Tag Archives: Blu-ray

Impressions, Movies & TV

The Orphanage

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The Orphanage.I’ve been interested to see The Orphanage ever since I saw it advertised with the Pan’s Labyrinth HD DVD as something presented by Guillermo del Toro. I’m quite wary of these endorsements, given that Tarantino’s name has given us such classics as Hostel, but I don’t think that del Toro has made a bad film yet, Pan was ridiculously good (to continue a theme from my last post, I own four copies of that film), and it’s looking like he’s going to direct The Hobbit. The man’s a legend, and the reviews of The Orphanage have justified his interest.

I had the opportunity to see The Orphanage ahead of my Blu-ray order arriving in a couple of weeks, and I was impressed. It’s not as terrifying as some critics (Mark Kermode, I’m looking at you) made out – I only had one good jump out of it – and it doesn’t even have a particularly unsettling atmosphere, a few scenes aside, but it still stands out as a bloody good film.

It’s not that often that you can say that about a horror film. Nowadays they tend to fall into the two categories of blood-drenched ‘torture porn’ (Hostel, Saw), or something from a director whose idea of horror is to jam on the piano keys every time another cat is inexplicably released from a cupboard. That or a remake of one of the seminal 70’s horror films. Both may be scary or entertaining in their own ways, but they’re usually used to prop up a crepe-paper story that really isn’t worth watching between the wanton bloodshed and cat jumping.

For one thing, it’s not like every post-Sixth Sense supernatural thriller, in that it’s not reliant on being turned on its head in the final few minutes to make it worthwhile and really doesn’t have all that much supernatural stuff going on. There are ghosts, sure, but no “they were dead all along” revelation. Just a story of past trauma that hits close to home (the following link is a spoiler) at this time and that I really should have seen coming in retrospect, and an explanation of how the events of the past 90 minutes have come to pass.

Cinemas that show non-English language films are like hen’s teeth around here – the nearest one to me that’s showing The Orphanage is 30 miles away – but if you have one (or the ability to import the BD or DVD), this one comes recommended.

DVD & Blu-ray, Editorials, Movies & TV, Tech

RIP HD DVD

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Blu-ray wins?

So CES hasn’t officially started yet, but the first megaton of 2008 has been dropped as Warner, currently the biggest studio for HD releases, confirmed that in May they’re dropping support for the HD DVD format. With only two major studios now supporting HD DVD, and one of them on a time-limited contract, it looks like the end of the HD format war is in sight.

The writing has been on the wall for a while now. Despite occasional better versions and, for me at least, a number of compelling exclusive titles, that was probably the death blow for HD DVD. It’s being reported as such, and even the comments from Toshiba have an air of resignition to them. There’s none of the bullishness that was usually found in press releases from both sides, and the cancellation of the HD DVD conference speaks volumes. They were blindsided and need a miracle, frankly.

Ultimately it’s good for HD movies. It will bring stability to the market that it hasn’t had and has probably been a contributor to the tiny size of the market for HD movies so far. I still don’t think Blu-ray will ever come close to the popularity of DVD, but now those who have been sitting on the fence can grow the market. Paramount certainly won’t stay exclusive when their contract period is up, and that will leave Universal as the last ones at the party.

I’m keeping my HD DVD player and keeping my collection, but now I’m only buying the biggest exclusive titles on HD DVD. That means Sweeney Todd and…uhh…hmm…

*goes to watch Serenity on HD DVD again*

Games, Impressions, PlayStation, Tech

A Week of PS3: Some Thoughts

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After seven days with the monolith from 2001 sitting on my desk I’ve got a good idea of what the system’s all about at this point in its lifespan.

Xbox Live pisses all over PSN. Poor friends integration (besides the fact that I only know a handful of people with one), different interface in every game, and they apparently remove older content because I can’t get the Everybody’s Golf demo or the first Uncharted trailer now. Plus no way to arrange content by game. I know PSN is free, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’d rather stay at the Ritz than a homeless shelter.

Live would do well to steal the idea of selling things in real money, though. At the current exchange rate Tekken 5 would cost me approximately 700 points. Although I’d have to buy 2,100 to get it. Fuck.

The PS3 is a better Blu-ray player than the 360 is HD DVD. I’ve watched a couple of films now (Apocalypto and Casino Royale) and have been thoroughly impressed, although despite the bigger library on BD I still struggle to find more than half a dozen films I want. There are a number of titles that I’ll be buying before the end of the year, though. And 1080p video doesn’t make Casino Royale any less overrated.

