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Sunday, November 23, 2008

There was a time when burning a blank CD-ROM in your own home sparked feelings of wonder and joy as if you were performing a minor miracle. What once seemed like a technical marvel has, like so many small wonders, become routine.

Now we can also burn our own DVDs. Sprinting down to the local mega-mart for a stack of blank CDs seems like a no-brainer, and it's quickly becoming so for DVDs. But the story doesn't actually end there.

Blank media still possess an air of mystery, at least to some people. When you buy a stack of shiny new platters packaged by Fujifilm, TDK Electronics, Ritek, Verbatim, Imation, Hewlett-Packard or another recognizable brand, you cannot count on the name that appears on the label to reveal the whole story. In fact, most of this blank media is manufactured by a short list of companies: India's Moser Baer, Japan's Ricoh and Taiyo Yuden, and Taiwan's CMC Magnetics, Prodisc Technology and Optodisc Technology.

Taiyo Yuden is the granddaddy of them all. Together with Sony and Philips, it invented recordable CD media in 1988. Today, these manufacturers produce a variety of product lines. Some are in-house formulations bought and resold under brand names, while other lines may be designed to the specifications of a particular vendor.

Just how much of each is out there "is an area where speculation takes hold more than fact," says Kevin Pieper, who maintains the resource site digitalFAQ.com. In Pieper's experience, the name brands "purchase the media being made by the manufacturers, and put their pretty little logo in it -- nothing more."

Verbatim spokesman Andy Marken describes the company's facilities in Singapore and Japan as using "our own processes and procedures" and says "our own production and quality engineers monitor the work flow."

It is not uncommon for brand names to draw on more than one manufacturer to fill their inventories, selling blank media with different ancestries. And so ... who cares?

People who take their burns seriously care a lot. They hang out in online forums such as Club CD Freaks, a community with more than 100,000 members and 5 million visitors a month. A smaller community of about 10,000 members frequents CDRLabs.com. Hot topics at these sites include reviews of the latest DVD recorders and hot tips on blank-media bargains.

The gospel according to these recording enthusiasts: All recordable media is not created equal. They tout certain manufacturers for producing "the good stuff," and revile others for unreliability.

"Good," by these standards, has several meanings. Most importantly, people don't want to wind up with coasters -- discs that fail to burn properly and are rendered useless. It used to be that producing coasters was a fact of life, back when recording technology was immature. These days, most coasters are the result of poorly made media. In fact, says Pieper, "there is actually more bad media now than there was just two years ago."

Even with a successful burn, the question of durability and longevity remains key. All burns produce a certain number of errors -- the CD and DVD data protocols are designed to handle this. But too many errors can result in a disc that does not stand the test of time -- readable in the short term, but possibly not years later.

Some media can burn reliably faster than its rated speed. A DVD+R might be rated at 4X burn speed, yet with certain recorders, it can be burned at 8X.
The factors that contribute to high- or low-quality media are varied. Several choices of dye are on the market, and which one is used can affect a disc's reflectivity, and thus its readability. But beyond that, says Pieper, "if your dye is unevenly spread, or the other materials and workmanship are shoddy, it doesn't matter what dye is used." Also, Pieper says if the glue job on the platter is sloppy, "the media literally falls apart."

story source: http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2005/03/66911

Sunday, November 16, 2008

JFK - Ultimate Collector's Edition

Dawn Taylor

One imagines that DVD marketers spend a good, long time thinking about what discs need to be released, and which older films have a big enough audience to justify putting together a massive "Super-Special Get Out Your Wallet Edition" with all sorts of extra features and inserts.

At least, I like to think that there's a lot of thought involved. But sometimes something hits the shelves -- like, say, the new Ultimate Collector's Edition of JFK -- that makes me wonder who, exactly, is the intended audience.

The set from Warner Bros. is a bulky box the size of a student's dictionary. It includes the 206-minute feature and all the same extras that were included on the 2003 two-disc "Special Edition" (making it not-so-special now, I guess), including the original commentary track with Oliver Stone, and members of the cast and crew and the 90-minute Beyond JFK: The Question of Conspiracy featurette, and deleted scenes.

