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The Departed, 007: Casino Royale films snag more awards
As if moving over 100,000 units wasn't enough, those involved with the making of The Departed have yet another reason to celebrate -- right alongside the equally successful crew involved with 007: Casino Royale, of course. At the first Entertainment Merchants Association's Home Entertainment Awards to hand out honors for high-definition titles, Scorsese's latest gem managed to take home the awards for HD DVD Title of the Year as well as DVD Rental Title of the Year, while the latest in the Bond series took home Blu-ray Title of the Year. Unfortunately, these two films (Casablanca notwithstanding, which nabbed the Hall of Fame Award) were the only notable winners residing on an HD format, but we'll be interested to see how all that changes on the next go 'round.[Via HighDefDigest]
The Departed HD DVD / Blu-ray disc breaks 100k mark in sales
While it wasn't too long ago that Tom Cruise was jumping off couches after finding out that Mission: Impossible III broke all sorts of HD disc sales records, it looks like there's a new champ in town. Warner Home Video has proudly announced that The Departed has sold over 100,000 units during its short stint on the shelves, making it arguably the largest selling high-definition movie to date. It should come as no surprise that the press release is mum when it comes to HD DVD vs. Blu-ray numbers, but it did suggest that supporting both formats seemed like an amicable solution to appease both camps. So, any guesses as to which format strengthened the final figure most?[Via HighDefDigest]
The Departed Blu-ray disc to feature uncompressed 5.1 audio track
While the mild background screams concerning HD DVD discs getting Dolby TrueHD audio while Blu-ray owners got stuck with a completely uninspiring "standard Dolby Digital" track haven't yet amounted to much, apparently Warner Home Video wants to set the record straight with The Departed. While we knew the film was slated to hit both HD DVD and Blu-ray back at CES, Warner has just now fessed up to the uncompressed audio we can expect to hear from the BD rendition. The HD DVD version will feature the expected TrueHD track, but the Blu-ray flavor will sport a delightfully lossless PCM 5.1 track that should measure up close enough to satisfy all but the most discerning audiophiles. So if you've been enjoying that dual-format BH100, and were leaning HD DVD's way on this one simply due to audio, now you've got one more quandary to solve in the next fortnight.
