MGM announces 4th-quarter Blu-ray releases

MGM, now under the arm of Fox and not Sony -- although they are following Sony and releasing these discs with MPEG-2 instead of MPEG-4 AVC -- has announced their next two waves of Blu-ray releases, also targeted towards early adopters and Playstation 3 owners. Usual Supects (day-and-date with the special edition DVD) and Windtalkers are slated for November 28, followed by Rocky (day-and-date with the special edition DVD) and Bulletproof Monk. What they do share with Fox's 8 movie releases is a $39.98 MSRP, which we should remind you is higher than we expect the discs to actually retail for but in this case, more than we expect due to their being catalog releases without exclusive features to speak of. They are all HDMV mastered with DTS HD Master Lossless soundtracks and "pop-up" menus. The BDA wasn't joking when they said they would have big announcements today, they are keying their strategy this fall around the Playstation 3 but we'll be happy if they can provide the quality movies we've been waiting for from Blu-ray.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 31st 2006 5:30PM]

Holy Smokes. If they drop a $500 BD player on us I might just have to open the wallet and spend a bit. Glad to know there's another Usual Suspects and Rocky coming and I haven't purchased these movies in DVD yet.

[akadennis Posted Aug 31st 2006 8:52PM]

stupid question but im gonna ask it anyway. what is HDMV?

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 31st 2006 9:26PM]

Dennis - I had to look it up myself earlier today, check the Fox post for my explanation, basically it just means the base Blu-ray authoring, no BD-J features. It's got a few advantages over regular DVD menus but not that much.

HDMV = High Definition Movie mode

A good breakdown is available here: http://tinyurl.com/mj3m9

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 1st 2006 2:48AM]

Thanks for the link and explanation, Richard.

[akadennis Posted Sep 1st 2006 7:13AM]

Thank you as well Richard :-)