Pixar on Blu-Ray = Blu-Ray Player for Me
 

Cars and Ratatouille are hitting Blu-Ray this year, at least according to Ultimate Disney:
http://www.ultimatedisney.com/disneybluray.html

If this ends up being true, I don't think I'll have the willpower to sit out the "war" any longer. I just hope that the non-$-rape players come out before these discs do.. as spending more than $300 on a player isn't my cup of tea (that's the price I entered DVD in 1999 if I recall correctly, Pioneer 525 player).

There are tons of Blu-Ray movies I want. What I don't want is a $600 PS3. So I'm still waiting for the $300 mark.

Monsters Inc, Toy Story 1 & 2, and The Incredibles would do it for me. :up:

Cars and Ratatouille ...not so much.

Wow, $300, you guys could be waiting a long time. No way your getting one this year for that price. HD DVD will be that price by Christmas with Chinese player deal Wal Mart struck recently, but a sub $500 BD player is still a pipe dream.

Car's is confirmed.. with Toy Story and Monsters Inc. to follow!

Sourcé?

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/448
http://dvd.themanroom.com/dvd-detail.php?id=3638

That highdefdigest article is from January and there doesn't seem to be any mention of Toy Story or Monsters on themanroom. Have there been any recent official announcements?

No. The "source" is an advertisement on the Peter Pan DVD that contained a list of possible upcoming titles, including The Lion King, Aladdin, Finding Nemo, and a few others. (Meanwhile, we're still waiting for The Shawshank Redemption which was supposed to be released in 2006.) It was probably something marketing came up with as a carrot to get people interested in BD, and they have no known schedule for actually releasing the titles. Cars is the only Pixar title that has been announced, but it's safe to assume Ratatouille will be day and date.

At this point, I'd expect Disney to wait for BD+ to be ready before committing to releasing classic animation. Even then, they may want to wait and see if it gets cracked right away.

Pixy!

I couldn't wait, and we bought our PS3 and we couldn't be happier! :up:

It is ONE HELL of a G-R-E-A-T player!

(Disney was the #1 reason we bought ours.)

Hope you get yours soon so you can 'SEE' what I mean, first hand!

Cars isn't coming in June. It's supposed to release in Sep. now.

Crap, when did that get delayed? I wanted that more than Pirates.

Cant we just buy the Pixar HD-Dvd's from other countries like we all do now with the on Blueray only titles in the US?

No, that only applies to titles where distribution is controlled by different studios in different territories. Disney naturally has worldwide distribution of Pixar's films.

Where'd you find Casino Royale?

????
There are a few BR exclusive titles (in the US) that have been released or are going to be released this year overseas....CR is not one of those titles......

Underworld:Evolution
Bridge To Tarabitha
Saw
Saw 2
Brothers Grimm
Terminator 2
XXX
The Prestige
Rambo Trilogy
Total Recall

Are jsut to name a few.......

I have a BD player and only own 3 of those titles mentioned. They arent anything to write home about. You're better off getting a PS3 then importing discs to be honest.

Exactly the point to my quote. ('a few' -- the question was 'why not all')

I'm pretty happy with the Pixar movies upconverted on my HD-XA1. As much as I love their flicks, it's gonna take more than them to get me to jump to blu.

I am very eager for more disney! I just got Deja Vu and not only was it a great movie, but the picture quality was like looking through a window. Ive seen a lot of HD movies, and this one is easily top of the food chain. Didnt hurt that i absolutely loved the movie too.

A valid point about the BD versions not being terribly impressive. However, I've seen a couple of the import HD DVD versions reviewed, and they've scored higher PQ ratings than the BDs and generally have more extras, too.

For example:

Los Bros. Grimm
BD -- http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read....=24695&___rd=1
HD DVD -- http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=23719

and
Total Recall
BD -- http://www.dvdtown.com/reviews/total-recall/3996/2
HD DVD -- http://www.dvdtown.com/reviews/total-recall/4318/2

All that's to say, I fail to see how someone would be better off buying a PS3 and sacrificing PQ and bonus features? If the HD DVD versions are better, why not import them?

Cow, the answer to your "why not all" question is that overseas, distribution of a movie is often handled by a different studio than it is here. So if it's distributed by a BD-only studio here in the good ol' USofA, it's sometimes handled by an HD DVD-only studio in the UK, France, Spain, Germany . . . wherever. With some films like Casino Royale, however, distribution is, unfortunately for those of us who are HD DVD-only kinda folks, BD-only. And unless I've missed out on some major information somewhere along the line, Disney/Pixar is internationally BD-only. Although, hopefully not forever.

I'm just wondering what excuse people will have once Blu Ray players start selling in the $200-300 range. I'm fairly certain Sony and theie gang will actively get this one by the end of the year (say the holidays). After that, there will be even less incentive to go HD DVD. I have nothing against it, but once comparing the Toshiba player and now my PS3, there is no comparison at all. The performance is night and day. Besides, comparing the picture quality is not that much of a difference when it came to the two formats.

