It is starting to look like I might have to make my first Blu Raspberry retraction and potential apology to Warner - though it is an apology that I am more than happy to make!

Bill Hunt over that The Digital Bits has noted in todays ‘early update’ that his contacts at Warner are saying that the press information stating that Blow would be Dolby Digital only are in fact incorrect - and that both Blow and L.A. Confidential will be released on BD50 discs with Dolby TrueHD audio.

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I must admit I was a little excited when I read that New Line is going to release Blow on Blu-ray Disc on the increasingly busy release date of September 23rd.

My excitement was a little short lived when I discovered that Warner appears to have taken over the New Line catalogue for real - and have infected New Line with their Dolby Digital sound tracks.

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Well, it is that time of week again - the time I gripe about some new release on DVD that we will not get to see in High Definition.

This week’s Blu Raspberry goes to Anchor Bay / Starz for their upcoming release of Heathers on DVD only, which ships July 1st.

While we appreciate the efforts that Starz has put into their Blu-ray efforts to date, surely Heathers is one of their more popular titles - the kind of thing that people would want to revisit in High Definition.

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You know, with the hustle and bustle of format wars and arguing over which codecs are better, etc., sometimes I think we forget about what gets us excited about disc formats in the first place - the movies.

For myself, the enjoyment of sitting down and watching a movie is the source of my interest in disc formats, video/audio compression and displays.

Recently I watched a couple of Blu-ray movies that, to be honest, I didn’t have high expectations for. In both of these cases I was pleasantly surprised by what the movie held. I am not one for writing disc reviews, but I thought I would share with you my thoughts on these two movies, both of which were presented beautifully, for both image and sound.

The first title is Surf’s Up. With all of the studios trying to make money out of the computer animated feature genre, and with some of these movies being less than great, I didn’t have very high expectations of this title from Sony Pictures Animation. My interest was piqued after seeing a presentation at CES where they discussed some of the camera move tracking they used to maintain the documentary style used for segments of the movie.

All technology aside though, what makes this a great little movie is the story and the characters. While Shia LaBeouf performed well as Cody, Jeff Bridges (The Dude!) as Big Z and Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) as Chicken Joe stole the show in my opinion. The story was not super original but it was certainly entertaining, and the colours and animation were great. All in all, I would recommend putting it in your Netflix queue.

The second movie I enjoyed was Mr. Brooks. I had not heard very much about this movie and received it as a gift. We only chose to watch it since we had a small crowd, where almost every movie suggested had been seen by at least someone in the room - except for this one.

Mr. Brooks is a thriller that is a bit twisty and turny, though does not try to be too clever. It took a little while to work out where things were going, but once in motion it was fun to try and predict what would happen next or what the final outcome would be. The director made great use of the sound track and visuals to drive his ideas home to the viewer - one of the higher impact sound tracks I have heard of late.

I am not a huge fan of Kevin Costner but I have to admit that the title role was a great part for him - nice to see him doing something a little more sinister. Dane Cook and Demi Moore also handled their roles well - William Hurt was excellent. Overall I enjoyed the film a lot more than I expected and recommend checking it out.

A good one for your Netflix queue - or if you are looking to buy, Mr. Brooks is also currently has a 43% discount at Amazon.

This week marks the release of my favourite film ever, Diva, on a super special edition DVD. It has been through a number of lackluster releases in the past but this time Lions Gate has released it as part of their Meridian Collection. So what is the problem you ask? I would think it is obvious - where the hell is my Blu-ray version? And a Blu-ray for Red Violin would be nice too while you are at it.

I think it is fair to say that serious movie lovers tend to be on the leading edge of home theater and many are yearning for releases like this on Blu-ray. As part of the ‘Cinema du Look’ movement, this film is visually stunning to say the least. If it is worth doing right, it must surely be worth doing in High Definition! And not Toshiba ‘we can make DVDs look like HD DVD’ HD - real HD.

When we see news that Criterion is going to release on Blu-ray, and that Eureka Entertainment will bring at least one of their Masters of Cinema series to Blu-ray, you would think that Lions Gate, a strong early adopter of Blu-ray, would bring us their Meridian Collection on Blu-ray, alongside their other ‘classic’ releases like Witless Protection and Delta Farce.

So this week the Raspberry award goes to Lions Gate Home Entertainment.

These days I see a lot of postings and rumblings about how, now that Blu-ray has defeated HD DVD, there is no sign of rapid price drops or promotions that it would need if it is to also dominate standard DVD. The aspect of these posts that amazes me somewhat is that they seem to come from a position of surprise or disdain.

These kinds of posts inspired me to write a commentary article pointing out what I feel are the obvious reasons behind this apparent lack of drive to dominance in the sell through video market. You can check out the article here or from the link in the side bar under Featured Articles.

Have fun with it, and if you have anything to add or want to disagree, feel free to comment below…

Every now and then we see forum posts like this touting the idea that somehow since Toshiba decided that HD DVD was no longer viable, they will come out with some kind of super upconverter that can make DVD look as good as real HD media.

The reality is that if Toshiba really thought that DVD could look as good as HD Media they would never have bothered with HD DVD in the first place. You can’t get something for nothing. No amount of special sauce can make road kill as good as Sirloin.

Sure there are people that will think that upconverted SD is good enough - just like there are people that think that McDonalds is good enough. But there will always be a difference.

For now the SD upconversion is the cheaper alternative - there will be a time when that is no longer the case. Upconverted SD is not the future.

I am sure that once Toshiba gets over their pride we will see Blu-ray players with the Toshiba name. After all they got over being on the wrong side of the VHS-Beta war, as did Sony.

It seems that recently the pricing of Blu-ray Discs have come under scrutiny.

James over at Format War Central posted this piece asking where all the Buy One Get One Free sales have gone. A fair question perhaps though to me it seems obvious that these sales were largely a tool to maintain or gain market share for specific ‘important’ events or dates, and a way to maintain a higher market share overall in the format war. While HD DVD focused on the pricing of the hardware, Blu-ray followed the strategy of using the media pricing to maintain market share.

Now that the format war is over, the studios need to work on what the price point of this next generation media should be. Video Business published this article about the price point of Blu-ray Discs.

The pricing of the Blu-ray media now walks the fine line where the discs sales will grow while profits can be maintained. Catalogue titles often cost twice as much as the DVDs, combined with the fact that many people already own the DVD and need to decide if it is worth paying that much for a Blu-ray ‘upgrade’.

While DVD retail pricing is pretty consistent, pricing can be all over the place, with Sony pricing their special editions well over $40 and Fox pricing their catalogue releases the same as their new releases. The only thing that is clear, now that HD DVD is not a threat, is that the studios are not interested in a ‘race to the bottom’ with respect to pricing.

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