Bottom line how will this baby look on a 48 inch widescreen HDTV??..

Aren't the xtras different from the UE anyway??..Might be worth the price just for the commentary!

Cameron=GOD IMO

The WMV9 encoding will NOT be 1080p. That is the resolution of the source master. One of the guys from WMV9 group at Microsoft is a semi-regular on the htpc forum at avsforum. He recently posted that the resolution will not be 1080p, but that it will be more than the 1024x576p resolution of "Standing in the Shadows of Motown." So, somewhere in between the two. Either way, if you can play it back it on your pc then it will be significantly better quality than the mpeg2 track.

Note also that on both Shadows and T2, the WMV9 stuff is on a second DVD with other extra materials. So it does not take away from the space available to the standard DVD mpeg2 encoding.

Don't you think his ego is big enough already? Why are you encouraging it to grow bigger?

Screw the "Extreme" edition.

I swear, this sounds more like a piece of frigging DVD-ROM software than an actual DVD.

Hi. My name's Jough. I'm the only man in the WORLD who thought that the supplemental features on the T2: Ultimate Edition discs weren't really all that good.

The transfer was okay, but hardly stunning.

And I would have liked to have seen a new Cameron commentary.

Cue: T2: Extreme Edition

It has everything the previous version lacked. It doesn't really matter to me that it's lacking stuff from the previous edition. I already have the previous edition. This will make a nice companion piece to it. And if the transfer is much much better, it'll probably be the one I watch.

-- Jough

Darn! Looks like I'll have to re-buy this version...

Yes, we all know he has a big ego but at least he delivers the goods and watching a Cameron movie at least I know I'm going to see something fresh and interesting..

Yes, Intel P4 3.06 Ghz and the AMD Athlon XP 3000+ (Actually @ 2.16 Ghz, but it is comparable to the P4 3.06). The video card memory is the wacky part as this memory is used for 3D buffer/texture/etc. storage (GAMES!) ... don't see how video playback would use it at all. XP Pro vs. XP Home, probably just a marketing gimmick to dupe a couple people into upgrading to Pro.

Currently all the decode is done by the cpu, so for say a resolution of 1280x576@24p you are looking at a minimum sustained data-rate from memory to the card of about 50MB/s maybe a fair bit higher depending on some technobabble. That is easily within the spec for even AGPx1 at least at a burst speed, but sustained may be another matter since 3D games tend to be bursty with the texture traffic and the cards are definitely optimized for 3D and not video. They are probably somewhat over-specifying requirements to make sure they are covered.

Also, future cards will eventually support WMV9 acceleration on the card, like they do today for mpeg2 video. When those cards become available probably 03H2, 128MB will likely be the minimum spec in the market for that featureset.

The specs for the HD version of the film are pretty outrageous right now - and since MP9 offers greater compression than Mpeg2 Video (i.e. DVD-quality video) it's likely that they could put the HD version on the second disc and still have plenty of space for a couple of HOURS of normal DVD video extras.

I'm curious how they'll break up the extras between the two discs.

Anyway, the HD version is a gimmick right now, but in a year or two most computers will be able to handle the HD version with no problems.

-- Jough

I agree 100%.

Okay, DavidH and I were the only two men in the WORLD who thought that...

I don't have the UE, but I can remember reading the specs for it, and not being too impressed. The first thing that always sticks out for me these days is director's commentary. Unless they have a good reason, or another good supplement, I'm very wary.
Exceptions include Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Spielberg doesn't do them, and there is an excellent documentary on the second disc.

Some director's commentaries are horrid, although I almost always appreciate them more than actor or other crew commentaries.

I've found that on the rare occassion that a disc will offer a composer commentary (sometimes mixed with an isolated score where there is score) and I've found those fascinating (i.e. Randy Newman's on the "Pleasantville" DVD).

-- Jough

Well ! Does this mean I cant watch it on my Amiga?! BOOOO!!!

