[Drongo]

Commentary: Year-End Studio Report Cards



Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

The award for "Most Improved Studio" of 2007 goes to Sony, who completely turned around all the quality problems they experienced in 2006, and delivered over 70 titles on Blu-ray this year, most of them boasting quite impressive quality.

Hopefully that's a sign that the studio will continue to dig into their catalog and expand beyond the Playstation 3's gamer demographic they've been largely catering to so far.

Grade: A-

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

Here we go. The most disappointing High-Def studio of 2007 is unquestionably Fox.

To be blunt, Fox needs to clean up its act in 2008. They made a complete mess of things in 2007.

Grade: C-

Warner Home Video

in my opinion, Warner Home Video easily qualifies as the best High Definition studio of the year, bar none.

Grade: A


More of Zyber’s studio assessments for 2007 here:




http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/sh...ort_Cards/1276

[Rasczak]

Agree with much of what is said. I would certainly say Sony has come along way from 2006. The re-release of The Fifth Element sporting decent PQ, PCM and TrueHD tracks is an example to all. However I would like to see TrueHD on all their releases - lets confine PCM to the past please.

I would also say Paramount has come along way - they have now, finally, started putting lossless audio on most new discs and have raised the bar for extras. Star Trek: Remastered (Season 1) is probably the best high def package out there at present.

I also concurr with the condemnation of Fox and MGM who have systematically failed to meet expectations - with luck their inevitable CES 08 press conference, where we can expect a rehash of the 07 PR, will be treated with the contempt it deserves. Mitigation for Fox is that their discs sport DTS-HD MA - but with BD+ as standard, enthusiastic regional coding, inflated RRPs they deserve a harsh assessment.

I think the comments on the smaller studios - Weinstein and Starz - were a little unfair though. At least these companies have put some of their media out to buyers which is more than we have a right to expect whilst this format war rages.

[David Mackenzie]

I agree totally that Sony have cleaned up their act considerably. Some of the stuff they put out is amazing.

But, I don't agree with the praise given to WB at all. With some exceptions (the Harry Potters, 300, Blade Runner), a lot of what they put out has an unusually soft look, even when a digital intermediate has been used as the source.