What, really? Why would it be a different encode? Were they just done at different times?

Looks like Amazon jacked the Fox titles previously priced at $23.95 back to $27.95; the Die Hard collection is back to $90, too. They had been at the lower prices for a while, so I thought it was a permanent thing. That totally blows.

The Unrated "Badder Santa" came out about 2 years before the Zwigoff approved Director's Cut.

Now, I would have assumed they were doing the two cuts with seamless branching, but now it sounds like they may have gone with their existing masters and put them both on the disc, which would be strange to say the least.

I haven't had a chance to watch my copy yet, but I assume it would be readily apparent if they did indeed put two different encodes on the disc by checking some of their shared scenes.

My wallet is REALLY gonna miss the 10% off!!!

I need to get as many preorders in on Dec 31 as I can!!

you're telling me :(

I'm just waiting for preorder links for
- Battle of Britian
- Bridge Too Far
- Across the Universe

The 10% discount has been pretty hit or miss for me when ordering stuff that won't ship until after January 1st.

Also, I'm guessing you can't write and have it manually applied since it would be outside the promotion window. So essentially any 2008 pre-orders that get the discount are gravy.

Not for me... I've gotten the 10% discount from Amazon CS on all my 2008 pre-orders. Even Tinker Bell (lol) which isn't supposed to be released until late 2008.

Well, I would think that since the order is placed before 2008, they would honor the 10% off. I wouldnt think you would have any issues contacting CS.

Hmmm....looks like I have a few messages to write. :)

The only problem is that if the CS rep manually puts in the price (with 10% off), it COULD disable the pre-order matching or you lose the discount if the price changes. It depends on how they do it. That happened to me once.

Not a huge concern, but just realize that if you see the price go down on that product, you might need to contact them again to fix your order.

I hear ya there, but I think it all comes clean in the end. CS also makes their share of mistakes when applying the discount. For instance, just say you've ordered 3 BDs and none of them had the discount applied. Many times, CS will calculate the discount for all 3 & just reduce the price on 1 of the BDs by that total. If you were really unscrupulous, you could cancel the other 2 BDs at regular price & just reorder them after the system was set to automatically remove the discount. I've never done that, but one time they applied the 10% to everything in my order (including a couple SDs).

Yep,

I always keep my eye on orders because of that. Usually, if that does happen, by the time I replace the order the discount is kicking in as well.

Right now my HP BD set was manually adjusted down to 94.xx. If they drop the price below 104.95 I'll have to adjust the order.

You're right, I was unclear, in Europe HD-Ready definition was this :

A display unit must meet with the following specifications to be classified as 'HD-Ready'. These are the minimum specifications:

1. Min. native resolution should be 720 physical lines in wide aspect ratio
2. Display must accept all of the following HD inputs: YPbPr1, and either DVI or HDMI
3. HD inputs should accept 1280x720 @50/60Hz (720p), and 1920x1080 @50/60Hz interlaced (1080i)
4. DVI and HDMI input must support HDCP content protection.

Now, with HD-Ready 1080p that was called Full HD before, HD-Ready logo means TV set that support 720p/1080i max.
Blu-Ray and HD-DVD movies are AACS protected to output 1080i max via component, that's why I said you just need a HD-Ready display, 1080p is useless.

But many european early adopters that speak english, spanish or french order their discs from US sites.

this is not correct. the clue is in the description you posted: the device (tv) must accept a 720p or 1080i signal, to be classified hd-ready. this is not the same as being able to display 1080p. in fact to achieve this resolution the display itself must have 1080 pixels across the screen, which is not the case with displays labled as hd-ready. full hd sets are around but are still in the minority.
which would suggest the usa numbers are artificially inflated. however with no region coding for hd dvd for the moment, and the weakness of the dollar against the pound and euro (plus exclusive european releases such as harry potter) there are plenty of americans posting to message boards that they are importing european discs. the exact correlation of numbers to import/exprot is not available, so it's just a guessing game.

The director's cut is AVC while the unrated version is VC-1. I also suspect that these are two different masters, and a review I read said the DC looks better (which may be because it's more recent).

BTW, I just saw this on AVS. It's from The Digital Bits:

"Also today, we have a follow-up for you on one other Blu-ray issue. Some of you may recall that a few months ago, viewers reported a framing problem with a few scenes in Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl Blu-ray Disc. Disney has apparently corrected the problem in production, so future copies going into stores will feature the correct framing (we'll try to find out if there's a way to identify corrected copies by the packaging - UPC number variation or something). In the meantime, if you have a copy with the mis-framed footage, you will SOON be able to call the studio's Blu-ray customer service hotline at 1-800-723-4763 (U.S.) or 1-800-877-2843 (Canada) to arrange an exchange. Don't call just yet - we'll let you know when the discs are ready for exchange. Just know that Disney has been working on the problem, and a solution will be available to you all shortly."

Independence Day has now been delayed until March 5 days before it was going to be released. Nice one Fox, love the support.

Nice how QC caught this days before it was supposed to be released and didn't notify anyone. I still don't buy the QC reason at all, especially coming from Fox. This title was suppose to be awesome too. At this point I really believe Fox just announces titles to persuade people into buying into Blu-ray and then hopes people forget about them.

Just saw on another forum that Live Free or Die Hard sold nearly a 100k on BD. While this is peanuts compared to dvd, for HDM standards this is quite a surprise considering the Box office take for it. Not bad for Fox. Hopefully news like this will prevent news like from the post above to keep happening.

Gizmo, I saw Independence Day when I was last at Fox. It's all put together and on disc. This is not a case of Fox duping people.

My guess it's a BD+ issue. I don't blame Fox for delaying to make sure it works in all players but they really should announce a delay a month or two before rather than a week before release. Quite annoying.

Don't they press copies of movies all the time for testing purposes? I have no doubt that there IS a HD version of Independence Day, but were they ever planning on actually selling it on December 4th? No specs were ever released for it (or several other Fox titles for December 4th). I don't think BD+ is the issue, otherwise they would have delayed those titles as well, Cast Away included.

I heard those numbers as well. I'm going to assume its the box set + single release version numbers combined. Not bad at all.

I think we all know Fox is the worst studio releasing HDM right now. And yes it sucks that yet another title is delayed. But I think you'd have a problem if one or two posters continually bashed on every decision Universal made in the HD DVD threads. Considering I've seen a Blu-ray copy of Independence Day, I'm willing to believe it was a QC issue. Anything else is just conjecture.

If only they would do as much for every title they release.



(Note: This is not a slam against the Blu-ray format, just the behavior of 20th Century Fox.)

The place where they will have the replication done will produce a certain amount of check discs after authoring, etc. is complete. These check discs are put through the QC process and this is where Fox found the problems. These are available weeks/months before the release date depending on how soon they begin the process.