I think you are being too optimistic there. If you look at the big boys in the video card market for the general public you have ATI, Matrox and nVidia (maybe you can add Sis but since the current Xabre are pretty crap I won't talk about them).

ATI would be the most likely company to add this support quickly to their cards. They care about 2D and release news cards pretty quickly but I am not sure they want to invest that much in that. They will probably prefer to invest more on 3D gaming to stay the king in 3D games.

Matrox also cares about 2D quality but they released the Parhelia a year ago. Since it is Matrox, it is a safe bet to assume that their "new" cards (new as in Parhelia vs G550, not new as G400 vs G450 vs G550...) will not be released before 2 years (maybe 3).

Then you have nVidia. Don't count on them, their 2D quality is ugly and the GeForce 4 don't even support full hardware MPEG-2 DVD decoding!!! But I think that the noisy GeForce FX do support 100% hardware decoding. But look at how many years it took them to support that standard format (WM9 is not yet a standard for HD).

I'd rather have DTS sound then a directors commentary. I'll still buy the new version but I don't know why they had to remove the DTS track.

Lame!

Not having DTS could be because of a bit/space issue. The UE edition looked somewhat compressed with artifacts possibly because of the DTS track on there.

I will agree as well on the quality of the extras. I will probably never watch them again. The only thng I wanted was the damn Guns N Roses video we still aren't getting. lol

Do I think the picture could be improved? Absolutely! I will rebuy this if reviews state the picture has been fixed during certain scenes.

As for the HD verison ... why waste the space? They should save that for the Super Ultimate Extreme Edition on HD-DVD. Ok, I'm kidding.

But WMV9 is part of DirectX 9. I base my statement about the pending support for WMV9 acceleration on the comments of one of the WMV9 engineers who regularly posts at avsforum. He initially thought it would only require a driver rev for the latest ATI cards to support it, but has since stated that he was too optimistic and now expects the next generation of cards, due out over the Summer, to support WMV9 acceleration.

As for Nvidia 2-D display quality, all of that changed with the release of VMR as part of XP. The Video Mixing Render does away with overlays and instead uses the texturing functionality of the chip. This approach has a number of benefits, one of which is greatly improved video quality because of all the work Nvidia has done to make their texture units top-notch. With VMR drivers and a VMR video player, even older Nvidia cards have video quality equal to ATI.

Since people are talking about WMV9 - I'll post a link I found in case anyone is interested.

http://windowsmedia.com/9series

Specs for a HD video on that page.
"we recommend at least a 2.4 GHz Intel or AMD Athlon XP 2100+ or higher processor and an AGP4x based NVIDIA or ATI video adapter card with at least 32 MB of RAM and the most recent OEM driver updates"

"these clips were encoded 24 fps, and a resolution of 1280 x 720 (720p)."
They average 7Mbps.

I'm still waiting for a clip to d****** on - my computer doesn't even come close to those specs so I'm curious to see what happens.

Could someone clarify the different resolution settings. e.g. 480p, 720p, 1080i vs. 1280 x 720
etc?

Thanks

Just d/l the Indy Car video and it ran perfectly fine, going to d/l the second Step Into Liquid video (it runs at 6.9mbps) to see how it does.

PC Specs;

Athlon XP 1700+
256MB PC2100
GF3 200/460
Win XP Pro

This is starting to look like an episode of Dragon Ball Z.
First there was super saiyan, then ultimate saiyan, then lvl 2 super saiyan, then mystical saiyan, then fused sayian, lvl 3 super saiyan, lvl 4 super saiyan.
Where will this madness end.

In case anyone else is running an old computer like me don't bother to download the HD video. MY P3 couldn't play back more than a few frames.

Well, lets see here --

DTS Track
3 Different Versions of the Movie

In my mind, that is a pretty good reason.On this extreme version, you will get:

1 Version of the Film
1 Version of the Film where you need equipment that doesn't exist quite yet
A Directors Commentary

IMHO, Ultimate is superior.