Oh, and according to the Blu Ray site, $299 Blu Ray drive for computers is coming in June. Players I'm sure stand alone players are right behind.

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=163

To clarify above, I meant stand alone players are coming right behind as well.

PC BD drives have always been a couple hundred dollars cheaper than the cheapest available standalone -- they don't need lots of processors or onboard memory because they can use the PC for that. There will be $300 standalones but it doesn't follow that they'll be "right behind" the Pioneer drive. I'd be surprised if we see a $300 standalone before Q4 at the earliest.

"Oliver Clothesoff"???

OH, MAN!!! I just saw that! :lol:

This is the last group of discs I would worry about on HD disc. I'll wager that 95% of humans wouldn't see the difference between BD and DVD, even when pointed out to them.

Your typical animated line is so thick that reducing to DVD resolution doesn't lose any detail.

The only real benefit IMO is the progressive storage medium.

I can instantly tell the difference between the animated intro of Casino Royale on BD and DVD, and so could everyone I watched the movie with (none of the others own anything beyond DVD). Animation looks amazing on the HD formats, I'm not sure what your problem with them is. You've stated a few times now how you don't think animation benefits from the new foramts.

See above for my "problem". Animation looks amazing on everything. Just hardly seems worth being the final straw that makes someone invest in an expensive new machine. Don't get me wrong, if I already have the equipment, I'll choose the HD disc over the DVD, just not the other way around.

Chicken Little on blu-ray looks absolutely stunning. Really huge difference from the DVD. I bet when Cars and other pixar flicks come out on BD, the difference will be staggering, especially considering how absolutely jaw dropping disney movies on blu-ray have been becoming recently (deja vu, chicken little, the wild, the queen, etc).

Just a warning on Cars. I've been real impressed with the quality of the Disney movies in high def on Starz-HD, especially Chicken Little and The Wild. Cars did not look as nice on Starz-HD, the overall look is a bit soft, and the distant shots look a bit blurry. It may be that Starz didn't get a true high def copy to show, I'm not sure, and also, I only watched maybe 15 minutes of it, but if they did get an official high def copy, prepare to be unimpressed this fall.

But people aren't talking about "line animation" here, but rather computer animated films. And in those that I've seen so far (ie Chicken Little, Open Season), there is quite a difference between BD and DVD, so I'm sure the Pixar titles should be impressive too.

And at any rate, I also was very impressed with the animated intro to Casino Royale (but have to admit that I haven't seen the regular DVD version to compare). Hell, I found that credits sequence more impressive than parts of the film itself, HD wise. :lol:

Wait... You say that the PS3 is blowing the Toshiba (HD DVDs) out of the water performance wise? And then you say that the picture quality is not that much of a difference? Huh?

If anything, the Toshiba's are getting better marks for quality, especially with SD upconvertion.

I don't see a $200-$300 BR player this year. Perhaps $400.

HD-DVD $300 by Christmas? Heck, it's there NOW. The Toshiba HD-A2 is $305 shipped from Amazon.

My guess is that $249 and possibly $199 may be the case by Christmas for HD-DVD.

That's one of the shouting points from the BR faithful I just don't get: "Oh yeah? You guys just wait til Blu-Ray has a $300 player and it will all be over!" Uhh... ok, but by that time HD-DVD will have a $200 player, so what's your point?

P.S. Why are we comparing prices anyway? I thought Sony and the BDA declared the format war over 17 times already this year?

exm - I am speaking strictly about the hardware performance. I have been able to fool around with the Toshiba. There are just too many issues while just playing a movie. And the constant firmware upgrades just seems to much. So far, I have had only 1 small issue with performance from my PS3, and that was fixed with the first formware upgrade (wireless firmware upload rocks). And i could care less about upconversion, i bought the PS3 for the discs. I already have a good upconverting Samsung dvd player.

And the only reason why I say what excuse will people have once the players get cheap enough is because of the studios that are releasing already on BR, but but HD DVD. If the studios start releasing in HD DVD, then Blu Ray should start worrying about its life span. Until then, if the BR players start getting to more ralistic costs, i think people will simply start weighing the options of what's avalible for what format.

As opposed to the PS3, which has had about 137 firmware updates since launching in November? :confused:

Yeah, no kidding. I have updated my Toshiba less than my PS3, used at least 10 times more and had hlaf the trouble out of it. I had one disc it screwed up on. Guess what the PS3 could not play that DVD either. The PS3 was glitching every movie I watched until one firmware update was sent. I just can't see anyone saying the PS3 is blowing the Toshiba players out of the water. The only thing it does better is startup time and play BD discs. Trust me, if it were not for the latter I would not fool with owning one.

Close. I think we are on 7 now. And to be fair, "most" of the updates are for game related things. There have been some essential updates to BD as well (Still waiting for upconvert, grrr).

Can hardly wait for Pixar on BD!

I have no experience with the PS3; after owning a HD A1 and HD XA2 I can tell you that I've had ZERO problems with any HD DVDs.