[Jim Di Griz]

Originally Posted by Karlin

In Play's 2fer £18 Once Upon a Time In America

I added The Colour Purple as the 2nd title.

Jubbly

Isnt it a bit odd having a pre-order title in the the two for £18? Dont remember seeing that before.

Anyway...Ive sold my DVD in anticipation and got about 7-8 quid for it!

[Todd Tomorrow]

Originally Posted by Jim Di Griz

Isnt it a bit odd having a pre-order title in the the two for £18? Dont remember seeing that before.

Anyway...Ive sold my DVD in anticipation and got about 7-8 quid for it!

Play has been doing it for ages. I remember pre-ordering Hellraiser and Magnolia on 2 for £18 deals months before they came out.

[Jim Di Griz]

Originally Posted by Todd Tomorrow

Play has been doing it for ages. I remember pre-ordering Hellraiser and Magnolia on 2 for £18 deals months before they came out.

Another one for after Xmas then....

Must hold out...

[Paku]

Originally Posted by Todd Tomorrow

Play has been doing it for ages. I remember pre-ordering Hellraiser and Magnolia on 2 for £18 deals months before they came out.

I wonder, can you use that if you only want one title from the list? Order the one you want plus one pre-order title, then when the first one ships, cancel the pre-order?

[gixxerman]

Originally Posted by Karlin

In Play's 2fer £18 Once Upon a Time In America

Thanks for that, I cancelled my Amazon pre-order (£12-ish) and ordered OUTIA & 'Dances With Wolves'.

Bit of a marathon set!

[Todd Tomorrow]

Originally Posted by Paku

I wonder, can you use that if you only want one title from the list? Order the one you want plus one pre-order title, then when the first one ships, cancel the pre-order?

No idea. Maybe you can't cancel your pre-order.

I'd like to take advantage of the 2 for £18 deal for OUATIA, but can't find a second title I'd shell out £9 for.

[golden phoenix]

Originally Posted by Todd Tomorrow

No idea. Maybe you can't cancel your pre-order.

I'd like to take advantage of the 2 for £18 deal for OUATIA, but can't find a second title I'd shell out £9 for.

my second title is cool hand luke which ive been meaning to pick up for a while! do you get billed the full £18 at once or £9..and then another £9 when Once upon a time is in stock.i wonder?

[Paku]

Originally Posted by golden phoenix

my second title is cool hand luke which ive been meaning to pick up for a while! do you get billed the full £18 at once or £9..and then another £9 when Once upon a time is in stock.i wonder?

They still ship and charge all titles separately.

[bosque]

According to DVD Beaver, this is an MPEG encode. The only other MPEG Blu-Ray I have is of the US release of Hannibal in the Lecter trilogy set and that does not look great, to be put it mildly. Don't know why Warner have chosen this HD encode so far into the shelf-life of the now well-established Blu-Ray format.

[featherhall]

Disappointing but did we expect much more ? The only reason to get this for £9 is so it's only on the one disc and for the sound.
Certainly wouldn't pay more than that

[rebel_scum]

Er, it's an AVC encoding, which is also known as MPEG 4. Christ on a bike, people.

[featherhall]

Originally Posted by rebel_scum

Er, it's an AVC encoding, which is also known as MPEG 4. Christ on a bike, people.

I was referring to the review on beaver in general, which is not bad but certainly not great

[rebel_scum]

If the low bitrate is an indication of this length of movie, with DTS-HD-MA plus extras, then I'd rather they split the eventual LOTR extended editions over two discs.

Although I hope I'm wrong and it's just Warner being incompetent at setting optimal codec settings.

Their business practices boggle my mind sometimes, for instance, putting two full versions of The Town on a BD-50, instead of using seemless branching.

[Jim Di Griz]

Originally Posted by rebel_scum

Er, it's an AVC encoding, which is also known as MPEG 4. Christ on a bike, people.

Love it!

Lets wait for some reviews of the actual disc maybe?

Im not expecting it to look fantastic because it wont. I do wonder whether one disc will be enough though.

[Jim Di Griz]

Originally Posted by rebel_scum

If the low bitrate is an indication of this length of movie, with DTS-HD-MA plus extras, then I'd rather they split the eventual LOTR extended editions over two discs.

Although I hope I'm wrong and it's just Warner being incompetent at setting optimal codec settings.

Their business practices boggle my mind sometimes, for instance, putting two full versions of The Town on a BD-50, instead of using seemless branching.

Seams reasonable to me.

Seems even

[Pecker]

I note the Beaver review says:

This may very well be the apex of how Once Upon a Time in American (sic) can look on digital disc.