But, oh, there's more. A third disc offers The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings (135 min.), a new documentary that looks at the history of the American dynasty, with a solid emphasis on Jack and not a lot of focus on the less positive aspects of the family. And then there are production photos, pictures of JFK, and reproductions of letters that he wrote and received. So if you've ever wanted the experience of holding a flimsy piece of paper printed to look like a postcard that John F. Kennedy once sent to his mom, you should be in hog heaven here. There's even a collectible pin tucked into the documentary's keep-case.

As for the movie itself, it holds up well. Better than well, really, but perhaps not in the way one would expect. Admittedly, it's not a reliable narrative. Oliver Stone's reputation as a crazed conspiracy theorist was built on JFK, and there are perfectly valid reasons to criticize the film purely on Stone's loose hand with facts, as well as his creation of composite characters for dramatic efficiency. As a historical document, and as a factual, investigative work on the reasons behind the Kennedy assassination, JFK fails utterly.

But Stone didn't make a documentary. He made a dramatic, big-budget, Hollywood-financed feature film. JFK is long, it's talky, and it stars Kevin Costner in one of the least convincing roles of his career, which is really saying something. And, for all that, it's a consistently engaging, even entertaining, work that achieves Stone's goal -- to make the audience ask questions, and to stir up enough controversy so that people would talk about the shady manner in which the government has handled information about the assassination.

Stone's intent is made clear in one startling moment as obsessed District Attorney Jim Garrison (Costner) speaks to the jury during the trial of accused conspirator Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones). "Show this world that this is still a government of the people, for the people and by the people,'" he says to them. "Nothing as long as you live will ever be more important -- it's up to you." And then he looks directly into the camera, challenging the viewer to do more than sit passively in a movie theater. It's a little jarring, quite powerful, and full of Stone's ego. And it works.

One very good reason why JFK has aged so well is that, in the 17 years since its release, Stone's muscular, fast-paced, directing style has been embraced as the Hollywood norm. In his New York Times review of the film's theatrical release, Vincent Canby described Stone's direction as "making hysterical scenes tumbling one after another, backed by a soundtrack that is layered, strudel-like, with noises, dialogue, music, more noises, more dialogue." Indeed, John Williams' score is predictably heavy-handed, but his use of an insistent rat-a-tat snare drum to simultaneously denote presidential gravitas and create tension is wickedly effective (and seems to have been baldly stolen by W.G. Snuffy Walden for The West Wing theme some eight years later). Viewed today, however, Stone's directorial style hardly seems any more rushed than your average cineplex release, and his use of layered dialogue-on-dialogue-on-music can be found on most nighttime television dramas.

One thing that can be said for the marketing minds behind the JFK: Ultimate Collector's Edition set is that their timing is excellent, with Stone's W. limping out of theaters and the DVD's November 2008 release arriving just a few weeks before the 45th anniversary of the event in question. And, thankfully, Warner Bros. didn't get greedy: The set retails for $39.98, which seems reasonable for the amount of extras included. Although I still wonder how many rabid JFK fans are out there, who either don't already own the special-edition DVD or are willing to pull out their credit cards just to get a documentary (which can be purchased separately) and some replicas of postcards.

story source: http://www.film.com/dvds/story/dvd-jfk-ultimate-collectors-edition/24375262

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

DVD wars: Not over yet

By Catherine Holahan

For a moment there, it looked as though the battle between the competing high-definition video formats was decided. In recent months, the camp backing Sony's Blu-ray technology announced a series of partnerships with rental and retail stores that left the rival HD-DVD format limping. But key support from Paramount Home Entertainment for HD-DVD make the next-generation video disc wars once again too close to call.

