Fox announces first Blu-ray releases: 8 titles, BD-J, MPEG-4 AVC, 50GB
Fox has announced they are jumping into the Blu-ray market in a big way this fall, with eight titles scheduled and the debut of many of the advanced features we've been expecting to see from Blu-ray since launch. Slated to launch just ahead of the Playstion 3 in Japan November 10th followed by North America, Europe and Australia release on November 14th, all of the movies will carry an MSRP of $39.98 and appear to be well worth it. Also announced today is the day-and-date with the DVD release of Ice Age: The Meltdown on Blu-ray November 21st. The rundown of the titles and their features is as follows:- Behind Enemy Lines: BD-J authored, DTS HD Lossless Master Audio and MPEG-4 compression. Includes several director commentaries and HD trailers for coming BD releases.
- Fantastic Four: DTS HD Lossless Master Audio, HD Trailers, HDMV authored.
- Kingdom of Heaven (Directors Cut): 50GB dual-layer Blu-ray disc to accommodate the 3 hour 42 minute movie DTS HD Master Lossless Audio, HDMV authored.
- Kiss of the Dragon: Director commentaries, HDMV authored, HD Trailers.
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: BD-J authored, MPEG-4 AVC compression, special features including search index by actor/character/location and more, a first-person shooter game, up to 99 bookmarks, pop up animated trivia game and HD trailers.
- The Omen (666): DTS HD Lossless Master Audio, director commentaries plus BD-exclusive pop-up trivia track The Devils Footnotes exploring the history of 666.
- Speed: BD-J authored, DTS HD Lossless Master Audio, 56 category search index, Speed: Take Down Java game with six play modes and HD trailers.
- The Transporter: DTS HD Lossless Master Audio, HDMV authored, director commentaries, HD trailers.
Filed under: Programming, Industry
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Natiahs @ Aug 31st 2006 11:04AM
Nice. If PS3 supports dual-layer disks, lossless audio, and BD-J features, it will exceed my expectations as a Blu-Ray player.
Wish the title selection was a litter better, though.
JET
PS: How weird is it that Corpse Bride was on the original HD-DVD demo disk but has only been announced for release on Blu-Ray?
jay @ Aug 31st 2006 11:06AM
Holy wow. I was hoping the (far superior) director's cut of "Kingdom of Heaven" was going to come out on Blu-ray some day. But as an initial release in AVC with lossless sound on a DL disc?
Awesome.
Dennis @ Aug 31st 2006 11:32AM
It will be interesting to see if using the MPEG4 Codec will surpass HDDVD in video quality. I doubt it since their still using single layer 25GB for most of these releases with the exception of Kingdom of Heaven. I have to say I will believe all this when I see it. It does not good though
Dennis @ Aug 31st 2006 11:34AM
Edit for Post 3 - I meant to end it by saying - It does sound good though.
hmurchison @ Aug 31st 2006 11:36AM
These are ok movies. Speed was a hit but like over a decade ago. Kingdom of Heaven was decent but it's a bit long. I'm interested to see what Fox can do with BD-J and how many DL movies they can ship. All in all a plus for the "beleaguered" BDA camp.
Brenden @ Aug 31st 2006 11:46AM
Its about time they started doing blu-ray right.
Even though i own a very nice two disc extended special edition of Kingdom of Heaven already, i will definitely pick this one up as well, and maybe eBay the other, or hand it off to my sister, who seems to like Orlando Bloom an aweful lot for some reason.
Gora @ Aug 31st 2006 11:50AM
Wow nice!
Steve J @ Aug 31st 2006 12:21PM
Good news indeed. Hopefully there will be news of more 50Gb MPEG4 disks in the near future. Still, it's not enough for me to justify getting a standalone player just yet. Just hope PS3 plays nicely with these disks.
As for the titles themselves... I like 'Behind Enemy Lines' but would only rent the others... except League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (which is crap).
John Sununu @ Aug 31st 2006 12:43PM
Why is it that Blu-ray can't use VC-1, like HD DVD, when it's consistently rated the best compression algorithm, better than MPEG4, or h.264. I just don't get it.