I wonder if they mean "This may very well be the apex of how Once Upon a Time in America can look on one digital disc"?

Fewer artefacts and more 'film like' sounds good to me.

Steve W

[featherhall]

Originally Posted by Jim Di Griz

Love it!

Lets wait for some reviews of the actual disc maybe?

Im not expecting it to look fantastic because it wont. I do wonder whether one disc will be enough though.

Dvdbeaver has the review up which is what we are discussing. It is on one disc and your right it doesn't appear to look fantastic but better than the sddvd.

[rebel_scum]

Originally Posted by Jim Di Griz

Seams reasonable to me.

Seems even

LOL!

I'm not even gonna correct it now.

[Marv]

Link to the beaver. Once Upon a Time in America Blu-ray Robert De Niro

Dos'nt look a massive step up from the dvd, still looks a little soft in some shots to me. Detail does look better though which you'd expect. Might hold onto the dvd for now as its a film i rarley watch anyway.

[shade_of_meta]

At £9 and one disk I'll be getting it regardless....I guess they'll do it right on triple-layer disks

[Pecker]

Originally Posted by Marv

Detail does look better though which you'd expect.

It's very difficult to say with Beaver's caps.

They always show the SD DVD at native resolution - fair enough in one way, but it is then extremely difficult to say if there's more visible detail in the HD version because there is more there, or because you can't see it on the SD caps because they're so small.

It's very difficult to judge difference side-by-side when the sizes are so different.

Steve W

[Kevo]

One of my all time fave movies (and soundtracks), despite the dodgy ageing make up (will look even worse in HD!), which to be fair Hollywood still can't make look convincing even to this day!

[Blackblood]

Received a copy and just had a skim through it. Sadly it appears quite similar to the DVD, colour is represented better and long shots look more sharper, close ups look virtually the same. The soundtrack fairs better with a real depth to the score.

[jsgreen89]

Really dissapointing

Although as long as it's no worse it might be worth getting just to avoid changing disc, and to get a slightly improved soundtrack. Oh well.. hopefully they'll do a much better job with OUATITW!

[golden phoenix]

ive always wondered about blu-ray..werent we promised that we could get tons of stuff on a 50 GB disc including excellent picture and sound even on 3/4 hour movies? are people telling that is now a myth.

avatar has managed it, so i dont see why this film should be any different if that is being used as an excuse for a average picture and sound.

[Todd Tomorrow]

Avatar and OUATIA are very different looking films. Having seen the film at the cinema several times since its release, the image was never going to be HD reference material. With its muted colour schemes, diffuse lighting and a soft-focus shooting style popular in the 70s and 80s, it's a tad unrealistic to expect (because we were promised!!!) an image that pops in the way that Avatar does.

I'll reserve my judgement till I see the release, but I have seen other films from the period shot in a similar style, like Body Heat or Carrie on Blu, which had similar criticisms levelled at them but which only represented the way these films were shot. Unless you have a really big display like a projector, an upgrade is probably not worth it for this type of film.

[Pecker]

I think the long version of Avatar is three hours, whilst this is four hours, which is a hell of a big difference, particularly at a length on the cusps of what we might expect BD to handle.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, even if there is no extra detail to be had from the source, as long as lots of video processing hasn't been applied, BD on a HD display will look better than SD DVD upscaled on that display. With upscaling, three quarters of the pixels are guesswork.

Steve W

[DICKIEDUVET]

Direct comparison

High Definition / Standard Definition Battle

[Pecker]

Cheers.

Far less EE on the Blu-ray Disc - check out the titles (the last cap).

These caps show a definite improvement over the DVD which wasn't as obvious on the Beaver site. It's not huge, but it's a lot clearer.

Steve W

[golden phoenix]

Originally Posted by Todd Tomorrow

Avatar and OUATIA are very different looking films. Having seen the film at the cinema several times since its release, the image was never going to be HD reference material. With its muted colour schemes, diffuse lighting and a soft-focus shooting style popular in the 70s and 80s, it's a tad unrealistic to expect (because we were promised!!!) an image that pops in the way that Avatar does.

I'll reserve my judgement till I see the release, but I have seen other films from the period shot in a similar style, like Body Heat or Carrie on Blu, which had similar criticisms levelled at them but which only represented the way these films were shot. Unless you have a really big display like a projector, an upgrade is probably not worth it for this type of film.

i can accept colour,styling etc etc..if this was given the same care that blade runner, (which was made earlier) was given, then any film from any period can look magnificent..i will reserve my judgement, i just dont accept (when it was shot, how it was shot) as a valid excuse for poor blu-ray releases in general ..i have cool hand luke which was filmed in 1967 and that bluray release is georgous...