King Kong and The Lord of the Ring's on HD-DVD

[Roger]

If you’ll indulge me in a bit of speculation... I couldn’t help but notice the current and up-coming HD-DVD titles are missing some key box-office players, namely ‘King Kong’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy. Surely both of these titles would be must-haves for fans of the films who are considering a HD-DVD player, so where are these mega titles?

This is where I go conspiracy theorist on you, so my apologies in advance. What if Universal (HD-DVD exclusive) were prepping Kong’s HD-DVD release to coincide with another consumer electronics release later this month, for example Blu-rays launch on May 23rd?

Ok I know it sounds a bit strange but hey since Universal agreed to support HD-DVD exclusively and Toshiba hasn’t exactly mounted an aggressive HD-DVD marketing campaign thus far, maybe Kong on HD-DVD will turn into an advertising blitz right around the time Blu-ray launches.

So far HD-DVD titles haven’t followed their DVD counterpart’s tradition of being announced months in advance of their release. A few of the Warner titles have been released with as little as a weeks notice, which makes the above scenario slightly more plausible.

That leaves our other mega-title up for discussion. The Lord of the Rings is a Warner Bros. release so exclusivity isn’t an issue here, the title will be available on Blu-ray and HD-DVD. However Toshiba could mount their own marketing campaign with the title right around the launch of another Blu-ray based consumer electronics device.

The PlayStation 3 is scheduled for launch in early November, hmm I wonder. Obviously this is all a bit of good natured speculation but hey, you never know…


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[Tommy]

I cant wait to get both of these movies....

[Wayde]

The release of the LOTR trilogy, Terminator and Star Wars on one format pretty well sells the format.

One is already in the hands of BD. But from what I understand BD is a bit troubled right now until they perfect dual layering. I am not convinced there will be dual layer BD disks so quickly as Sony is saying (late summer). Sony has a history of giving mistruths of their capabilities.

[Tommy]

I was watching the LOTR DVD's on the HD-DVD player, it already looks great. I'd like to see the difference if it was in actual HD.

[Wayde]

Actually I PVRed it in HD when it was on the movie channels and brought up the same frame for comparison. I tried to shoot the difference but it never came out looking right.

There is a scene in the second LOTR movie where the boys are riding to that town on the hill. You see horses in the foreground, snow capped mountains way in the background and the various little wooden shacks and what not on the hill in a sort of middle foreground.

On that one still frame in the HD version that aired on cable you could not only make out details in the cottages you couldn't on the DVD but you could actually see some of the patterns in the ice on some of the mountains in the background. It looked more three dimensional.

That tends to be the biggest difference with DVD and HD. In fact it's difficult for me to tell the difference between them when I'm watching a close up of a talking face. It really stands out when there is a wide scene with images deep in the scenery as well as other objects in the fore and middle background. A good HD presentation will show all the objects with some amount of clarity. Most DVDs won't show details in background objects.

Of course mileage will vary. Some of the HD films I get on cable just have crap for video. Sometimes the only thing the HD moniker on the film has to offer is the correct aspect ratio, I see little qualitative difference between it and a decent quality digital feed at 480P.

[Tommy]

I agree the clarity of detail seems to be the improvement from dvd to HD. I'd say its not a drastic difference but any improvement at all in picture is progress...

Thanks for sharing the comparisions. That's what I expected as far as differences and I look forward to actually seeing it in HD