[chelsea.tone]

Fox Home Entertainment has announced six upcoming Blu-ray titles, all with street dates during the first quarter of 2008. Included in the list is the delayed Blu-ray release of 'Independence Day' which will see release on March 11th, the same date as the newly announced and highly anticipated 'I, Robot'.

MAN ON FIRE (January 8th): Authored in BD-Java using MPEG2 compression and presented on a 50GB dual layer disc with English 5.1 DTS HD Lossless Master Audio and French and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital Sound. Subtitles: English, Spanish, French.

WALL STREET (February 5th): Authored in MPEG2 compression and presented on a 50GB dual layer disc with English 5.1 DTS HD Lossless Master Audio and English, French and Spanish subtitles. Bonus features include:
Commentary by Oliver Stone
Intro by Oliver Stone
Greed is Good-Featurette
Deleted Scenes with optional commentary by Director Oliver Stone
Money Never Sleeps - The Making of Wall Street
ME, MYSELF & IRENE (February 5th): Authored in MPEG2 compression and presented on a 25GB disc with English 5.1 DTS HD Lossless Master Audio and French 5.1 Dolby Digital Sound. Subtitles: English, Spanish, French. Bonus features include:
Deleted scenes with optional commentary by Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly
Crap on the Lawn
My Cow Likes The Road
Warming The Melon
Morning After
Can't Find My Wallet
Hat On Fire
Dear Old Dad
Sex Flashback
Hank and Charlie Disagree
Extended Butt Chin Scene
Theatrical Trailers
ICE AGE (March 4th): Authored in MPEG2 compression and presented on a 25GB disc with English 5.1 DTS HD Lossless Master Audio and French and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital Sound. Subtitles: English, Spanish, French. Bonus features include:
Commentary by Director Chris Wedge and Co-Director Carlos Saldanha
Deleted Scenes with commentary by Director Chris Wedge and Co-Director Carlos Saldanha
"Paying Toll"with Aardvarks
Sylvia and Sid Introduction
Sabre Stake Out
No More Fruit For You
Sid and the Ladies
Sid and Sylvia
Gone Nutty – Scrat's Missing Adventure
Theatrical Teaser
Theatrical Trailers
INDEPENDENCE DAY (March 11th): Authored in BD-Java using MPEG2 compression and presented on a 50GB dual-layer disc with English 5.1 DTS HD Lossless Master Audio and French and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital Sound. Subtitles: English, Spanish, French. Bonus features include:
Scene Specific Commentary by Director Roland Emerich and Producer Dean Devlin
Commentary by Oscar-Winning FX supervisors Volker Engel and Doug Smith
Trivia Track
Search Content
Personal Scene Selections
Alien Scavenger Hunt (Java Game)
D-Box Technology
Theatrical Teaser
Theatrical Trailers
I, ROBOT (March 11th) : Authored in BD-Java using MPEG2 compression and presented on a 50GB dual-layer disc English 5.1 DTS HD Lossless Master Audio and French and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital Sound. Subtitles: English, Spanish, French. Bonus features include: Commentary by Director Alex Proyas and Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman
Commentary by Screenwriter Jeff Vintar
Commentary by Composer Marco Beltrami with isolated cues from the score
I, Robot Trivia Track
Extended and Deleted Scenes
D-Box Technology

Tony

[FOXCLOSE]

I wonder what people here will say about the MPEG 2 come back!?

[chelsea.tone]

Not much lol seem to be rather busy elsewhere

Tony

[Prime Time]

It is disappointing that Fox have decided to author all these releases in MPEG 2. Whilst MPEG 2 has produced great results on some Blu-ray releases VC-1 or AVC coding does have the potential to offer better picture quality particuarly on BD25 titles.

Hopefully, better releases than these will be released by Fox in Q1 as these announced titles are all rather underwhelming catalogue releases and will come with the usual higher Fox price tag.

[phildh]

Blatent quick and dirty DTheater ports, it wouldnt suprise me if they've just reauthored the same encode. Which is a shame.

Man on Fire should look superb (it does on the dtheater versions i've seen).
Nice to have the DTS-HD.

