Warner to finally bring V for Vendetta to Blu-ray
By Ben Drawbaugh 
posted Mar 31st 2008 2:16PM
posted Mar 31st 2008 2:16PM
Although Warner was officially format neutral for the duration of the format war, for the most part, the big W leaned Red. The most obvious sign of Red bias was the twenty some HD DVD exclusives that included some of Warner's hottest titles. Recently we learned that Batman Begins will be released on Blu in July, and now it seems that V for Vendetta will hit first in May -- the twentieth to be exact. As much as we love both of these movies, the one we really can't wait for is still MIA. So how about it Warner, when exactly can we watch the one in HD on Blu-ray? [Disclosure: Engadget is part of the Time Warner family]
This release had serious problems on HD-DVD. You could see where someone used the "burn" tool to lighten up the characters against dark backgrounds in many scenes. HD didn't do this release many favors.
This article says it uses the VC-1 codec which could mean WB will just shove the existing encode onto Blu Ray and be done with it. If so that would be disappointing seeing as they are no longer constrained to 30Gb any more.
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=1159
This release looked and sounded excellent on HD DVD - using a higher bitrate encode wouldn't necessarily yield better results.
And since Warner has constantly shown it will take the laziest path (porting 640 kb DD tracks from BD over into HD DVD's DD+ track, porting HD DVD's encodes into BD), this doesn't surprise me.
I have it on HD DVD and thought it looked pretty damn good.
Funny. I've been enjoying those movies in hd for quite some time now. And people wonder why someone would support HD DVD. Hope you blu-ies enjoyed your Resident Evil Apocalypse or whatever it is you people watch.
Granted, HDDVD had some nice movies...Batman Begins, V for Vendetta, Bourne trilogy, Matrix trilogy. However once you purchased those, the well pretty much dried up for good HDDVD-only movies.
Come on, Chad, we HD DVD lovers had Battlestar Galactica!
:)
I wish Universal would go ahead and start publishing those on BD - I actually had to buy Season 3 on *gasp* regular DVD the other day...*shudder*
At this point, I think the smart move for BSG on BD would be to just wait for the 4th season to finish, then do a nice box set of "the whole story" including the mini, Razor, etc.. in one package. Of course they should redo the S1 encode and do the rest properly, include all the content that's been on the DVDs and web, etc.
Could be a hell of a set if they'd do it right.
The "well dried up" for good Warner HD-DVD exclusives? ...hmm, scratches head.
How about -
CONSTANTINE
CASABLANCA
GRAND PRIX
FORBIDDEN PLANET
ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD
MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY
...etc
-LOL- (at your comment)
So frikin what if it's released on Blu-ray. I have a Blu-ray player and I don't give a damn if its released or not. Who cares!
Shockingly, some people have different movie tastes than you. If you ever wonder why you're the only one alone in a theater watching a movie, that's why :)
I will state the first rule of blogs again: IF THOU ARE NOT INTERESTED, THOU SHALT NOT CLICK THE LINK. AND THOU CERTAINLY SHALT NOT COMMENT ABOUT JUST HOW UNINTERESTED YOU ARE IN THE ARTICLE.
Bitter much ? :)
As a side note, "The One" is rumored by Insiders to arrive around Xmas 08.
Great movie for a great format! lol.
BTW that mask reminds me of the anonymous protest against the Company of Scientology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Anonymous_Scientology_9_by_David_Shankbone.JPG
At least they didn't make everyone wait for the fifth of November.
lol
i think, other than pip support, the reason they were holding out on realeasing this film is because they know it will sell a lot and they want sales of blu ray players to be really high or at least as high as hd dvd players to release them. i dont know if they caught up already but i think they would maximize profits by waiting as long as they can. just my opinion.