@FreeRange

Well, I'm not sure if it's "misworded" or just one of several variations of the phrase. Other slight variations I've heard are "close to the vest" "keeping your cards close to your chest," "playing your cards close to the vest/chest," but they all mean the same thing of course, just that someone isn't being completely open about what they are doing. Try Googling it without quotes around it and you'll find a ton more.

It may be a mismatch, or Nolan may have done it on purpose to keep making slight references to playing cards with the whole Joker thing, but I doubt it. It's really not my place to say.

@ FreeRange

You've never heard the expression "play things close to the chest?" It's not a new expression. It's actually an extremely common idiom that came from playing cards. You're obviously free to be bothered by whatever you want about a movie, that just seems like a ridiculous nitpick since it's based on your lack of knowledge of something and not the film inventing an expression.

Sure, not every person who owns a PS3 ran out and bought this last week. I didn't, but not because I don't love the movie. Christmas is a week away, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person expecting to get it as a gift this year. I'll be curious to see what the post-holiday numbers are.

I've been looking at the Panasonic SW-5582.

As far as this model goes, 6x is a nice step up, but I am surprised at the lack of playback.

Well, technically the reviewers they are specifically speaking of didn't
love it the first time they reviewed it. In fact they gave it a
pretty mediocre score. So this time it's more like "Well... now that
we've had some time to think about it... " or "Well, in light of
recent developments and changes to the system."

That being said... I am glad I got a 60 GB model before they scrapped
production of them. I swapped out the hard drive on mine for a 300 GB
one so what I was really interested in was built in Wi-Fi and
Backwards Comp. though hardware, not the emulation software the 80 GB
uses. I never owned a PS2 so this gave me access to a huge library of
games in addition to all new features on the PS3.

The BT/IR thing has never been an issue for me, but I can see why it
would annoy people who have a single universal remote setup. There is
that cheap adapter to fix this, but I've never used it so I can't
speak for how good it works.

Yep, I'm the same way. I have only upgraded the movies I watch a lot or ones I had on DVD that were relatively crappy transfers.

I have pretty much stopped buying DVDs though. I know it's not the same, but when DVD came out I was the same way with my VHS collection, I only bought new releases and upgraded movies that I watched really frequently until the cost came down.

Well, I do not own a 360, so I cannot speak from experience, but I've heard a lot of good things about using it to rent movies and playback streaming video from your PC network. Not to mention, you can get an HD-DVD drive for it for super-cheap now. Sure, the format is dead, but you can get some really cheap add-ons to your collection and it's not as though the drive is useless besides HD-playback.

As for video comparison, 360/PS3 are a wash from everything I've seen. Even with side-by-side video comparisons you may only notice a few dropped frames or minor artifacting here and there depending on the game, and even then they will likely not be noticable at all when playing at home. The Wii offers nothing comparable for video playback.

My Wii and PS3 are hooked up to a 50" Sony SXRD and admittedly both look great, but the PS3 looks much much better. The Wii maxes out at 480p.

@ J. Goodwin... my friends lists and messaging system work fine, but you're right, the other features on non-existant right now.

So far, I have no major complaints about my PS3. The only minor ones I have is the slow download times for firmware updates and the lack of DLC for cross-platform games. If you don't have one now, I would recommend the 80 GB if you can find it as it still offers backwards compatiability through software emulation. I was lucky and got a launch system (60GB, though I removed the HDD and replaced it with a 300GB one) The Wi-Fi setup works great, the online service is free (360 is what? $50 a year? no biggie, but free is nice), you can use it as media hub and stream video from your PC, Linux-compatible, and built in 2.0 Blu-Ray playback. Not a bad system at all.

Well, I have no interest in this bundle whatsoever so if I am wrong here someone please correct me, but from what I can tell there is absolutely nothing different about the system itself other than the color...

With that being the case... anyone who really wants a gun-metal system and controller can just have ColorWarePC color theirs for $125, or two dozen other other colors for that matter. I think I'll e-mail this guy and let him know that.

@ JDS

I'm looking forward to V for Vendetta. I have not really started "upgrading" my DVD collection except for Memento, but V for Vendetta is one movie I watch enough to make it worth the upgrade.

I remember when they pulled Blades of Glory off the shelves because of Paramount jumping ship. I just bought it on DVD instead (it's not like that movie would really benefit from being in high-def anyway) but I remember copies of it on Blu-Ray were being sold on eBay for absurd prices. I'd like to see the people who paid $200 for a copy of that movie now.

I'll probably pass on the rest of those though. The National Treasure set and Bee Movie will probably sell well, but they're not the type of movies I would watch over and over.

Honestly, I wouldn't expect LOTR until the 2008 Holiday season at the earliest. It seemed pretty obvious they were waiting for one format to emerge the victor in the format war before they even started working on the HD versions. Now that's it's over and they only have to worry about making a Blu-Ray version, I imagine they're taking their time making something special if the collectors editions of the DVDs are any indication. They know it will sell like crazy when it is released regadless of when.

I'm not a betting person, but I would put my money on there being a huge (and expensive) collectors set out just in time for the holidays this year that will sell like crazy regardless of the price.

Yeah, these are definitely collector's items for movie buffs. With rare exception all of these movies are typically released in "standard" editions for the mass market. It's pretty much like any "special collector's gift set" they put out there for film, they are only made and designed for avid collectors and die hard fans of those particular movies, but it's nice to see they are charging the exact same for the Blu versions as they are the DVDs.

I only ever bought one DVD from their collection (rented others), but the allure is pretty obvious, they really do go the extra mile to ensure the quality is well above any "standard" edition.