, mostly thanks to it being used as the cover for the paperback collected edition I think. But it's not used in any of the artwork for the movie release. Instead, they have a special edition release with the Doomsday Clock colored yellow FOR NO REASON, and splattered with blood as the smiley button is supposed to be. Basically, they replaced the smiley with the Doomsday Clock (which itself is a noteworthy symbol in the series). Sucks.

Reason: As far as I can guess, it is because the original smiley graphic is copyrighted, and even though Time Warner was willing to pay to use it for the collected edition of the comic, they were not willing to pay to use it for the home video release of the movie. They weren't even willing to pay the case to get the graphic used on any of the MANY buttons they made to coincide with the film's release. Apparently, they never even made any for just the comics release either, but wow. How hard should it be to give the fans a simple button with a yellow smiley face and a small splatter of blood printed on it?

And while I'm babbling about Watchmnen, I'd like to say this: Amazon has it on pre-order for 20.50. New release Blu-ray of a high profile comic adaptation. Just barely north of 20 dollars. And people are STILL complaining about how expensive Blu-ray is compared to DVD. Check again, fool, the DVD of this movie is only a couple dollars less.

35mm is not SD

People scoff at older material released on Blu-ray. Why?

They think that for something to be HD, it needs to have been created in the last decade or so wherein HD has begun its viability. But they ignore film. All movies and many older TV shows were recorded on film.

Film is an analog source. Common sizes for movies and TV are 16mm and 35mm. Some films also appear in larger sizes such as 70mm or IMAX's proprietary 70mm format.

Now, SD TV material is 640x480. HD is 1280x720 or 1920x1080. Care to guess what the digital resolution inherent to film is?

35mm is usually scanned at what is called 4K, which is 4096x3112. In the past, 2K was common, but even 2K is a higher resolution than modern TVs can display (and many people don't even have 1080p sets and are instead content with 720p sets).

The thing that set me off was people questioning why Star Trek The Original Series was being released on Blu-ray and stating flatly that there wasn't a reason for it. Ignoring the obvious things like framerate, progressive display, more accurate color, and more disc capacity, they think that the 35mm masters of the show didn't show enough resolution to be worth displaying at 1080p. Things like this are ridiculous and just make me so mad. It's one thing to say "I don't think it would look that much better and it wouldn't be worth it for me considering the price," but to flatly say that the film isn't resolved enough is just annoying and completely wrong. And it's not even that... people even think old MOVIES don't have enough resolution inherent in the master negatives/interpositives, when in fact, even theatrical prints would look good (i.e., resolved enough) if transferred and encoded on Blu-ray.

I'm not even a fan of Star Trek, but I love what they did here. Full restoration of film masters for TV shows should be more common. Not many shows have gotten it, and Star Trek is the first one to start putting them out in HD for consumers. Kinda surprised, since Seinfeld rescanned their film masters a while back too and they still haven't gotten around to putting them out. Dragon Ball Z has done it too, but again, not released on Blu-ray for consumers yet.

Wolverine or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Prequel

The thing got leaked. I saw it. Was not impressed. Not that I was planning to see it in the theatre anyway, but I really didn't want to after seeing the work print.

Then I heard about the X-men films on Blu-ray. I had been planning on buying them so long as they were reasonably priced, and Best Buy was set to have them in store for 55 bucks on release day. Terrific. I had no qualms about paying that.

Then I heard that the individual releases had e-cash for a ticket to the Wolverine picture... but the box set didn't. "No big deal," I thought to myself. "I didn't even want to see it anyway."

But then I hear that Best Buy is doing a 2 for 35 dollars deal. Not only those 3 X-men films, but more than a few others I had been eyeballing. So I grab the three X-men films and Horton Hears a Who for about 17 bucks each. Each one of the movies comes with e-cash for one of three future Fox releases, most notably here being the Wolverine movie.

So I get a great deal on movies I wanted to buy, and I get to take the family out to see this Wolverine picture. And people say Blu-ray is too expensive. How often are DVDs available for 17 bucks on release day and come with free tickets to a sequel in the theatre? Ok, it's probably not that unusual, but it's still pretty good, especially since these X-men movies are freaking packed with extras.

And anyway, even if the Wolverine movie is just as bad as the workprint, it doesn't cost a thing and the action is top notch regardless. Just disappointing what they did with my homeboy Deadpool.

My addiction

My name is Chris, and I have a problem.

I have an addiction. An addiction to Blu-ray.

Right now, I've got a shelf here with 250+ Blu-rays and DVDs, with somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 of them unwatched yet. The shelf unit is almost totally full.

And I'm seriously contemplating buying more. I've got a cartload on Amazon ready to go with about 50.

Fifty. Even if I was getting these at insane prices averaging 10 bucks each, that'd be 500 bucks. The average price is probably more like 17~18 or so. I'll let you do the math.

At least I can take solace in the fact that I haven't got anything better to spend the cash on. No family dependent on me, no girlfriend to shower with gifts, no drive or direction to further my education, and I get by with minimal living expenses. Wait! This is a good thing?