ILJG @ Aug 31st 2006 1:23PM
I'm glad the advanced audio codecs and MPEG4 are finally being used, as well as BD-J. I'm afraid I REALLY disagree with the article when it states, though, that they're worth the $40 MSRP.
HD-DVD can already have long movies with great PQ (via VC-1), interactivity (iHD), and lossless audio (DTS TrueHD) without being that expensive. You shouldn't have to pay more for BD to get the equivalent quality of HD-DVD, they should be the same price.
If the PQ and AQ are at the same level, it makes no sense at all for one format to charge more for software and twice as much for the hardware.
ILJG @ Aug 31st 2006 1:25PM
Correction to above, I meant to say "Dolby TrueHD"
apoc06 @ Aug 31st 2006 2:51PM
Blu-ray content providers are hesitant to use VC-1 since MS owns the licensing rights to it. MS is the main supporter of HD-DVD. So they would only be paying thier competitor.
Jellodyne @ Aug 31st 2006 4:00PM
Nice. Much better treatment than most of these crappy movies deserve. Fantastic Four and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I'm lookin' at you.
jsn @ Aug 31st 2006 4:21PM
Kingdom of heaven is the only title in the bunch worth watching and there's no way in hell I'd pay 40 bucks for it. Hell I've watched it in HD twice in the last month on HBO and could record it in HD if it were worthy....
This whole format war is pissing me off. I'm not jumping in line for either one. But where the hell does these guys get off raising the near two decade old "standard price" for a movie to $40 just so you can get higher res, slightly improved audio and a bunch of extras that most people never watch anyway. ughh...
I'd go down on a long man for a quality dual format player. Then I would spend the next month shitting in envelopes and mailing them to the key backers of both formats in protest of their senseless dividing of the market for the sake of being able to MAYBE say "the winnars are we!".
It'd be one thing if there were actual good movies on both formats (HDDVD does have the lead here, by a mile). But 94.234265% of these movies are pure worthless shit.
John Sununu @ Aug 31st 2006 4:46PM
"Blu-ray content providers are hesitant to use VC-1 since MS owns the licensing rights to it"
Not entirely correct.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VC-1
"Although widely considered to be Microsoft's product, there are actually 15 other companies in the VC-1 patent pool (as of April 2006)."
WiFiSpy @ Aug 31st 2006 4:48PM
I own 5 of the movies on D-theater....
I do give props to Fox for using DTS MA, but that really sucks for people with the Samsung BD player.
John Sununu @ Aug 31st 2006 4:51PM
And I should add that a lot of those companies are Blu-ray companies themselves. So that still doesn't explain why VC-1 is not being used for Blu-ray, even though it's very successful on HD-DVD.
Kevin M. @ Aug 31st 2006 10:18PM
Okay, this is sounding good. I understand why ALL of those are MPEG-4, because either they are on a 25 gb or REALLY LONG. Now, we will see more of Blu-ray's potential (but not yet all of it).
What I really can't wait to see is a relatively short movie encoded in MPEG-2 on 50 GB. Because MPEG-4 and VC-1 aren't "better" (nor is MPEG-2) but they work differently. The increase in quality is not even with the bit rate. Eventually, the increase becomes neglegible, and the "less efficient" codec (MPEG-2) actually surpasses the "more efficient" one (MPEG-4 or VC-1). And yes, this takeover actually occurs in the realm of Blu-ray's ability!
Let's just hope that dual-layer firmware upgrade happens real soon, or you'll be seeing Samsung BD players all over Ebay.
Juice @ Sep 5th 2006 7:51PM
This is an ok release, Kingdom of Heaven, and behind enemy lines should be good movies to show off blu ray capability. The whole dual layer thing is pointless, 25GB is fine for a movie encoded in VC-1 or Mpeg-4, unless its really long like kingdom of heaven or they want to put on alot of extras. Its nice to see the DTSHD also, as this is also more effiecient than the full LPCM that has been on sony discs. Now in terms of price, if these movies actually sell for $40, then I wouldnt buy one of them. Blu ray just isnt marketing itself well, $1000 for a player and $40 per movie, not worth the jump from the Denon 3910 I already own. This is the reason, I already own the HDDVD player, at $450 I get HD and it does very well with standard DVDs, almost as well as my Denon.