[Rasczak]

Blatent quick and dirty DTheater ports, it wouldnt suprise me if they've just reauthored the same encode. Which is a shame.

And a return to MPEG2. And one is on a BD25 as well

I'll buy I Robot though - a top film IMHO.

[av addict]

i suppose these films made in mpeg2 where ready months ago-id day and i-robot,,so thats why they are coming out in mpeg2---hopefully all new announced titles will be avc encoded

[tobi]

Man on Fire on January 8 is great but how about giving people outside of the US a release date because we know your not going to make it region free...

[MarekM]

well ID4 japan and europe version are AVC with bitrates from 20 to 40 Mbps (I own it), so I am sure same will be US version.

Marek

[chelsea.tone]

Originally Posted by MarekM

well ID4 japan and europe version are AVC with bitrates from 20 to 40 Mbps (I own it), so I am sure same will be US version.

Marek

On pre-order + will order i-robot

Tony

[MarekM]

I've got ID4 from holland, couple of weeks ago, I wonder what will be european release date for I ROBOT can't wait for that one !

Marek

[chelsea.tone]

I import so all good for me

Tony

[Jim Morrison]

Hopefully they will announce some more titles at CES...

*cough* Predator *cough*

[Greg]

Interesting and not wishing to get this thread off track from the admittedly great releases, but if Blu-ray is the winner, I hope these aren't indications of how we are going to be treated. I.e not the best picture quality available.

[Adam_uk]

MPEG 2 really? Why

Fox are the worst HD studio, crap/ few extras, MPEG 2, silly RRP's.

If HD DVD does die- I hope this does not become the norm!

[chelsea.tone]

Agreed, but if you dont like the way they're presented..dont buy them

Tony

[AML]

Why does everyone hate Mpeg 2 so much? If done properly you can get really good results. Look at films like "Black Hawk Down" on Blu Ray.

Correct me if im wrong, but Mpeg 2 uses less compression that AVC/VC1 does it not?

[Romero]

Think the OP should edit the title as Fox's US releases, no good for most of us here in europe due to the region lock Its a pity its so hard to get release details on discs here in Europe, also with HD-DVD on life support I can see sloppy & Lazy transfers becoming the name of the game from companies like Fox. I hope they get hammered in reviews and no one buys them until they improve their standard of product!

[Sonic67]

Originally Posted by AML

Why does everyone hate Mpeg 2 so much? If done properly you can get really good results. Look at films like "Black Hawk Down" on Blu Ray.

Correct me if im wrong, but Mpeg 2 uses less compression that AVC/VC1 does it not?

Interesting that when 'The Fifth Element' was redone it went from BD25 1080p/MPEG2 to BD-50 Dual-Layer Disc 1080p/AVC MPEG-4.

[AML]

Originally Posted by Sonic67

Interesting that when 'The Fifth Element' was redone it went from BD25 1080p/MPEG2 to BD-50 Dual-Layer Disc 1080p/AVC MPEG-4.

Surely it doesnt matter how many layers you have on a disc? (especially with your example since mpg 2 would use more and not less space than AVC)

If the first version was bad, it was because Sony didnt make enough effort for the first transfer.

AVC and VC1 only improve things in that they use less space and are more efficient.

But like I said before, Mpeg 2 can produce good results as long as the necesary effort is made.

Fifth Element was bad because they didnt make the effort. Simple as that.

[Sonic67]

It's generally thought that MPEG2 was good but not as efficient as it could be now. In the same way DAB was a compression format that is being replaced by DAB+, MP3 is not as good as everything from WMA to Vorbis and AAC and future HD formats on Freeview are expected to move away from MPEG2 as well.

[lukey37]

Even though on the press release above it says Man on Fire has been encoded using MPEG2 the sleeve says it is actually AVC @ 29MBPS. If that will apply to all the others listed as MPEG2 I don't know.

[Fuey_fu]

Originally Posted by lukey37

Even though on the press release above it says Man on Fire has been encoded using MPEG2 the sleeve says it is actually AVC @ 29MBPS. If that will apply to all the others listed as MPEG2 I don't know.

I'm sure I read on AVSforums that the MPEG2 thing was a typo and all the films would be AVC

[tobi]

Play.com has Independence Day in stock...