On Aug. 20, Paramount parent Viacom announced plans to release home movies from Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks, Nickelodeon, and MTV Films exclusively in the HD-DVD format, which is backed by Toshiba and Microsoft. Recent box-office blockbusters such as Transformers, Shrek the Third, and Blades of Glory will be among the first films to be released solely for HD-DVD players. Together, the three films brought in more than US$1.5 billion worldwide, making them among the highest-grossing movies of 2007, alongside Walt Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End and Columbia Pictures Spider-Man 3. Both Disney and Sony-owned Columbia Pictures support the Blu-ray format.
Setback for Blu-ray momentum
Rob Moore, Paramount's president for worldwide marketing, distribution, and home entertainment, says the company favors HD-DVD because its supporting players are cheaper, on average, than Blu-ray players, making them more consumer-friendly. Toshiba's entry-level player is just under US$400. Sony's entry-level player is about US$100 more. "Ultimately, what we think is going to drive adoption is the price point," says Moore, adding that concentrating on one format will make it easier to release discs quickly.

Paramount's decision came as a surprise to some, especially Blu-ray supporters. Before the announcement, only NBC's Universal Studios was exclusively distributing HD-DVD discs. Many studios, including Time Warner's Warner Bros. Pictures and others, have been releasing films in both formats, waiting for a clear victor to emerge before choosing sides. And it had seemed Paramount was content to do the same. "We don't really understand the decision at this particular time because of all the momentum that Blu-ray has had over the past two months," says Andy Parsons, a chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Assn. in North America and senior vice-president for product development at Pioneer USA.

Blu-ray supporters had cause for optimism. Blu-ray discs were outselling HD-DVD discs by a factor of nearly 2 to 1, says Parsons, fueled in part by the popularity of Sony's PlayStation 3, which plays Blu-ray movies as well as games. The game system costs only US$600, compared with the US$900-plus price tag on some of the newest Blu-ray players.

The Blu-ray camp had also announced a series of deals that promised to further extend the dominance of Blu-ray technology. On Jun. 18, movie rental giant Blockbuster announced plans to expand the sale of Blu-ray discs, and only Blu-ray discs, to 1,450 more stores. Previously, only 250 company-owned stores rented high-definition discs. Soon after, BJ's Wholesale Club announced plans to stock only Blu-ray discs and Target said it would sell only Sony's Blu-ray player in stores--though it still planned to carry HD-DVD discs and the external HD-DVD drive companion to Microsoft's Xbox 360.
Will confused consumers stay away?
So why did Paramount back HD-DVD? A Hollywood news blog, Deadline Hollywood Daily, reported that Toshiba & Co. agreed to pay Paramount US$150 million for "promotional consideration". Neither HD-DVD representatives nor Paramount would confirm or deny any such deal, saying only that they could not discuss specifics. "Any sort of price differential in 2007 is likely to evaporate by this time in 2008," says Forrester research analyst Josh Bernoff. "This is surprising, and it does make you wonder what is going on behind the scenes."

Regardless of how the deal was done, the question now is how the divided support among movie studios will influence consumer shopping this holiday season. Bernoff, for one, believes the renewed strength of the HD-DVD camp will confuse consumers--and unsure consumers keep their wallets shut while they wait for some sort of resolution that can guarantee they are not wasting money on the next-generation version of Betamax.

HD-DVD supporters hope Paramount's support will fuel sales by enabling the studio to focus on extra features that make next-gen DVDs worth the price and hassle of upgrading from a traditional DVD player. "The consumer today is very happy with their DVD, and they need to look at more than the better picture and the better sound quality," says Ken Graffeo, co-president of the HD-DVD Promotional Group and an executive vice-president at Universal Studios. "They need to see how this is going to change their movie-viewing experience. (Paramount)can now focus their communications on the benefits of this format."

Meanwhile, the Blu-ray camp is all the more determined to show why their discs alone--and not some hybrid version or dual-support player--deserves to win the format wars. "Either a single format wins, or nobody wins,"says Pioneer's Parsons. The smart money for the moment is on nobody.

story source: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/business/0,39044229,62031331,00.htm

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