Re: Did Blu-ray score a goal in own net with BD+?

Considering how bad FF2 was maybe they're doing people a favor. LOL.

Jason your points are very valid. As for Fox knowing or not knowning if the disk would work or not dosent matter though. Right now the best thing for Fox and the Bluray camp is to not say anything and not draw attention to them selves. The Bluray camp has had to much negitive publicity in the last few weeks they dont need to add to it. The best thing that can happen is they get the firmware update out as fast as possible. Before the consumers get annoyed.

As for the extras is that what we are paying for correct me if I am wrong and someone probably will arent the old movies just being up scaled and put onto disk. The older films where not filmed in hd so with out the extras there is really nothing to justify the cost. You might as well by a dvd player that up converts to 1080p and by a standard DVD..

I am just curious to find more early adopters who are completely frustrated by the crap that Sony has sent our way. I bought a PS3 on launch, with promise of games and great movies. I have waited close to a year for any of these promises to come true, and now it just seems like my whole year was in vain. I bought the PS3 in hopes of supposed launch game Lair and 4 month away Heavenly Sword, as well as the advertisements showing Spiderman 1 & 2 on BD. I soon found out that HD-DVD LOOKED BETTER ON MY 133" SCREEN, due to Sony using the ancient Mpeg formatting, and when the games I wanted so badly were finally released in Sept, they were so disappointing (12 hrs of gameplay for H.S. and Lair - meh) that I have yet to own a single game. Now Sony continues to screw the early adopter, both on stand alones and on the PS3. Two price drops in one year? I owned a first gen LD, first gen DVD as well as a first gen SVHS and I have never felt so violated for being that support out of the gate. The early stand alones can't work with BD-J, firmware updates are lacking on anything other than PS3s and the latest debacle has only the PS3 able to handle yet another sony propietary BD+ security encryption mechanism for anti-piracy. This means the people who spent 1000+ are now sitting on drink coasters instead of BD players, as they won't even play BD+. This is nuts, but I would like to get an email chain started, hopefully followed by a website and maybe even some paid advertising against all this forceful, decietful propaganda that has left so many of us out to dry. You can email me at jahosive@yahoo.com. I will send out weekly updates letting people know how many have signed up, and actions that can be taken. I would also like to find others that are willing to help (my main reason for not already setting up a website). I am sick and tired of being lied to, and hopefully some others are too.

jackfrost,

I think in the interest of being completely up front with the consumers who already bought FF2 (or those who are thinking about it) is the best policy for Fox. A complete mea culpa, throwing themselves on the mercy of the court (of public opinion).

"Know what happened? We were excited about the BD+ ability for the disc and even though we noticed issues with it through the production process, we had been working with Samsung and LG (and whoever else) to put a firmware update together since the problem was found. We were assured by our partners the update would be ready ahead of the disc's street date. It wasn't. We either had the option of withholding the release until a later time or putting a disc with clear problems on the street. We decided to continue with the planned Fantastic Four launch and fix the problems as they came up."

If I'm not mistaken, this is the first BD+ disc on the market. As great as it would have been for everything to go smoothly, how much actually GOES smoothly with a new technology or versions of technology?

Jason

"The older films where not filmed in hd...." --Jackfrost

Well, in fairness, "older films" were filmed on film stock, and it isn't known as "high definition" as we use the term today. Older films (and most of today's films) were shot on photographic film, which when transferred into the digital domain take upwards of four or five thousand horizontal scan lines to do them justice (so today's digital "high definition" photograpahy, even the industry's new 2K standard, has quite a ways to go to capture all the purity of good, old-fashioned photographic film--which is why most filmmakers continue to use cameras with film stock rather than digital cameras).

Today, the term "high definition" can mean anything in the digital domain that uses at least 720 horizontal scan lines to reproduce. Therefore, "older films" are of a much higher resolution (when transferred to the digital domain) than newer digitally shot films, which are done at the mere 2K.

What is supposed to happen is that studios transfer their photographic films to masters at 4 - 5,000 lines and then downscale them to 1080 lines for HD DVD and Blu-ray and 480 lines for standard-def DVD.

At the moment, a few filmmakers are, indeed, shooting their movies digitally in HD (with digital rather than regular cameras using film stock), but, as I say, they are shooting at 2K, a resolution that still doesn't match good photographic film and that still needs to be downscaled to 1080 or 480 for home viewing.

John

---

[Post edited by John J. Puccio on Oct 4, 2007 - CDT 3:01 PM]

JJ79:

The question here is. Why BD+?

Thank you, Henning, I did get us a little off subject.

But the question may not entirely be BD+. That's a matter for each studio to decide. The question is why Fox apparently didn't test out the new copy-protected discs on a variety of different players before releasing them to the public. I mean, it's not like there are hundreds of different BD players out there. There are a relative handful of Blu-ray players from just a few manufacturers.

When a computer programmer designs a program, he tries it out on a number of different combinations of equipment to be sure that it will play on the majority of home systems. Didn't Fox try out their test discs (check discs) on anything but Sony players to see if they would work?

John

Henning, if I understand right, why does FF2 need to have BD+ is the question.

I thought that's what Fox was waiting for: really good copy protection and the like. Without BD+, would they have ever gotten back into releasing on hi def?

Jason

It sounds like Fox probably doesn't want to release their properties except with BD+. They probably had some angst because it was part of the standard specs for so long without actually being supported by the players. There was some rumor that they were going to hold off on releasing the FF2 disks until the problems had been worked out (I assume that meant until the hardware folks sent out drivers).

My suspicion is that they became impatient when they realized that their revenue was at the mercy of R&D cycle of outside corporations. Given the alternative, they just released and let it be Samsung's problem. Or so they thought.

However, its Fox that gets as much of a black eye out of this as Samsung. I have seen websites that are just advising against buying Fox disks until this is sorted out. That has to drive them nuts. Especially since they were following "the rules" when they released the disk.

I wonder if they feel burned enough by this it makes them reevaluate their committment to the BD camp? (Probably not since they are so concerned about DRM -- HD DVD may not present a viable alternative in that regard).

I don't see why they can't just rely on good old fashioned prosecution when their copyrights are infringed upon!

We've sat through how many hours of our lives being forced to view that warning on standard DVDs...just have faith in the honest consumer and go after the dishonest ones with legal action. It's not that hard to figure out.

I've licensed every piece of software I have, and I've paid for all the music and movies I have. Why should I have to suffer because of Fox's paranioa? Oh wait a minute...I don't! I have an HD DVD player. )

Seriously...I'm not going to buy into the blu-ray thing, period. For many reason beyond this latest mess. It [still] just isn't a good thing.