When the price drops I’ll probably buy a 360 with HDMI. It looks pin sharp and really is a surprising improvement over component or VGA. Oddly this is the first time I’ve watched native HD content over HDMI, since I’ve only ever used my upscaling DVD player previously.

Remote Play is a brilliant feature. Let me stream a DVD or BD to myself on the bog and it’ll be perfect.

Although the disc drive is significantly quieter than the 360’s, the fans aren’t. It’s near silent when turned on until they kick in after a few minutes (or is my room just too hot?), at which point I can hear them over a movie. Still, credit where credit’s due: it doesn’t sound like a jet taking off during a game which is an improvement.

I love the open standards for peripherals. Bluetooth means that anyone can put out wireless accessories, and being able to use any old flash memory card or USB drive as a memory card – allowing me to back up saves and even downloaded videos to my computer, no less – is fantastic. Ditto being able to use any old Bluetooth headset. Microsoft needs to note that charging £25 for a 64MB memory card is insulting when I can buy a 4GB flash drive to use with the PS3 for less.

On the subject of Bluetooth, why haven’t the syncing issues with the controller been fixed? Probably half a dozen times now my controller has stopped responding to leave my character running into a wall, and it’s not on when other wireless controllers like the 360’s and even the Wavebird have been absolutely rock solid. Because Resistance is so obnoxiously stingy with the checkpoints I had to do a whole – quite difficult – section again when it cut out and sent me gaily walking out in front of a big enemy with an equally big gun.

And why isn’t there an IR receiver? I see no real benefit to a Bluetooth remote (the ergonomics of a remote mean that it’s generally pointing at the device anyway) and it only serves to annoy the AV geeks who have their expensive universal remotes. You know, the ones who you’re trying to convince that the PS3 is a high end piece of AV equipment. Mine can turn on and control the 360 and PS2 but not the PS3, the one with movie playback that I might want to use with some regularity.

Stop plugging ‘CELL?’ and ‘Blu-ray Disc?’ at every opportunity. We know you have big discs (I said ‘discs’!) and a powerful CPU but we don’t need to be told in game trailers. It comes off like vapid marketing speak and undermines how good the technology actually is.

Most of all, the PS3 needs more games. Resistance, Motorstorm, and Ninja Gaiden don’t cut it at this point against two competitors that are ahead in sales and software. Thankfully there’s some good stuff coming this year.

Editorials

HD-DVD or Blu-ray?

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With CES going on in Las Vegas at the moment all the news about the next-generation DVD formats is starting to come out and the whole debate over whether the “official” format, HD-DVD, will triumph over the technically superior upstart, Blu-Ray. The last thing anyone really wants is a format war, especially when the early players are so fucking expensive.

I’m a huge DVD buff so I’ve been following this whole thing pretty much since the beginning and know the relative benefits of each format (the respective Wikipedia entries here and here are a good starting point), and really hope that a compromise can eventually be reached because a format war will do nobody any good, but it’s impossible to guess which one of the formats will win out.

The most obvious comparison is VHS against Betamax, in which the technically superior Betamax was beaten out by VHS in the race to revolutionise home entertainment. That shows that even if Blu-Ray is superior in many ways (storage space for a start: 54GB and up compared to 30-45GB) it’s not going to ensure a victory. It could be argued that any technical superiority is made irrelevant by the fact that HD-DVD carries the familiar DVD name which BR won’t be able to use, and to a consumer who dislikes jargon and prefers recognisable names that’s an important coup.

What could make or break them is hardware support, and although much has been made of the PS3’s ability to play back BD-ROMs (obvious comparisons to the PS2’s place in cementing DVD as a mainstream format should be made) you can’t ignore that Microsoft are firmly behind HD-DVD. Even if the Xbox 360 doesn’t have HD-DVD compatibility, Windows is more ubiquitous than even the almighty PlayStation and if they sneak it into homes via the growing HTPC market that’s just as much a trojan horse as the PS3.

Part of me wants HD-DVD to win out for the simple reason that I’m all for standards, and Blu-Ray is another attempt by Sony to establish their own, often overpriced, standard when the current one doesn’t suit them. We’ve seen it so many times – Betamax, Memory Stick, DVD+RW, UMD, MiniDisc, ATRAC, etc – and it just locks people into Sony hardware, undermines standards, and confuses the average consumer.

Coexistence is a possibility like with DVD-RW and DVD+RW which seem to have established some form of equilibrium, but I don’t think anybody thinks that it would be a better solution than one unified standard with all movies on it. Our best hope is just that a compromise is still possible or, if a format war does happen, that it doesn’t undo all the good work that DVD has done in bringing home entertainment into the digital age.