Paramount officially announces M:i:III simultaneous Blu-ray, HD DVD & DVD release

We may be able to forgive Paramount for the relatively small number of high-def discs they plan to release this year as they have announced what appears to be only the second tri-format day-and-date release on Blu-ray, HD DVD & DVD, after The Lake House. Mission: Impossible III will come on HD DVD with all the special features we told you about on the same day as the standard-def DVD release, but it will also come out on Blu-ray complete with high-def extras, DD+ soundtracks and all...except for the HD DVD-exclusive picture-in-picture enhanced commentary from star Tom Cruise and director J.J. Abrams. The MSRP is set at $19.99 for the standard DVD, $24.99 for the collectors edition, and $29.99 for both HD DVD and Blu-ray. Blu-ray fans finally have a blockbuster to look forward to this winter, unfortunately they're still coming up short on the extras, we have to wonder if the home release of Superman Returns will suffer the same cuts.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 11th 2006 7:52PM]

I guess I'll be picking up HD DVDs until the BDA can get 50gb discs and MPEG-4 working.

If this trend of better picture and more extras continues, I may have to revise my "Blu-ray will win because of studio support" theory.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 12th 2006 4:13AM]

Indie software vendor Eagle Vision says it will become the first music video company to embrace both the new High Definition formats with a simultaneous release on HD DVD and Blu-ray of the live jazz concert recording Pat Metheny Group-The Way Up Live.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 12th 2006 5:18AM]

RE: #1

Could somebody tell me the differences between the VC-1 and MPEG4 codecs from a technical point of view... and say (honestly) which one is better?

Is MPEG4 the sort of codec that will need the 50Gb disks to look good?

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 12th 2006 8:11AM]

Steve, both VC-1 and MPEG-4 are good codecs. At 50GB of storage space there are few exceptions in movie titles that will need that much storage space to house the movie using either of those two codecs. MPEG-2 will need much more (~2x) the storage space for same resolution and PQ reproduction compared to VC-1/MPEG-4.

Also, it greatly depends on the studio's desires for how the titles are mastered and not just which codec they use. What I would like to know is how many people have experimented with authoring drives (both Blu-ray and HD DVD) in the consumer world to create test disks to effectively test playback hardware.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 12th 2006 10:01AM]

Picture-in-picture commentary???!!!! Just when i think extra features can't get good enough! XD