Saturday, May 26, 2007

Friday, May 25, 2007

John Rambo (Rambo IV)


Check out this 3 1/2 minute trailer of Rambo IV simply titled John Rambo. I watched First Blood on Blu-ray a few weeks ago and was so thrilled by it that I will probably add it to my collection. I don't remember it being so good. I think that #4 could be what we needed to bring back this action title to the big screen. I can't wait.

Weird Al as Rambo

Classic UHF scene. I must watch it again soon.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

HD-DVD vs Blu-ray, Class for Dan Ray


Question: What kind of bear is best?

My last post got my American friend living up in the great white north to say, "You can buy a HD-DVD drive for your XBOX 360 for only $200. There's really no difference between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, it's just a corporate thing." and " 720p is 720p and 1080p is something that normal people don't have the hardware to watch. I hate the Blue Ray / HDDVD dichotomy because it's stupid and I'm in favor of standards. It's all about advertising and money period."

Yes and NO. Yes, someone could go out and spend $200 for lack luster HD-DVD player and add it to there $399 Xbox 360 and then plug it into their TV with some component cables and get a maximum resolution of 1080i, and then buy HD-DVD's and be OK with that until a couple of years from now when they stop making the HD-DVD format movies and it is DIVX all over again. (DIVX was a format created by Circuit City and some investor lawyers back in 1998 which, the concept was: you were able to buy movies for $5.00 and you were allowed 24 hours to watch it, after placing it in your DIVX player that had a modem contacted servers to allow playback , before it became a coaster.) Let's just say that the format didn't even last more than a year and there were lots of people that had paid lots of money for the players and now had an obsolete box after DIVX called it quits. I can't say this battle will be as bad as the DIVX format war with DVD, but format wars are not good for anyone.

I have to say 720P (IMHO) looks really good, but if you have well trained eyes you can tell the difference from 720P to 1080P. This is especially true if you have a bigger TV. Here is something to think about, if you have a 19" monitor, you could run it at 1024 x 768, but why? Doesn't 1280 x 1024 just look better? As you get more lines of resolution the better the picture is going to look. No ifs, ands, or buts will change that. So when you say we “don't have the hardware” to see 1080P, I would have to say you’re wrong unless you were referring to a blind person.

Blu-ray is better because BD disc can hold 25GB per layer whereas HD-DVD only has 15GB per layer. That is about 8.5 hours of HD video on the BD and 5.1 hours on HD-DVD. Now, you are thinking that most movies are around 2 hours. Well why do lots of people buy DVD's? It’s because of the extras; how they made the movie, behind the scenes, etc. That is over 3 hours of extra footage that they could put on that disc. They can put on extra audio tracks. Currently Casino Royale has like 8 languages on the disc. When you have films like Pirates of the Carribean, Casino Royale, Pixar films, and Star Wars (someday) those films are money in the bag for the format.

Yeah in a sense it is all about that $, but we are trying to make a HD standard here. It’s just that two sets of companies have different ideas of what the standard should be. I will state the obvious statement of who’s is better. When you have 2/3rds of the big Hollywood studios (Disney, Fox, Paramount, WB, and of course Sony) for Blu-ray, that is telling you something. As of May 2007 BD movies hold 60% of the market share of movies, and in Japan BD totally owns the market. Those Japanese know what technology is since they brought us the Walkman.

Bottom line is, if you have never seen 1080P and you watch 720P on your computer screen, how can you say one or the other is the best? I double dog dare you to come by my place next time you are in town and I will show you what 1080P looks like.

Class dismissed.



PS.. Does this guy look like he knows anything about Blu-ray?

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Heroes Season 1 not on Blu-ray


I saw the last couple episodes of Heroes on NBC and was instantly hooked, so I decided to skip the season finale since I had missed most of the season and figured that I would watch it on DVD or better yet Blu-ray when it came out. Well, the release day is going to be August 28, 2007 and NBC Universal did what I thought they were going to do and will release it on DVD and HD-DVD (BOOOOOO). I don't really know what else to say, I am really disappointed, I really wanted to see Heroes on Blu-ray. I understand that they are the only major player that is solely tied to the HD-DVD camp, but lets get real here and sell it on both formats and see which one sells better.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

2007 Audi A4 - Safest Cars 2007


The A4 along with two other cars was named the safest cars of 2007. I made a good choice getting one of these for myself. I have to say it is the best car I have ever owned and I would just like for you to go and test drive an Audi and see for yourself. Click on the picture to read the complete story.

Friday, May 11, 2007

New Equipment in Crackdown

This game was already pretty cool, but now with the updates, it looks freakin' Awesome. (Did I just type freakin'.) Yep. Get this game for the Xbox 360 if you don't already have it.

Monday, May 07, 2007

Support Blu-ray: Sunday May 27, 2007


The Blu-ray community is asking for your help. If you have a Blu-ray player then your job is to go to Amazon on Sunday May 27, 2007 and buy as many titles as you like of Blu-ray movies. We need to end this format war and we need to stand together to let the HD-DVD camp know that Blu-ray is a far superior format.
All of the major movie studios stand behind Blu-ray, the only big boy studio that is not is Universal. When I ran into Joe Carnahan (Narc, Smokin' Aces) a couple of weeks ago I told him to tell his people at Universal to support Blu-ray as for I would love to buy Smokin' Aces on Blu-ray. I know it probably won't do anything telling a big time director, but when they start supporting the format that I support, I will tell everyone that I told them to.