OK, what's the deal here? Lost among all the Warner going Blu talk yesterday is this terrible press release from Fox about their upcoming catalog titles:

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/pres...x_q1_2008.html

While the missing extras from their standard def counterparts is pretty much to be expected at this point with Fox, all these are going to be in inferior MPEG2?
Why would they go back to using that bloated, outdated codec and not AVC?
I'm hoping it's just a typo and they do end up in AVC...we'll see....

Fox sucks. Independence day was announced for last quarter too.

Don't forget the budget-friendly $39.99 prices!

you guys really like using MSRP don't you? MSRP means nothing. hell all dvds sell for less than their MSRPs.

Yeah, but when the MSRP is $39.99, the street price is usually higher than any other releases on the same medium.

Would have probably turned out the same had Fox chose to go with HD-Dvd only.

And? I'm simply addressing one persons statement about how the $39.99 translate into street prices.

Perhaps Fox will begin to lower their prices now that they have to compete with Warner.

The problem is that, with all the vitriol currently on display about the Warner decision, a few vocal people are citing Fox's high prices as evidence that Blu-ray (under Sony's evil dominance, of course) is planning to price gouge everyone now that the war is "over".

The fact that Fox has a long history of overpriced, under-featured DVD offerings doesn't seem to enter into their thinking, nor does the obvious conclusion that, had Fox chosen HD DVD, their prices would still have been as high.

If Blu-Ray wins, and they begin price gouging, I don't expect Blu-Ray to last long either.

Maybe. Maybe not.

In all fairness MPEG2 can look very good. The problem is you need a lot more room. So, with all the yelling of Blu-ray having more space than HD DVD, maybe this time Fox will actually use the space. In any case, sounds like Fox is just lazy and cheap. They don't want to pay for the VC-1 encodes because it belongs to Microsoft. Hope this won't be a trend, now that a particular "winner" is inevitable.

You are grasping at straws here. Looking for the reason on why HD-Dvd should have won out. As stated before Fox has always had high MSRPs on their dvds well before Blu-Ray or HD-Dvd were even born. You just have to hold your money tight and wait for the right deals in regards to their titles . I have always wanted the Man On Fire 2-Disc set but because I could never find it for a reasonable deal, although I did miss a couple of opportunities, I never picked it up. Had HD-Dvd won I don't think Fox would have said "Oh yeah, our new MSRP is going to now be 29.99 to reflect our new found good will toward men."

I believe someone at AVS who already had Man On Fire confirmed it was AVC and the MPEG listing on the back of the art was a misprint.

That's not to say the others might be MPEG2.

EDIT: The back art of Man On Fire shown at DVDEmpire says AVC.

And it also shows a complete lack of special features which is why I will have to pass. Hopefully now that this war is coming to a close they will work on getting quality product out the gate the first time around.

all these rival companies are REALLY getting to me, they all want what the other has and consumer's lives are made miserable in the process.

Yeah, I just read at AVS Forum that the press release was incorrect and it WAS just a typo! Thank goodness....AVC really is where we need to keep the encodes at!

(Yes, I know MPEG2 CAN look just about as good, but it requires WAY more space to do so...so why at this point would anyone use it when the much more efficient AVC is available and producing arguably the best results, as shown in such top rated titles as Ratatouille, Pirates, Die Hard 4, Silver Surfer, Transformers, etc....)

Like it or not Fox has turned the table, and done so in an impressive manner. Their post-Paramount event releases have been as solid in the audio/video department as possible. Yes, they had manufacturing problems but so did Warner...with a few extra on top. In fact, aside from Blade Runner which was worked on for some time now it truly started to look like they, WB, were taking the cheaper and less than impressive road.

Fox is following the same progression we witnessed prior to their release of Fight Club on SDVD -- higher than other studios prices, initial batch of non-anamorphic titles (Brokedown Palace, Strange Days, etc) / lackluster BRs (Entrapment), gradual decrease in pricing. Which all led to them being one of the top studios in the business.

If you don't see the enormous progress they've made from Entrapment to The Day After Tomorrow then there is something wrong with your set-up.

Pro-B

Wow, I couldn't disagree more. I believe that BR will follow the same path as standard def DVD. Initially it was Divx and DVD, some studios were Divx exclusives (Disney, Fox, Universal?) and others like WB were DVD exclusives- some studios sat on the sidelines waiting for the dust to settle. WB and Toshiba were strong partners at the time and they carried the ball until Divx caved and DVD won. Even though one format "won" the prices on hardware dropped and the catalog of DVDs offered has grown exponentially as the prices dropped. I'm not sure how long it will take but I think the prices on both hardware and software will drop significantly.

Back on topic - I think we should wait for reviews before we assume that they are MPEG-2. The people that wrote copy for the press release might not have been HD enthusiasts.

MPEG2 still looks good. Kingdom of Heaven and Black Hawk Down are gorgeous.

It can, but at the cost of using up double the space of AVC...wouldn't you rather they not waste the bits on an MPEG2 encode and instead use AVC to look just as good or better, plus have the space for extras and whatnot?
If Fox had used AVC on Kingdom Of Heaven today, maybe it would have had at least some of the extras from the 4 DVD set....and Sony probably would have been able to put all of the extras from the 3 DVD Black Hawk Down onto its Blu-ray release as well....

FOX sucks mostly when it comes to HD, they have a couple good titles lately.

Ronin BD is MPEG2. Still looks good.

I actually wouldn't be surprised if we see some more MPEG-2 titles though, if they were encoded before they were cancelled/postponed last spring. That's probably what happened with Robocop.

I agree but I'm not allowed to say it anymore.