[Romero]

I waited for the Blu Ray release of this in Europe thinking that the specs would be the same as the US BR release, how wrong was I only standard Dolby Digital on the disc. Ordered it off Sendit and as with most eu suppliers no specs for the disc so ordered it blind. When I checked the HD-DVD version of the movie it at least has a Dolby Digital+ soundtrack.
Gonna trade this in straight away, be warned anyone else thinking of buying it for a superior soundtrack you won't find it on this release.

Romero

[Rasczak]

waited for the Blu Ray release of this in Europe thinking that the specs would be the same as the US BR release

I think this film has a different studio distributing in Europe. In the US it is BluRay exclusive whereas here it is a dual format release.

[Romero]

Originally Posted by Rasczak

I think this film has a different studio distributing in Europe. In the US it is BluRay exclusive whereas here it is a dual format release.

Yeah but they could have at least stuck a DD+ soundtrack on the BR release. I would have been happy with that

Romero

[Rasczak]

Originally Posted by Romero

Yeah but they could have at least stuck a DD+ soundtrack on the BR release.

I'm not sure if there is any UK BluRay product that can handle DD+ yet (if I'm wrong can someone correct me please). It's an optional codec on BluRay versus a mandatory one on HD DVD. Furthermore the BluRay variant of that codec is quite different from the HD DVD one.

[Romero]

Originally Posted by Rasczak

I'm not sure if there is any UK BluRay product that can handle DD+ yet (if I'm wrong can someone correct me please). It's an optional codec on BluRay versus a mandatory one on HD DVD. Furthermore the BluRay variant of that codec is quite different from the HD DVD one.

Yes there is I have an Onkyo 605 AV receiver and have my PS3 connected via HDMI, If Studios want people to opt for BR in Europe then they need to provide the best video and audio on their releases.

Romero

[lfletcher]

There are players that can decode DD+ on Blu Ray (the Panasonic for example), but DD+ on Blu Ray is a different kettle of fish to DD+ on HD-DVD. It's 7 channels only for a start - which is why I don't think we'll see this audio stream used very often, if ever. DD+ was invented by Dolby to get past a packet size limitation inherent to HD-DVD due to it being a continuation of the DVD file structure. Blu Ray doesn’t have this packet size issue, so the implementation of DD+ on each format is different.

As for this particular release, as already mentioned it has a different US and European studio. Disney in the US, Warner in Europe. The US release got the PCM treatment (but is region coded if my memory serves me correctly), where as the Europe release is just DD (for BD) and DD+ (for HD-DVD) as Warner hardly ever use PCM or TrueHD on Blu Ray releases. In fairness to them though, this does appear to be changing in recent months.

My advice is to do as much research on titles before purchasing them as different regions can have different audio specs even if they are distributed globally by the same company. If they are by different studios, then they are almost certain to have different audio and video encodes.

[Romero]

Yeah but whereas its easy to get specs for US BD releases its very hard to get them here in Europe before they are released. Sendit gives no details, amazon.co.uk hadn't it even listed until after its release. Warner in this case could have made the effort to stick a DTS-HD soundtrack on The Prestige as an alternative. Then again Warner are still siding with HD-DVD, so probably didn't put to much thought into the BR release.

Romero